Willa Cather

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY A. S. BYATT 'During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk kept returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had both known long ago. More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood . . . His mind was full of her that day. He made me see her again, feel her presence, revived all my old affection for her.' My Antonia is the unforgettable story of an immigrant woman's life on the Nebraska plains, seen through the eyes of her childhood friend, Jim Burden. The beautiful, free-spirited, wild-eyed girl captured Jim's imagination long ago and haunts him still, embodying for him the elemental spirit of the American frontier. In this powerful and astonishing novel, Willa Cather created one of the most winning yet thoroughly convincing heroines in American fiction.

My Antonia

My �ntonia, by Willa Cather, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. “No romantic novel ever written in America . . . is one half so beautiful as My �ntonia.” —H. L. Mencken Widely recognized as Willa Cather’s greatest novel, My �ntonia is a soulful and rich portrait of a pioneer woman’s simple yet heroic life. The spirited daughter of Bohemian immigrants, �ntonia must adapt to a hard existence on the desolate prairies of the Midwest. Enduring childhood poverty, teenage seduction, and family tragedy, she eventually becomes a wife and mother on a Nebraska farm. A fictional record of how women helped forge the communities that formed a nation, My �ntonia is also a hauntingly eloquent celebration of the strength, courage, and spirit of America’s early pioneers. Gordon Tapper is Assistant Professor of English at DePauw University. He is the author of The Machine That Sings: Modernism, Hart Crane, and the Culture of the Body, from Routledge.

Julie <3

Rocío de la Hera

Sarah Sammis

I read Willa Cather's My Ántonia for the Decades Challenge. I wanted to read it after having enjoyed My Mortal Enemy last July. While I enjoyed pieces of My Ántonia, it didn't hold my attention like My Mortal Enemy.

My Antonia is broken into five uneven parts and grew out of some short stories Cather had previous written. The five parts are The Shimerdas (which comprises the largest chunk of the novel), The Hired Girls, Lena Lingard, The Pioneer Woman's Story, Cuzak's Story. It's in the Lena Lingard where the story loses its focus as the narrator, Jim Burden, goes away to college and his attention turns from Ántonia Shimerda to Lena Lingard who is a less interesting character than the Bohemian pioneer.

The settings and themes of My Ántonia are similar to those in On the Banks of Plum Creek (1937) by Laura Ingalls Wilder but they are aimed at an audience. Cather describes through Jim Burden the way the landscape changes and the rise and fall of the different pioneering waves. Burden arrives in Black Hawk at a time when the sod dugout homes are giving way to A-frame wood houses and the homesteads are being eaten up by wealthier farms. By the novel's conclusion, Burden laments at the way the highways are beginning to criss-cross the landscape cutting through and burying so many of his childhood landmarks. I found that closing observation especially telling given the book's publication in 1918, decades before the two big pushes of interstate highway systems.

My Ántonia's two central themes are the roles that immigrants and women played in shaping the prairie. Burden observes throughout the novel the different cultural backgrounds of the families living near him and how these backgrounds influence the choices the families make in their day-to-day running of their farms and businesses. Then through Ántonia and to a lesser extent the other women in the book, Cather highlights the role women played in these early pioneering years and how often their contribution was belittled or underplayed.

Ryan Haber

I am fresh from this novel, sol am
not a fit judge. Really, though, I
feel as though this might be
almost the perfect story. Cather's
prose is lively and graceful, and
has made me fall in love with
Nebraska. Her descriptions fit it
and expound upon it and unpack
it for someone who has passed
through. Her character
development is insightful and
realistic, explicating the human
condition by demonstrating it
rather than lecturing. And the
storyline follows a perfect, smooth
arc, rebounding on itself and
advancing forward, like a rising
tide in the grain fields she so
beautifully describes.

Ben Jenkins

A story stretched too thin but with frequent beautiful and memorable passages.

Ruby Emmeline Fisher

beautifully written and described. So visually pleasing and it was incredibly easy to escape to the plains and farmland Antonia walked. The narration through Jim burdens eyes was a sweet story of love, friendship and fondness.

Missy Zuber 

My favourite Willa Cather book.
Books about immigrants and their lives intrigue me.

Kate Larsen

I was recommended this book because my little sister was named after My Antonia! Loved the vivid pictures this book brought to my mind. I also appreciated the truth behind these stories, and that Willa Cather didn’t just write about the good but also the hardships. Great book that kept me engaged and felt like I was in my own little world while reading it.

Barbara Williford

I’m going to present an unpopular opinion but I honestly don’t understand what all the excitement was about this book. I listened to the audible and that was the longest 8 hours of my life. 

The book was mainly about Jim Burden and little stories about life in the Midwest. I can’t even say they were interesting stories. A whole chapter on one particular play he saw . 

Sprinkled throughout the book were stories of Antonia but not enough that the book should be solely dedicated to her. Was not impressed.

Amanda Rocha

Names have been used for eons, though not always; there was a time in history when there was no linguistic need for personal names. In the modern world though, names are essential to to individual. While most people have a vague idea what their own name means, few give it much thought. Many parents will carefully select names with meaning for their children, either rooted in family tradition or bourne of carefully considered meaning. Authors treat their works similarly, putting much thought into choosing names of characters, in the hopes of expressing traits or habits of the character by deciding on a name that epitomizes that character themselves.

The study of names is called onomastics, a field which touches on linguistics, history, anthropology, psychology, sociology, philology and much more. When referring to the "meaning of a name" however, they are most likely referring to the etymology, which is the original literal meaning. The Oxford English Dictionary defines etymology as “the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history”.

The development of character identity is essential to understanding individual motive; It has been suggested that, often, authors will select names for characters that will reflect actual traits of or decisions made by the character themselves. This not only adds meaning to the work of literature but adds an element of realism to the characters.

Names are universal in human language; according to Alego, proper names were the “original kind of word, due to an uncritical acceptance of a romantic view of the savage as a simple, uncomplex soul, given to concrete thinking [...]” (11, Alego). At one time anthropologists thought that certain peoples were so "primitive and unorganized” (Feldman) that they didn't even use names. However, as time passed and cultures evolved, language was created in order to prescribe meaning to the world around us. As names eventually became a standard way to identify ourselves and others, names have been passed down through family lineage as a form of respect for the individuals who have bore the name; but in writing there is no lineage to base characters on. In literature, it is the authors’ responsibility to craft a name worthy of the character they have brought to life. In literature, a name can mean everything.

The historical debate between naturalists, who see the name as revelatory of the thing named, and conventionalists, who believe the name as an arbitrary designation, has continued through the centuries and is still very much alive today. Alego has suggested names to be “without signification” (53, Alego), meaningless marks by which one thing is distinguished from another. On the other hand, Alego also purports that it would be “contrary to man’s nature to name the objects of his thoughts by sounds which conveyed no meaning to him or others” (58, Alego). In this regard, it can be maintained that, if only based on the meaning within man’s own mind, there is still meaning behind the selection of names, either for people or for things.

It has been suggested by Shook that “some names resulted from considerable thought, while others came about in a more casual fashion” (xi, Shook). While some names are chosen deliberately and with much fanfare, others come about almost by accident. In an essay written by Cather, she asserts that the writer “accepts, rather than chooses” the theme of material, suggesting that one will instinctively choose character names rather than purposefully. But, even when naming is in some sense “instinctual” (11, Alego), there is no reason to expect we can ever identify the “instinct” that underlies it. Feeling can be reason enough to capture and create valuable meaning.

n Willa Cather’s My Ántonia, the character of Jim Burden embodies traits suggested simply by his naming. The word “burden” is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a “heavy load, a weight”; coincidentally, Jim’s character in the novel serves as a catch-all for burdens that may or may not be his own. Jim becomes a confidant to Ántonia, listening to her troubles while helping her through her own burdens. Cather builds tension into Jim's thoughts about Ántonia in order to deconstruct the myths about women to which he subscribes (Rosowski 89), which serves to burden himself with romantic hopes and disappointments. He becomes a solace for his grandparents, taking on their burdens of labor by physically helping them to work their lands. Most importantly, Jim himself feels burdened - burdened by the limitations of his home and by his prescribed notions of women.

Accordingly, Jim’s grandparents also embody the idea of burdens as strongly as Jim. Josiah is a strongly religious man, silent and given to hard work, while Jim’s grandmother, Emmaline, shows great concern and compassion throughout the novel; all members of the Burden family seem to illustrate and capture the essence of being burdened with something, and all hope to transcend their burdens and the burdens of others throughout the novel. The quest of the Burden’s is an attempt to un-burden himself of his past by freeing himself of that past.

In the passage about the "world's cornfields" Jim comments on his grandfather's ability to collapse history and see the farmland generations later. Although regarded as an uncommon ability, this destinarian vision was not peculiar to Grandfather Burden. At a fundamental level, it is the most American of capacities. As essential a contribution to success as investment capital, this prescience provides the psychological impetus and comfort necessary to undertake any new venture in peace and war, especially homesteading. Only because Jim inherited this disposition from his grandfather can he tell the story of My Ántonia. This proves that, though Jim may not share his grandfather’s first name, he has that last name of Burden, subsequently inheriting the family name as well as the family purpose.

Some of the names chosen for characters in My Ántonia ironically depict the characters; for instance, it is funny that Wick Cutter would be a money lender, or that Tiny Soderball would become the biggest and most well-known name of all the characters in Black Hawk. Carry Fisher is known for introducing newcomers into society, by “carrying” them in by taking them under her wing or reeling them in, similar to a “fisherman”.

Character names are not the only names which enhance meaning. Names of places, too, imply importance and can provide context clues about the significance of a place. The fictional Nebraska town of Black Hawk in My Ántonia., for example, provides the reader with an idea of what the town values, represents, and embodies. According to Oxford, the hawk is a bird of prey, metaphorically emphasizing an ability to lead and influence others. When the hawk is present in your life, it could signify that it's time to take more initiative and being active, which is exactly what the citizens of Black Hawk do. Hawks traditionally symbolize the power of observation; coincidentally, gossip is a trait that many characters within the town actively embody. By prefacing Hawk with the color black, a color suggestive of mystery, secrets, and despair, the town is immediate given a dark connotation. In conjunction, the town of Black Hawk suggests a town of desolation and darkness amidst hard work and strong leadership.

The sense of personal identity and uniqueness that a name gives us is at the heart of why names interest us and why they are important to us as individuals and to our society as a whole. Regardless of “whether names in general can be said to have meaning or whether they are empty labels” (1, Alego), names will and do ultimately reveal characteristics about those named, whether learned or given.

kezzie

Simon Elliott Stegall

This is a very mysterious book. I wasn't sure what it was about, or why I was reading it, until I WAS. In other words, there are moments in this book that are unexpectedly moving, and the moments just pounce on you out of the bushes of a very normal book. Be it Cather's natural description (which is glorious!) or brilliant vignettes, something or other grabbed me once every few pages and kept me reading what was otherwise a rather mundane book. 

Clearly this is a great work, because those moments transfigured My Antonia from a piece of nice storytelling into an overwhelming artwork. I really can't explain the experience of this book better than that. As Jim Burden says, referring to the peace of the Nebraska plains, "At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great."

Jeremy Anderberg

“Ain’t it wonderful how much people can mean to each other?”

I first read Willa Cather right before our daughter, Willa, was born. We picked the name sort of randomly — she’s not named after Cather or anyone in the family — but it inspired me to finally read the classic Pulitzer-winning author.

I started with O Pioneers! (1913) and loved it. Alexandra Bergson was immediately one of my favorite characters in literature; my own heritage includes plenty of strong, independent, prairie women, so it was easy to picture my past generations in her place.

That book started Cather’s Prairie Trilogy, though I didn’t go right to the second book, The Song of the Lark (1915), which generally has the weakest reviews of the bunch. My Antonia is probably Cather’s most enduring work, so it’s what I picked up next.

The structure is really interesting and sort of drew me in on its own; narrator Jim Burden has written down his memories of the one and only Antonia Shimerda from their years growing up together in rural Nebraska.

The Shimerdas immigrated from Bohemia and are immediately introduced to the cold, brutal realities of life on the frontier. Winters are unforgiving, rattlesnakes dot the prairies, and life is all about putting enough food on the table.

In the midst of that tough life, though, teenaged Jim and Antonia see their frontier as more adventure than hardship. Eventually Jim’s family moves to the small town nearby, and things irrevocably change for everyone:

When boys and girls are growing up, life can’t stand still, not even in the quietest of country towns; and they have to grow up, whether they will or not. That is what their elders are always forgetting.

Above all, it’s a coming-of-age story, following our main characters over the decades. It’s about how kids grow up on the prairie, how town life impacts one’s identity, how the very nature of years passing by changes things.

I think I enjoyed the plot of O Pioneers! a little better, but Antonia is as memorable a character as they come, and the final 50 pages of the book are as gratifying as it gets.

A great book and a perfect encapsulation of Midwest life in the 19th century.

Janet Doré

My Antonia has been on my To Read list for years. I had a feeling about this book when I first heard about it. I suspected it had the potential to speak to my spirit and rank as one of my All Time Favorites. It finally felt like the right time to read it. I was especially anticipatory because I'm seriously antsy to break my four year fiction dry spell. That's right...it's been four years since a fiction book has made my list. 

Sadly, this didn't happen with My Antonia. I liked this book enough to give it four stars...the writing, the history, the interesting and likable characters. I'm most definitely glad I read it. But, it just didn't have what it takes to make the top of my list. I'd say the two biggest factors were Antonia not being the narrator [resulting in an emotional distance from not truly knowing her] and the lack of any significant story. I seem to be on a roll with "slice of life" stories. I'm so ready for a story to grab me, yank me in, and spit me out thoroughly spent at the end.

Hailed by reviewers and readers for its originality, vitality, and truth, this novel secured Willa Cather a place in the first rank of American writers. Cather called My Ántonia "the best thing I've done." For Oliver Wendell Holmes, My Ántonia had "unfailing charm, perhaps not to be defined; a beautiful tenderness, a vivifying imagination that transforms but does not distort or exaggerate." H. L. Mencken declared it "one of the best [novels] any American has ever done." Cather drew deeply on her childhood days in frontier Nebraska for this, her fourth novel, published in 1918. Old immigrant neighbors inspired many of the characters, particularly the heroine. Ántonia Shimerda is memorable as the warmhearted daughter of Bohemians who must adapt to a hard life on the desolate prairie. She survives and matures, a pioneer woman made radiant by spirit. W. T. Benda's illustrations further illuminate the fiction of a writer who drew so extensively on actual experience.

My Antonia

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