My Antonia is one of the most beautifully, and romantically written novel I have
ever read. The book is a reflection of Jim Burden's happy childhood growing up in the
open country of Nebraska. Although Jim grew up, and became a successful legal counsel
in New York, and married, I got the impression from the introduction that his life as an
adult felt incomplete, thus unhappy. Giving him the motive to go on a spiritual and
emotional journey to capture what he lost. Willa Cather's My Antonia is a novel about
Jim Burden, and his miraculous journey back to a time/place known as "Antonia:" where
life felt complete, and all was thought possible.
To Jim Burden, Antonia Shimerda isn't just the pretty little Bohemian girl
neighbor. She represents the brilliant essence of his youth, and the magical memories of
the countryside in Nebraska that he cherishes ever so dearly in his heart. Jim says, "The
Shimerdas were the first Bohemian family to come to this part of the country" (15). And
this is what Cather's writes in the introduction, "... when we were crossing Iowa, our talk
kept returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had both known long ago.
More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to us the country, the
conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood" (2). This is Willa and Jim conversing
about this foreign girl that means to them the country, the conditions, and the whole
adventure of their childhood? Jim Burden is an intelligent, sophisticated, and very well
educated American that has been raised by an American family, and to base the
significance of his youth to a girl from, as the conductor says, "across the water" (6),
moves me in the utmost romantic way.
In the life of Jim Burden, Antonia, and the "land" is one. For example,
...