My_Antonia_and_the_Nebraska_Landscape

My Antonia, written by Willa Cather, starts as ten-year-old Jim Burden along with a family of Bohemian immigrants (The Shimerda Family) are moving to Nebraska to start a new life. Jim is moving because his parents have died and his closest relative lives in Nebraska; the Bohemian family is travelling on the same train because they have come to America to begin a new and better life. The landscapes described in this book paint a spectacular picture of the Nebraskan prairie. Throughout the novel, the characters create a safe, welcoming place that assists them in getting over their fears of moving to a new place. The prairie accommodates the characters as they work through emotions and come to terms with the death of their parents, offers a comfortable sanctuary (a place that creates comfort where one goes to be with their own thoughts and feelings, with no judgment or expectations, where one can sort out the pain of a trauma or make sense of puzzling questions) from homes far away, reflects the growth and maturity of the characters after being apart for an extended time, and reunites childhood friends on common ground. Jim arrives in Black Hawk and is greeted by a farm hand from his grandparent’s farm who takes Jim by wagon to the farm. Jim has time to think about his fear of moving to a new place and the loss of his parents along his journey. He sees that “there was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made …I [Jim] had never looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain range…but the complete dome of heaven...I left even their [his parents ] spirits behind…I felt erased, blotted out” (Cather, 12). Jim was used to Virginia, with its rolling hills, mountains and populated landscapes. On the prairie, there is nothing for miles and miles: no houses, no people, no activity, no mountains. Many people fear emptiness of the unknown. Jim’s thoughts indicate it is no different for him but at the same time, he also seems open and willing to embrace the unknown with a clean, erased slate. Many people work through their feelings about death by staying in a place that reminds them of the one who died, Antonia did when she remained on the family farm. Jim on the other hand, does not have that connection and finds comfort on the prairie. He starts to feel a sense of belonging there when he is ready to deal with some of his issues around his parents’ death. Jim conquers his fear of the wide-open prairie through his explorations with Antonia, who shares her own love of the land. Antonia tries to show him how the prairie makes her feel free and alive, but has difficulty telling him because she does not speak much English. She beckons Jim to give her the words to explain her passion for the new countryside. “Name' What name…She pointed into the gold cottonwood tree...and said again, “What name'” Antonia pointed up to the sky and questioned me with her glance. I [Jim]gave her the word, but she was not satisfied…she pointed to the sky, then to my eyes, then back to the sky…and shook her head…nodding violently” (25). Although the concept of loving the land takes Jim a while to get used to he says, “It was wonderfully pleasant” (26). He does overcome his fear, spending time with Antonia and sitting in his grandmother’s garden. “I was something that lay under the sun and (I) felt it like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy” (20). Grandmother’s garden reminds Jim of his parents’ garden in Virginia. Laying under the sun and feeling its familiar warmth maybe one reason why he finds comfort and happiness there even though he never comes right out and says it. More and more through the story Jim enjoys spending time in the country with Antonia; they spend many an autumn afternoon and evening experiencing “the glorious cloudless sunsets with the sun going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky” (183). They watch the land change in preparation for the coming of winter, “the blond cornfields were red gold, the haystacks turned rosy and threw their long shadows“ (35) on the copper-red grasses of the prairie. “The whole prairie was like a bush that burned with fire but was never consumed” (35). Engulfed by the beauty of the change between seasons, Jim forgets why he was ever afraid in the first place. The prairie is inviting with its beauty, and provides distraction from fears or worries. It is as though the prairie says, “Look at me; I am here to help in finding your way!” After the winter death of Antonia’s father, the land and summer season with signs of renewal and beauty, seem to change her depressed mood to one of happier times, like reuniting with a friend who has been away for a while. “All around her were the throb of spring, the light restlessness, the vital essences of it…rising suddenly, sinking suddenly impulsive and playful like a puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted” (92). Antonia has always been connected to the land and finds working the earth to be cathartic. She resolves the things that bother her by working harder around the farm. For example, when her father dies and Jim moves to Black Hawk. Antonia says, “I ain’t got time to learn. I work land like a mans now“ (94). She feels she needs to work harder to fill her father’s shoes and perhaps she does not want to leave her father by moving to town, which would put too much distance between them. This may be an excuse not to attend school, and allows her to work off the pain of her father’s death. The hired girls (farm girls who have moved to town to help their families financially) and Antonia, work the land and in turn become very close to it. One evening they are blessed with the sight of the “sun’s lower edge resting on the high fields against the horizon, a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun…In a moment we realized what it was…it stood out…heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun“ (183). The plow symbolizes their connectedness to the land and reminds them of how insignificant humankind is in comparison to the natural environment around them. Antonia and Jim continue to experience this connection throughout their lives. Jim returns many times to the wild place he once feared and then learns to love. Jim is able to attend college in nearby Lincoln Nebraska and he does well for himself. On invitation from his advisor, he decides to continue his education at Harvard Law School, but before going to the city, Jim returns to the prairie to visit Antonia. Upon his return, he is directed to Widow Steavens, now living on his grandmother’s old farm, to ask about Antonia and her fate after she was abandoned and left pregnant by Larry Donovan. Antonia relies on Widow Steavens for support in birthing and raising the baby and has the most up to date information on his childhood friend. It has been only two years since Jim left home and a lot has happened to Antonia. On his way to see Widow Steavens he remembers a desolate land that was empty and devoid of activity. “The old pasture land was now being broken up into wheat fields and corn fields… little orchards were planted where there were none and there were red barns insight“ (227). Jim feels that the expansion of the land means that people are doing well and raising happy families. Jim says, “It was like watching the growth of a great man or of a great idea“ (227). It also reflects Jim’s maturity and growing fuller in his own life. After Jim’s visit with Widow Steavens, he spends the night in his old room. Laying awake thinking about Antonia, the “summer wind [is] blowing in the windows, bringing the smell of ripe fields, he lays awake and watches the moonlight shining over the barn…windmill making its old dark shadow against the blue sky“ (235) as it had done so many years before when he was a boy. The breeze calls him to remember a simpler time in his childhood. In the morning, Jim sets off to see the Shimerda family for a long-overdue visit with Antonia. Jim visits with the Shimerdas and Yulka tells him to find his old friend Antonia on the “southwest quarter shocking wheat” (236). “I went down across the fields, and Tony saw me from a long way off“ (236). She has been waiting all day for him to come. News travels fast on the prairie: Antonia already knows Jim is in town. “They instinctively walked toward that unplowed patch at the crossing of the roads“ (236) where her father was buried, still covered in the old familiar red grass, to sit and reminisce about their past. Choosing this place signifies an important crossroads, reflecting a turning point in their lives. Jim tells her everything as if they were ten years old again. He explains that he will be moving to New York to become a lawyer. She knows, with her father as her witness, that Jim will not come back again. Jim promises that he will return to visit, but life takes hold of him and it is twenty years before Antonia sees him again. Antonia influences Jim repeatedly, however, “The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don’t realize it. You really are a part of me” (237). With Antonia playing such an integrated role in Jim’s life, it would seem that Jim would have returned sooner or followed through with the thought of her being “his sweetheart, or his wife… anything a woman can be to a man“ (237). Somehow, circumstances intervene and life in the big city distracts him from his thoughts of visiting Antonia. In the twenty years that pass, Antonia has married Anton Cusak; their farm boasts a “wide farm-house, with a red barn and an ash grove, and cattle-yards in front that sloped down to the high road“ (242). Jim and Antonia have developed their lives over the past twenty years and this is reflected in the landscape of the prairie, which has grown up and changed in its own ways. Jim recognizes many of his childhood places and notices many differences that show the aging of the prairie. “All the years that passed had not dimmed Jim’s memory of that first glorious autumn spent on that fresh new prairie“ (27). Antonia shows Jim around the farm with her children and tells him, “I love them [the trees] as if they were people, rubbing her hand over the bark. We planted every one and used to carry water for them too--after we’d been working in the fields all day“ (249). “They were on her mind like children“ (250). Antonia’s closeness to the land is revealed through her careful thought in caring for each tree planted, field harvested or food item preserved. She had never been happy anywhere else. The land will always connect Antonia and Jim, no matter how far apart they become. Jim and Tony will always come back to the place where they taught each other to love. “Now Jim understands that the road that brought them together when he was ten years old will be the same road that continues to bring them back over and over again” (272). “Whatever they had missed, they possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past“ (272). Childhood bonds can be some of the strongest bonds true friends can share. Close friends can be reminded you of each other when least expected, bringing a range of emotions and memories that no one can ever take away from them.