Questions About My Ántonia

by Willa Cather

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Answered Questions (8)

do you have to read the first two in order to read this one?

Susanne Ortiz They are three different stories, just based in the same time period.

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Does Jim Burden's narration sound like a male voice?

Lisa

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)[I agree that it sounds like the voice of a boy who never really fit in as a country boy. He was always sort of reserved in the minds of others as being cut out to be a doctor or some intellectual. He ends up a Harvard-educated attorney, wealthy, comfortable, and with a wife that doesn’t appreciate his “romantic disposition which often made him seem very funny as a boy” (says the narrator in the introduction). He is elsewhere described as being overly romantic, and it is pointed out that that is what is “wrong” with him. Perhaps all his constant reading of literature did make him a little “soft” compared to the hard-working country folk. The introduction-narrator also says that he or she (I could think it may be one of the Harling children - I like to think perhaps Nina) doesn’t like Jim’s wife because she seems “incapable of enthusiasm” and because she allowed her “husband’s quiet tastes [to] irritate her.” As a child though, he did all kinds of errands for the men on his grandparents’ farm, riding “Dude” all over the country. Also when Mr. Shimerda died and everyone left the house, he was alone. He realized he should get some chores done, which he promptly did, since he felt such an “extension of power and authority.” He carried in cobs and wood from the cellar, fed the hens and gathered eggs, cared for the cat. His character seems to be described by the introduction’s narrator and by other characters in a way that fits his voice and the character he represented in the novel. I think that the way that Cather writes him as one kind of quiet and gentle man, and a mostly respectable one in my opinion, and Antonia as one kind of physically powerful woman, also respectable, is a wonderful portrait of people as they are, not as we expect them to be. This book is so filled with wonderfully different levels of strength and character in each man and woman. Goodness, strength, hopes, dreams, failings, pettiness, etc are attributed to each human according to his or her actions and character and not whether man or woman. To say Jim doesn’t have a male voice is to try to say there is such a thing as “a male voice” rather than that each man has his voice. A man is a man if he is a man! If the character does things that other men wouldn’t do, that doesn’t mean he isn’t a man (I get it, a woman wrote the book, I totally get it), and maybe she didn’t get inside every man’s head, but she sure got inside Jim’s head. She also showed how some men can be of a softer nature and still be characterized as masculine (killing the snake was a great story, also his passionate nature helped develop a Western railroad line), full of life and desires; while some women, like Antonia, can be of a harder nature and still be characterized as feminine, full of life, and desirable. Her experiment with writing from a man’s perspective, just one man’s perspective of his own life, was successful in that IF you didn’t know it was written by a woman, you might be fooled, even if you didn’t like the man. And even if you who say “it doesn’t work” are right, what an awesome experiment she attempted! I can hardly agree with those who would say she failed. (hide spoiler)]

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What is the "green insect" that Antonia finds and puts in her hair to keep it safe so she can show her father? It's autumn, frosty weather, too late in the year to be a grasshopper, and besides, they don't chirp. Any guesses?

Val It is most likely to have been a bush cricket (also known as a katydid). They can be quite noisy.

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Is this a YA book?

Val This edition, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
has lots of helpful notes, not just on the originals of the people and places Willa / Jim is de…moreThis edition, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
has lots of helpful notes, not just on the originals of the people and places Willa / Jim is describing, but also on the plants and animals, that buses were horse-drawn, a mastiff is a breed of large dog and so on, so I don't think younger children would have too much trouble reading it. There are one or two incidents that might need a bit of parental or teacher guidance, but nothing too adult. (less)

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I wonder who Jim Burden married as well as what character wrote the book...Any thoughts?

James (JD) Dittes Jim Burden never fits into Black Hawk, despite his love for it. I think the revelation he encounters in the final section, "Cusak's Boys," as he see A…moreJim Burden never fits into Black Hawk, despite his love for it. I think the revelation he encounters in the final section, "Cusak's Boys," as he see Antonia's happiness and her large brood of kids, is made sharper with the realization that he went to school in Lincoln, then Boston, and lives in New York City with a striving suffragette who could care less when he leaves on his long, western excursions for the railroad.(less)

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