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