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Significance Of Jim Burden's Coming Of Age Journey In My Antonia

1197 Words5 Pages

Recovery of The Past Antonia, by Willa Cather, follows Jim Burden's coming-of-age journey. Throughout the novel, Jim builds a relationship with Antonia Shimerda and other important characters who advance his story and shape him into who he becomes. This story illustrates Americanization and Immigration as a whole and expands on the idea of manifest destiny. In Cather’s enigmatic prologue, she writes from the perspective of one of Jim Burden’s old friends, while Jim and him reminisce about their old town. They converse about Antonia and her significance to their lives and what Antonia means to them, and Jim soon confesses that he’s begun to write about what he remembers about her. Months later, Jim comes back with a book titled “My Antonia.” The use of the prefix “my” when describing Antonia illuminates the importance of their past, …show more content…

He says that he “remembered her voice so well” contributing to his thoughts of nostalgia, and longing for the past. At the end of the novel, while looking over the road that Antonia and Jim first came to Blackhawk on when they were younger, Jim says: “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” (179). This quote illustrates the importance of the past and that whatever Jim and Antonia missed, they still have their memories together. The bond that they share is so crucial to each of their lives, that it overpowers anything that will ever be. When Jim states that the same road was to bring them together again, it highlights the importance of growing up and illuminates the nostalgia that Jim feels in this moment. The “incommunicable past” is what they will always have and something that nobody can ever take away from them. The memories that Jim and Antonia share have a special place in their hearts and will always be with

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Jim lives with his grandparents in Black Hawk, and two farmhands, Jake and Otto Fuchs. Jim arrives in Nebraska after his parents have died, at the same time as Antonia and her family. The Shimerda family live close to Jim’s grandparents, and they become friends. Jim teaches Antonia to speak English, and they spend a lot of time together exploring where they live. The Shimerdas are not doing very well in Nebraska, and Jim’s grandparents try to help them by providing food and items they can use.

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In her novel “My Antonia,” Willa Cather shows the impact the Hired Girls have on Jim is the way they offer him a nostalgic connection to his past by using the works of Virgil, and from this connection Jim is able to reach deep intellectual and personal understanding. After being away from his childhood home for many years, and in the midst of pursuing his studies, Jim is reunited with Lena Lingard. The effect she has on him is immediate and lasting, and after seeing her for the first time Jim finds himself thinking of the past. “When I closed my eyes I could hear them all laughing - the Danish laundry girls and the three Bohemian Marys.

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Set in nineteenth century Black Hawk, Nebraska, Willa Cather’s novel My Antonia is the tragic, yet hope-filled memoir of Bohemian immigrant, Antonia Shimerda, as recounted through the memories of her childhood friend, Jim Burden. Arriving in Nebraska with her family, Antonia’s life is hopeful. However, the infertile prairie land disheartens her father causing him to take his life.

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Comparing Jim To 'Te-E-Ach My Antonia'

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I believe Jim was the one who happened to learn more out of the whole relationship. One detail would be that while Antonia was being taught, Jim was also able to learn more himself. For example, he was able to learn more about himself throughout the entire experience. This shown through Jim not knowing that you could “cook cucumbers” but found that it was ok because “Ántonia assured [him] they were very good.”

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This visitation had intensified the already vivid memories of his childhood. Lena’s visit had brought along an aura of warm and friendship with her. Lena’s visit had brought along a surge of flashbacks as Jim had stated he could plainly hear the laughs of the Danish and Bohemian girls. However, Lena eventually has to leave and Jim’s best days fled with her. Though everyone goes through a cycle of some sort throughout their life the one I have witnessed while reading My Antonia is to an extent is very different.

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In Willa Cather’s book, My Antonia, the theme of childhood can be seen throughout the book and affects the meaning taken from the story. A childhood theme can add so much to a story and really drive the points the author wants to make. As the novel follows Jim throughout his childhood the theme of innocence and maturity are displayed throughout the story in multiple circumstances. Jim and Antonia’s relationship revolves around their adventures as they explore the prairie and all its wonders.

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Social barriers were one reason why Jim didn’t pursue Antonia romantically. Antonia, also known as Tony, was a poor, uneducated immigrant that moved in America with her family to find a better life. Jim, on the other hand, was an average, educated youth, moved in Nebraska to live with his grandparents. He remembered how Antonia’s father begged to teach Antonia in English (19). Immigrants were poor that they could not even provide proper education to their children like how Mr. Shimerda asked a ten-year-old Jim to educate a fourteen-year-old Antonia.

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Later when her father dies she must take on the roll of a man in her family. She then goes to work for a family where she learns how to sew, and cook and dance, and do things that a women may do. Antonia through her hard work grows up to be a great mother despite all of the hardships she has faced. When Antonia and her family settled in America they knew very little english, but Antonia’s father knew that for his family to do well in America they would need to learn how to speak the language. He pleaded to Jim, “Te-e-ach, Te-e-ch my Antonia!”

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Town life wears at Antonia and Jim’s innocence—Antonia capers with young men at a local dancing tent, and Jim flirts with pretty Bohemian immigrant Lena Lingard. Later at college, Jim’s secret love for Lena and close friendship with her distract him from his studies. Escaping to Harvard for renewed

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Antonia gradually emerges from Jim’s emotional presentation of her to become a believable, independent character in her own right. In fact, by the end of the novel, Antonia has perhaps made more of an impression on many readers than Jim has. Many critics argue that Ántonia, despite the fact that she barely appears in the last quarter of the novel, is the real protagonist. Pretty, vivacious, and extremely generous, Ántonia fascinates Jim. He feels that Antonia is unusually alive, a sentiment that he echoes even after meeting her as the mother of ten children at the end of the novel.

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