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My Ántonia
April 2023: Friendship
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My Antonia by Willa Cather - 4 stars (Subdue)
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Published in 1918, My Ántonia is a story of a friendship between an orphaned boy, Jim Burden, and a Czech immigrant girl, Ántonia Shimerda, living on the Nebraska prairie in the late 1800s. It is the third book in the Great Plains Trilogy, though these novels are distinct enough to be read as standalones. The book is structured as a fictional memoir, written in first person by Jim Burden, and submitted to an unnamed narrator. The characters are the people of the community of Black Hawk, Nebraska.
It is written in five parts, telling the story of Ántonia’s life through the eyes of her friend, Jim. It is also a coming-of-age story from the perspective of an older Jim, now a successful lawyer. It highlights the harsh life on the frontier. The tone is nostalgic. “In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again."
It is beautifully written. The setting is vividly described: “Soon we could see the broken, grassy clay cliffs which indicated the windings of the stream, and the glittering tops of the cottonwoods and ash trees that grew down in the ravine. Some of the cottonwoods had already turned, and the yellow leaves and shining white bark made them look like the gold and silver trees in fairy tales.”
During this period, many immigrants were arriving from European countries, so it serves as an early example of a migration story. It also highlights the lives of ordinary people, and especially the women. IT does not shy away from describing the many difficulties they faced. Willa Cather lived on the Nebraska prairie as a child, so this book provides a slice of history told by someone who lived through it.
“For Ántonia and for 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, the incommunicable past.”