In America's Pioneering history, strong bonds between people and the land they live on have been built. From this bond, the act of colonizing land brings people together in intense relationships. In My Antonia, Willa Cather looks into these bonds between people, land, and people through the relationship between the 2 main characters, Jim and Antonia. Throughout the story, Antonia as a representation of a life very different from Jim's and as a strong bond with the land shows us Jim's fascination with Antonia. She is his counterpart.
             Antonia represents an alternative to Jim's life as a middle-class American boy. Unlike Jim, she's able to move away from all the stereotypes and boundaries of her class and gender. Antonia is a lot less inhibited than Jim is and listens to her heart more. In the end, Jim's decisions are made according to social thumbs up or thumbs downs. He goes through a rebel stage and ignores all of his responsibilities to his own class to hang out with people his family and friends don't think highly of, but when he figures out that what he's doing is hurting his grandparents and where they stand socially like honor wise, he stops really fast. He goes back to the whole country women feel of life when he ignores his studies and starts to hang out with Lena in Lincoln but right after Gaston Cleric, his mentor, gives him a little bit of advice, he forgets about Lena and focuses back onto his studies. After doing things like this over and over, he ends up really far away from Nebraska to the point where he can't ever be as close again. Back to present tense, the grownup Jim regrets not being able to both stop to enjoy all the country girls, the "Real Women" like Lena and Antonia, and at the same time, be admired for his successful professional life. He wishes he could've had both. In the end, he plans out lots of visits from New York to Antonia and her family b...