My Antonia

In Willa Cather's novel "My Antonia" she talks about how she views the pioneer time.  She says that they lived the simple life only needing necessities.  During that time needed alot of land for farming, know how to communicate with other farmers, money and needed people to help work your farms to grow enough food to survive.

My Antonia is told in the perspective of another main character. Jim, but if the story was told in Antonia's perspective the whole story would change and be told in a different way.  Jim came from a whole different background. He was obdurate, richer, born and raised in America and had plenty of land.  Antonia on the other hand was poor, struggled to grow enough food to survive and was a immigrant to America.

Willa Cather being a woman was trying to tell this novel in a mans point of view, showing the situation that Jim is in.  If the author would have been a man, this story would have been completely different. Jim would have acted like a totally different person. With the author being a woman it sounds like a woman trying to sound like a man, she tells all of Jim's feelings and about how much he cares for Antonia. She does not sound like a man at all.

Jim changes the title in my opinion because he understands Antonia, he knows what she has gone through and what she has lived through.  Though they may have never became a couple he still cares for her and they were really close. 

This novel shows the way that pioneers struggled during that time period. It also showed all of the hardships immigrants faced as they came to America.  I believe that a sequel in Antonia's point of view would be a very good sequel to this book.

Author Willa Cather embedded literary devices, such as metaphors, similes, and personification, within her writing.

"As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colour of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running."

"The grave, with its tall red grass that was never mowed, was like a little island."

"Winter comes down savagely over a little town on the prairie. The wind that sweeps in from the open country strips away all the leafy screens that hide one yard from another in summer, and the houses seem to draw closer together. The roofs, that looked so far away across the green treetops, now stare you in the face, and they are so much uglier than when their angles were softened by vines and shrubs.


Chunk #1: Comment the effect of the setting on the characters within the novel.
The setting in the novel plays major roles on the characters.  It affected Antonia by making her learn to work and manage a farm, if she did not learn to do so she and her family would not survive. The setting effected Jim because living in the society that he lived in it helped him know his social class or standards since he was a lawyer.

Chunk #2: discuss the effect a setting on you, including imagery (lots of adjectives) and a simile or a metaphor as you describe the land.

The baseball field is peaceful to me, especially on game day when the lights are shining bright and the fans are screaming.  Standing on the mound, my arm as a whip as it slings the ball to the plate. Hearing the words "strike three" come from the umpire is one of the greatest feelings, as if I struck out Babe Ruth.  The baseball field truely my oasis, where I go to get away from the stress from school or parents.