My Antonia Nature Analysis

Revered scientist John Lubbock once said, “Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.” Nature is as complex as it is vast; yet, it has the ability to reveal more about humanity than those who inhabit it. Such an idea holds very true in My Antonia, Willa Cather’s acclaimed depiction of pioneer life in the 1800s. In the novel, Cather uses elements of nature to reflect the innate qualities of certain characters throughout the novel. While several of nature’s elements can be linked to the sentiments of various characters, three in particular provide captivating insight into certain characters: the river, the winter, and the

Jim recounts in Book 1, Chapter 15, “On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk; the handles, the tongue, the share--black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun. Even while we whispered about it, our vision disappeared; the ball dropped and dropped until the red tip went beneath the earth. The fields below us were dark, the sky was growing pale, and that forgotten plough had sunk back to its own littleness somewhere on the prairie.” The plough is among the most essential farming tools, largely representative of the farmers’ themselves. Jim and Antonia see the plough cast against the sun, symbolizing man’s relationship with nature. Initially, as the sun sets behind the plough, there seems to be harmony between man and nature, almost “heroic” of sorts on man’s part. However, as the sun continues to sink, the plough becomes more miniscule, sinking “back into its own littleness.” This shows that man and his creations (the plough) are ultimately no match for nature’s