Free My Antonia Essays: An Analysis :: My Antonia Essays

My Antonia I think that My Antonia, written in 1918, is one of Cathers finest works. Critic H. L. Mencken thought it to be the most accomplished, and concisely after it was published in 1919 he wrote, Her style has lost edginess her feeling for form has become instinctive. And she has got such a grip upon her materials...I hump of no novel that makes the remote folk of the Western praries more real...and I know of none that makes them seem better worth knowing. One of the proud points in the fib is the tragic case of Mr. Shimerdas death. In this character Cather shows an most obsessive longing of hers for the past. A cultered man, Antonias father cannot handle the hardships he encounters in Nebraska, and longs for his life back in Bohemia. He clings to his Old World jam and foods...a knitted grey vest, and, instead of a collar, a silk scarf of a dark bronze-green, carefully crossed and held together by a red coral pin. Homesick for his native husbandry Mr. Shimerda shoots himself. Some critics flummox Cathers recurring preoccupation with the past destructive, T. K. Whipple said that there was an element of oestrus in the theme. To have cared intensely about anything, is not to have lived in vain. I think that the theme of the immigrants longing for the past was very fitting. more of the settlers of the mid-west praries were immigrants, and most did desperately try to cling to their past while grammatical construction a new life in the melting pot of America. The hardships of the immigrants were not uncommon. Many were forced to go into town to become a engage girl as Antonia did before she returned to the farm labor that she enjoyed, where she discovered urban center life in the dance clubs. My favorite part about narration My Antonia is the beautiful descriptions of the land and other small details. In this story Jim pith is not only a narrator for Cather, but for the land. Throughout the story his descriptions bring an eloquent style to he r writing and capture the reader into the story. Everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but rough, shaggy red grass, most as tall as I. In a phrase that is now on Cathers tombstone, he comes to accept the power of the land over him, saying, That is happiness to be dissolved into something complete and great.