

Perhaps readers are supposed to feel nothing but pity for Antonia and see her life as a complete waste, see her as a poor, unfortunate soul.

Though I'm not sure he truly 'gets' it how lucky he is. Jim's relationship with Antonia and the other country 'hired' girls (immigrants all) leave an impact long after he moves away to the big city-New York. The novel does a good job in contrasting experiences: new world, old world men, women country, town. But it's a solid narrative well worth reading. The novel concludes with Jim reconnecting with Antonia several decades later. But while the future looks bright and practically limitless to Jim, Antonia's future is less certain. Antonia comes to town as well as a hired girl. There is no time for education, no time for fun, no time for anything but surviving. After her father dies, she takes to the fields full-time even hiring out to other farms as needed. (I believe she is five years older.) But while Jim works on the family farm, Antonia WORKS on farm. The two become friends and sometime playmates despite the age difference. On the same train is an immigrant family, the Shimerdas there is a teen girl, Antonia, who speaks a little English. The novel begins with his journey west to Nebraska. Premise/plot: Jim Burden recollects his youth in Willa Cather's My Antonia. I was ten years old then I had lost both my father and mother within a year, and my Virginia relatives were sending me out ot my grandparents, who lived in Nebraska. įirst sentence: I first heard of Antonia on what seemed to me an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America.
