My Antonia Overview

1
My Antonia Overview

• Optima diesPrima fugit
• Virgil

2
Willa Cather

• Born in Virginia, 1873moved to Nebraska a la Jim
  Burden
• My Antonia, published in 1918takes place around
  the turn of the century
• Strong descriptive power throughout
• I first heard of Antonia on what seemed to be an
  interminable journey across the great midland
  plains of North America

3
Themes

• Man v. Nature
• Town v. Country
• Education v. Civilization
• Plight of Immigrants
• Individual v. Society

4
Symbols

• The Nebraska Landscape
• The Snake
• The Plough

5
The Nebraska Landscape

• I had the feeling that the world was left
  behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and
  were outside mans jurisdiction, (7).
• All those fall afternoons were the same, but I
  never got used to them. As far as we could see,
  the miles of copper-red grass were drenched in
  sunlightthe blond cornfields were red gold, the
  haystacks turned rosy and threw long shadows,
  (22).

6
The Snake

• I whirled round, and there, on one of those dry
  gravel beds, was the biggest snake I had ever
  seen. He was sunning himself after a cold night,
  and he must have been asleep when Antonia
  screamed, (25).
• She liked me better from that time on, and never
  took a supercilious air with me again. I had
  killed a big snake and I was now a big fellow,
  (27).

7
The Plough

• 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, I stood out against the sun,
  was exactly contained within the circle of the
  disc the handles, the tongue, the share black
  against the molten red, (118).

8
A Sampling of Themes

• The Plight of Immigrants
• The Shimerdas were the first Bohemian family to
  come to this part of the country. Krajiek was
  their only interpreter, and could tell them
  anything he chose, (13).
• My grandmother always spoke in a very loud tone
  to foreigners, as if they were deaf, (14).
• All foreigners were ignorant people who couldnt
  speak English, (98).

9
Or was the glass half full?

• I always knew I should live long enough to see
  my country girls come into their own, and I have.
  To-day, the best that a harassed Black Hawk
  merchant can hope for is to sell provisions and
  farm machinery and automobiles to the rich farms
  where the first crop of stalwart Bohemian and
  Scandinavian girls are now the mistresses, (98).
• The country girls were considered a menace to
  the social order (98).

10
The Individual v. Society

• The life that went on in them seemed to me made
  up of evasions and negations shifts to save
  cooking, to save washing and cleaning, devices to
  propitiate the tongue of gossip. This guarded
  mode of existence was like living under a
  tyranny. Peoples speech, their voices, their
  very glances, became furtive and repressed. Each
  individual taste, every natural appetite, was
  bridled by caution, (106-107).

11
Sorry, just couldnt resist this one

• The first time I deceived my grandparents, I
  felt rather shabby, perhaps even the second time,
  but I soon ceased to think about it, (107).

12
The American Dream

• Sowhat can you find that supports this
  overarching theme?

13
Optima Dies?

• You will always remember me when you think of
  old times, wont you? And I guess everybody
  thinks about old times, even the happiest
  people, (152).

14
Last lines

• For Antonia and me, this had been the road of
  Destiny had taken us to those early accidents of
  fortune which predetermined for us all that we
  can ever be. Now I understood that the same road
  was to bring us together again. Whatever we had
  missed, we possessed together the precious,
  incommunicable past, (175).