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Racial Attitudes In John Cather's My Antonia

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Question: How does Cather use Jim's description to reflect the town's racial attitudes towards the new settlers. In the novel “My Antonia”, Cather uses Jim's character descriptions in order to show racial attitudes towards the new settlers. She also compares his description of russians with Antonia’s in order to show the town's racial attitude can be contrasted depending on how well they know each other. First and foremost, the author of “My Antonia” presents positive racial attitudes of Jim through his description of bohemian families. This is evident when he says ” We knew that things were hard for our Bohemian neighbors...two girls were lighthearted and never complained.” By this readers can be inferred that Jim has sympathy and understanding for difficulties that bohemians are facing. In addition,the end of the quote which says “two girls were lighthearted and never complained” suggests that bohemians are coping well with their hard lives, and Jim is positive towards their attitudes. Furthermore, the author of the novel showed racial attitude of the …show more content…

This is evident when Jim says “I had often tempted to go see them….but one of them was a wild-looking fellow and I was little afraid of him.” In this sentence, word “tempted” suggests something forbidden and indicates that russians can be strange. Another word “wild-looking” suggests that Russians are savage and live in a very wild fashion. Another quote saying ”Russia seemed to me more remote than any other country-farther away than China.almost as far as the North pole” shows Jim`s vague description about Russia and how limited is Jim's knowledge about countries outside U.S. This shows Jim is getting afraid of them just because of their appearance and his unsureness of what kind of people they

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