Masterpieces of American Lit.
Essay 2: My Ántonia
Nostalgia
From the outside, farm life reflects the notion of simple living. The same chores are to take place every day, at the same time, during the same season, and so on. However, farm life is much more complicated when explained by a person from within the community; from a more personal level. The men, women and children all have specific tasks to accomplish that are essential to keeping the farm running smoothly. The jobs around the farm have been learned by the young ones, and taught by their elders in a continuous circuit. In a way, the teaching is a reflection of the past by the adults, and a connection to the present by the children. In My Ántonia, by Willa Cather, farm life is looked at from within the circle, but the past and its connection to the present is examined even more closely. The tone of My Ántonia is very nostalgic, and represents the narrator, Jim’s, feelings toward his memories. The epigraph “Optima dies...prima fugit,” or “The best days are the first to flee,” sets up the novel with this sense of wistfulness (Cather 142). Willa Cather juxtaposes the happier times of childhood to the hardships of adulthood through her characters: Jim, Ántonia and Samson. Cather portrays the children as having feelings of more self-worth than they do as adults. Through Jim’s memoir, based on his love for his Ántonia, he is able to connect and reestablish his vanished past in the prairie with his life now as a high powered lawyer. When Jim Burden moved to Nebraska after being orphaned, to live with his grandparents, he was unsure where life was going to take him. He was unaware of the joy and adventure he was going to experience living on a farm. As Jim recollects his time on the prairie, he emphasizes the little tasks that made him feel so big as a child. He was so grateful to help his grandparents by riding six miles both ways to the post office, so others would not have to interrupt their work for such a menial chore. This made him feel needed and worth something. All it took for Jim as a young boy, to feel mighty, was to kill a rattlesnake. Jim “had killed a big snake – [he] was now a big fellow” amongst the farm (Cather 33). As he grew older, it became more difficult for Jim to find achievement in small things. Becoming a powerful, New York lawyer was not incredibly satisfactory for him. Jim feels as though one of his last successes ever, was when he made his commencement speech after he graduated high school. He was so satisfied to have made Tony proud with his speech, dedicated to her Papa, that “no other successes have pulled at [his] heartstrings like that one” (Cather 126). When Jim describes his wife, it almost sounds as if it is a convenient marriage that goes well with his career. He is at the point in his life where he has a job, an unimpressionable wife, and very little excitement. Jim understands that his past can never be recovered, but he also knows that it can never be escaped. He is in agreement with Virgil and the epigraph, and reflects on it after seeing Lena while in Lincoln. He continues to meditate on the epigraph while telling the story of Ántonia’s adult life. Ántonia, in her childhood, was the most carefree of all Jim’s acquaintances. She was so friendly, strong and outgoing in her younger years that even Lena describes “Ántonia’s failing” as “if she once likes people, she won’t hear anything against them” (Cather 144). Tony was so eager to learn English, to play in the fields was exciting and to do a man’s work made her feel so strong and successful. She felt like she belonged on the prairie and did not feel like she would ever need to make her home anywhere else. As she matured, and was sent to work in Black Hawk as a housekeeper, her spirit started to dwindle, and consequences of growing up took over. Her childish image started to fade and she was being impressed with a negative reputation. So much so, that she was kicked out of the Harling’s house and had to work for the shameful Mr. Cutter. Ántonia’s most apparent change in personality happened when she was engaged to be married to Larry Donovan. Mrs. Steavens told Jim that “the first thing that troubled [Ántonia] was when [Larry] wrote...they would likely have to live in Denver” (Cather 165). She was very distressed because all she had dreamed of doing was living on a farm and perhaps raising chickens or even a cow. After discretely returning to her mother’s home, when Larry abandoned her in Denver, Ántonia worked through the harvest, but only for her family because she “was too modest to go out threshing for the neighbors, like when she was young and free” (Cather 168). She did not appear to be as happy as she once was, in fact she looked lonely and miserable. To feel less lonesome, she talked to her father’s grave, and reflected on what once was, on that very prairie, many years ago. Jim describes, in detail, his acquaintance Samson, and his experience of his past versus his present situation. Samson is the blind piano player Jim runs into at a bar in Black Hawk. Jim tells Samson’s story of being raised on a plantation as an embarrassment to his mother because he was blind and ugly. His mother kept him hidden and he was not allowed to play with his siblings for they would make fun of him. After sneaking away into the main house, like he had been warned not to do, he stumbled upon a piano. Samson fumbled around with it and those around him soon learned that he had impeccable pitch and incredible memory. Jim recalls Samson’s story and explains that “no matter how many wrong notes [Samson] struck, he never lost the intention of a passage, he brought the substance of it across by irregular and astonishing means” (Cather 104). Willa Cather is deliberate in adding this passage of Samson through means of narration by Jim to show that children are able to conquer huge tasks and it makes them feel more accomplished than it would an adult. The youth have a certain light inside of them that keeps them going and pushes them to continue to pursue great tasks and achieve great dreams. After learning how to masterfully play the piano, Samson does not make anything of himself. Not to say he is unsuccessful since he is a fabulous entertainer and a beautiful piano player, but he will never accomplish such a feat as he once did of learning to play the piano, and he will continue to live an uneventful life, with just himself and the piano. Through Jim, Ántonia and Samson, Willa Cather gives an insight to her nostalgia and her longing for her childhood in Nebraska. Speaking directly through Jim, Willa Cather emphasizes that “when boys and girls are growing up, life can’t stand still, not even in the quietest of country towns; and they have to grow up, whether they will or no. That is what their elders are always forgetting” (Cather 107). Children take the time to appreciate the smaller things in life, whereas adults are too busy to stop and admire the red grass and the rolling plains. Even though there is much to look forward to in adult life, Cather emphasizes the joys of being a child, and being so carefree and innocent. Life takes a sudden toll on one’s spirit and the best days are the ones experienced during childhood. My Ántonia reflects Nebraska life for Jim, Ántonia and the author herself. It is a happier time filled with childhood innocence that is shadowed by homesickness and nostalgia.