Jim's Obsession In My Antonia By Willa Cather

Obsession is the attachment of a person's internal thoughts towards someone else. In My Antonia by Willa Cather, Jim immediately talks about Antonia in an obsessive way. He frequently mentions her in conversation from the moment he first heard of Antonia. Even though Antonia is described as opinionated and talks a lot, Jim spends a lot of time with her, observing and admiring everything about her. Jim’s romanticism leads to an obsession with Antonia. Jim seems to be obsessed with Antonia because she clearly says how she will always treat Jim as a child but he refuses to believe that and continues to obsess over her.
Not only did Jim’s romanticism lead him to an obsession but his own insecurities as well. “Much as I liked Antonia, I hated the superior tone that she sometimes took with me. She was 4 years older than I, to be sure, and had seen more of the world.” (18) Jim never liked when Antonia made him feel like a child. Jim visits Antonia and when he leaves and walks down a road. He says, “As I went back alone over that familiar road, I could almost believe that a boy and girl ran along beside

Jim talked about how he would have a recurring dream about Antonia. “One dream I dreamed a great many times, and it is always the same. I was in harvest-field full of shocks, and I was lying against one of them. Lena Lingard came across the stubble barefoot, in a short skirt, with a curved reaping-hook in her hand, and she was flushed like the dawn, with a kind of luminous rosiness all about her.” (98) He has stayed attached to her for so long and even in the end the last thing he thought about was him and Antonia. “Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.” (136) He knows they will always find their way back to each other because he is