“The American West -- to many it means cowboys, guns, cattle, horses and gunfights. But it was also about homesteading and pioneering the frontier” (Wild West Cowboy). The novel, My Antonia by Willa Cather, expresses this often forgettable side of the American west. My Antonia is a heartfelt story that tells the story of Jim Burden and his life in the western frontier. Jim meets many people in his days living in Nebraska and the memories he shares with them, especially Antonia Shimerda, stays with
the American landscape, always subject to ecological processes and human agency, was transformed at an accelerated pace by unbridled economic development and mass settlement,” (Finkelman). As explained in the previous quote, westward expansion was increasingly becoming more popular, and more emigrants and immigrants settled west. Some of the states that were often settled in were California, Oregon, and Nebraska. Many great authors of the time would write of experiences or dreams of the west such
What Makes American Literature American? What is your definition of being American? Does it involve liberty, justice, freedom, equality, and love? There are many different definitions of what makes something American depending on how one views America. American Literature aims to define the values and morals of American culture. If we judge American literature by freedom, diversity, culture and equality then Willa Cather’s, “My Antonia” is an excellent example. The concept of freedom in America
In My Antonia, there are various themes throughout the novel such as; having relationships with their past, relationship with their environment, having immigration experiences while being in the United States and lastly having traditional nature of frontier values. Some motives in the novel are, childhood, adulthood and religion. And lastly some symbols that will be a primary focus throughout the work is the Nebraska landscape and the plow. In Willa Cather's work she focuses on her "powerful literary
My Ántonia subverts traditional gender roles, both for women and for men. Set around the turn of the century in the American West, the novel surprisingly features women as its strongest characters and men as its weakest. The full definition of feminism is the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes. Our society is plagued to believe that one sex is superior over another. In My Ántonia, there is an apparent reversal of stereotypical gender roles. Women take control of families
My Ántonia is a novel written by Willa Cather, about the coming of age, using a style of writing that was popular around the late 18th century. Except for the introduction, the entire novel is written from Jim’s perspective as an adult man looking back on his childhood. Nearly the entire story is Jim relating accounts and memories emphasizing the youthful recollection put loosely together as Jim mentioned in the introduction by stating, “I didn’t take time to arrange it; I simply wrote down pretty