My Antonia. Question #9 Willa Cather’s novel, My Antonia, is set in the early twentieth century in the frontier town of Black Hawk, Nebraska. Cather’s story is often praised for its pastoral depiction of life on the American frontier and for the diverse, hardworking people who settled it. As the young Jimmy Burden notice while traveling across the plains, “There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made (Cather p.14).” In My Antonia, many of Cather’s
In My Antonia, Willa Cather writes that Mr. Shimerda implores Jim to “Te-e-ach, tee-e-ach my Án-tonia” (book one: chapter three), when in fact it is Jim who learns more through this relationship. In the beginning, Jim is introduced as an orphan having just recently lost his parents, who has not yet discovered who he is yet. Due to this loss, Jim travels to Black Hawk, Nebraska in order to live with his grandparents when he hears news of the Shimerdas, a Bohemian family, arriving. After meeting the
In the book My Ántonia, it is debated whether Jim or Ántonia learned the most through their relationship. Both learned a lot about each other and about friendship. Both learned about patience and forgiving. Although they both learned a lot Jim learned the most through their relationship. Jim learned more because he was affected by her fearlessness, independence, and strength, he learns the way the immigrants from Bohemia live, and she was a symbol of his adventure in childhood and his past