Antonia's Perseverance In My Antonia By Willa Cathera

“You influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don’t realize it. You really are a part of me”(Cathera 206). My Antonia by Willa Cathera captures the story of Jim, the narrator, and Antonia, growing up in the rural lands of Nebraska, and follows their lives through adulthood. Through this novel, the care Jim and Antonia share becomes blatantly apparent and their relationship becomes more and more indescribable. Antonia's perseverance affects Jim’s compassion. Antonia's perseverance affects Jim’s recognition of the disadvantages others face, understanding of the hired girls' freedoms, and alters Jim’s view of success. Antonia's perseverance affects Jim’s recognition for the disadvantages of others. The Shimerdas

The hired girls are the girls who are immigrants and have left their family to go work for the townspeople who hire them. Due to the different social standards between Black Hawk and Bohemia, Antonia doesn't exactly align: “But no matter in what straits the Pennsylvanian or Virginian found himself, he would not let his daughters go out into service. Unless his girls could teach a country school, they sat at home in poverty”(Cathera 128). Explains that the hired girls have the opportunity to make a change but the American, Black Hawk folks, girls are forced to watch their family suffer which in their view is better than girls working. Antonia has been described with the amount of work she does in fields countless times even to the point where she was working in fields until the instance gave birth. This proves her persistence for work even since it does not follow the social standards; and this is something Jim wholly admires. In Jims younger parts of life he thought of Antonia much more romantically, he even tries to kiss her: “Now, don’t you go and be a fool like some of these town boys. You’re not going to sit around here and whittle store-boxes and tell stories all your life. You are going away to school and making something of yourself. I’m just awfully proud of you. You won’t go and get mixed up with the Swedes, will you?”(Cathera 143). Antonia refuses to kiss Jim for the fact she feels Jim

Success looks different for everyone, and isn't measured by amount of money or materials but by your happiness. At the end of one's life the only way one is successful is if they did what they wanted with their life and found peace and happiness. Jim hesitantly visits Antonia 20 years later fearing how her life could have gone but misjudged it. Jim arrives at Antonia's house and finds her, on a farm with 11 children but she's happy :“I know so many women who have kept all the things that she had lost, but whose inner glow has faded. Whatever else was gone, Ántonia had not lost the fire of life”(Cathera 216). Antonia is described with her fire, her unbothered way of living. Antonia does not hold onto the past but moves forward and finds happiness. She pushed through the hard and has found bliss; and from this Jim is taught how her success looks. Some like Lena Lingard found success from wealth while Antonia has found success from her children and her land. Antonia is pictured as bliss in Jims mind, with power of emotions: “All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions”(Cathera 220). Jim described Antonia with “her heart came out of her body” meaning Antonia's love radiates to all. Followed by “tireless in serving generous emotions” describing how Antonia isn't afraid to hide how she feels, she has had so many hardships and has pushed through successfully and