A Frontier Education in "My Antonia"

            Willa Cather, in "My Antonia," presents a strong idea of the importance of a good education. Without knowledge one cannot form a successful future to support themselves. Through the duration of the novel, the reader follows the growth of a young Jim Burden. He attends school and continues to college to become a lawyer while country girls, like Antonia, work on farms or as housekeepers. As Jim grows and advances, Antonia appears flat and stagnant. She seems to simply shift from one hard labor to the next with no hope of rising. But in fact, it is Antonia who receives the greatest knowledge as she builds a prosperous farm and family, far surpassing Jim's study of Latin and literature. Cather shows how a formal education will find you employment but it does not grow the mind or fully complete the soul. Antonia ends the novel a mature and happy adult, content with everything in her life while the educated Jim is still a boy searching for adulthood and his place.
           Compared to her, Jim's progression appears to be a successful arch. He begins as an orphan moving to his grandparents on the wild prairie. He arrives as a lost child and is spared from the labor of the farm, spending his days running errands or teaching English to his Bohemian immigrant neighbors, Antonia and her sister. Unlike what the title suggests, Jim Burden is written as the romantic hero. He is set up with one task; to teach Antonia. This is the one goal he fails.
           After Antonia's father dies, she is sent to work in the fields and Jim is moved into town to start school. While Jim studies Antonia is plowing fields. When he is in class she is hired out as a hand on neighboring farms. Antonia was understanding what it was to be an adult, working as hard as any man, and learning what it meant to work hard and discovered the pleasure of the fruits of her labor. By the time she was sixteen, Antonia knew what she could accomplish through her own strength and had gained a skill to start a future.
           It would take Jim 20 years after graduation to return to his Antonia. They are both married; Jim to a society woman and Antonia to a Bohemian immigrant. Jim is still a boy at heart and Antonia remarks on how he has stayed quite the same. His figure is free from signs of age or wear while she is older, hair grizzled, and some teeth missing, but still the same girl. "She was there in the full vigor of her personality, battered but not diminished" (Cather 244). He admires how well Antonia raised her boys; "straight, well-made fellows, with good heads and clear eyes" (Cather 253). He decides he could stay and slip easily into this family. "There were enough Cuzaks to play with for a long while yet" (Cather 272).
         Antonia is the essence of life and the fertility of the frontier. She used the knowledge from working the land as a child to build a thriving farm for her family. This is not to say that Jim is not educated of as successful. As a lawyer he gained great standing and built wealth, but he was never a man, happy with his success. Through her own education, Antonia has matured beyond Jim and is content with where life has led her, never once looking back at what she could have been if she had followed Jim to school. Life is not just about going to school and gaining book smarts, it is also about working hard to grow a future with which you can feel accomplished.

"My Antonia" Annotations

Hicks, Granville. "The Case Against Willa Cather." English Journal 22.9 (1933): 703-710. JSTOR. Web. 29 Nov 2012.

Hicks argues that Willa Cather is unable to write beyond nostalgic romanticism or progress successfully as a contemporary author. He presents Cather’s romantic Prairie Trilogy, “The Song of the Lark,” O Pioneers!,” and “My Antonia,” and compares them to her later works stating that her attempt to study the current more modern frontier life left her novels with uninspiring examples and representing her own aversion and dislike of nonromantic themes. He allows the beauty of her Nebraskan descriptions in "My Antonia" and her use of heroism with the piety of pioneers. She does not ignore conflict and hardship when painting her romantic tales which he concedes makes this trilogy an American classic. But she could not continue writing of the Nebraska of her past while the frontier moves forward. Hicks allows that she is not the only contemporary author to not succeed in a more modernism movement and fall back upon romanticism ideals. When one cannot move forward, flight is the only option left. He concludes, though, that this move is the ending of most authors, Cather included. "Flight is destructive of artistic virtues" and by not being able to move forward, she was left behind. This will deprive generations of her literary potential found in her Prairie Trilogy and overtime could push even them to the sidelines.

 

 

Rosowski, Susan J. "Discovering Symbolic Meaning: Teaching with Willa Cather." English Journal 71.8 (1982): 14-17. JSTOR. Web. 26 Nov 2012.

Willa Cather's novel "My Antonia" was written to teach. Through her use of universal themes, her passion and attention to detail Rosowski writes how Cather is able to gather an audience and teach her readers about perceiving depth and enticing the mind for continued discussion and literature advancement. Rosowski details how Cather’s own background gives her incite and an ability to show small wonders in new territory. Her story is not only about a young boy and girl growing up together but about the progression of life and maturity. Antonia begins to take on the role of the life and fertility of the frontier. She is desire and accomplishment. Readers can associate her to people and ideas in their own lives until she is no longer just Jim's Antonia. Rosowski concludes that Willa Cather's "My Antonia" is not simply a novel. Her tale teaches generations about great literature and entices future reading. The reader is required to think deeply and read past the simple episodic tale of a boy and a girl. She allows "the teaching of universal symbols" and depth of character for her own novels as well as other authors.

Annotations over "My Antonia"

Dahl, Curtis. "An American Georgic: Willa Cather's "My Antonia"." Comperative Literature 7.1 (1955): 41-53. JSTOR. Web. 15 Nov 2012.

            Dahl states that “My Antonia” embodies the main themes found in most Cather novels. The most prominent are Cather’s desire illustrate her own Nebraska background and use and understanding of themes found in the poet Virgil’s works.  Like Virgil, Cather writes of the simplicity not of a grand subject matter. She describes the simple life of farming in Nebraska, staying true to her roots. Dahl states that all the great literary art comes from the beautiful, simplicity of the earth’s fertility as seen in Lena Lingard and Antonia. He argues that Cather interprets Virgil’s writing and uses his them of “the ageless struggle of man with the earth is the most fully satisfying way of life.”

 

Feger, Lois. "The Dark Dimensions of Willa Cather's "My Antonia"." English Journal 59.6 (1970): 774-779. JSTOR. Web. 14 Nov 2012.

            Despite how the novel “My Antonia” first appears, it is not a simply a tale of the roots, and values of pioneer family life, but, as Feger argues, of violence, the denial of human life, and of life’s ultimate futility. She describes through the opening scenes of Jim’s parents death, the subsequent suicide of Mr. Shimerda, the rattlesnake fight, and the lightning storm the darkness and violence that follows the young protagonist. His love for Antonia is blinded by the darkness of their life and he flees to Harvard and to the East. Feger also questions the insertion of the unhappy stories of Pavel, Peter, and the wolves or the suicide of the Norwegian man. She states that they all raise disturbing questions of loss, violence, deception, and death that are faced by Jim and Antonia. The novel closes in the same manner that it began, hiding it’s pessimism about life with the old, innocent, country life.

 

"Three Lives" Annotations

Wu, Yi-Ping. "Stein's MELANCTHA." The Explicator. 66.3 (2008): 178-180. Web. 3 Nov. 2012.

Wu argues many critics view Stein’s “Melanctha,” praised for undermining the current American realism, as serving her interest in defining her own “American Whiteness” and will only see her corroborating in white racism. She claims there is compatibility between race awareness and modernism that is overlooked. The characters of Melanctha correspond to Stein’s own expatriate self which allows her to cross the color line and embody the characteristics of another race. She challenges Americans’ view on their culture through her ease of crossing across the line, canceling the differences between each race. As Wu states, Stein’s use of black literary expression allows her and her readers to gain a new understanding of true American identity.

Wilson, Mary. "Stein’s THE GENTLE LENA." The Explicator. 64.2 (2006): 89-91. Web. 8 Nov. 2012.

Wilson disputes the belief that Stein’s “The Gentle Lena” is not “a softer portrait of a tragically submissive wife who dies in childbirth” but of a will-less and passive young woman. Lena is described as gentle and pleasant, with an inbred lack in understanding and self-knowledge. Wilson conceives Lena to be not only unaware of this quality but also of a deep dislike of her own self. As the story proceeds, Lena is slowly slipping from the center focus until, at the conclusion; no one knew what had become of her. Lena’s tale is not of a submissive, writes Wilson, but of a redirection of will. She has not denied herself, she just simply is lacking. 

 

Escaping the Bonds of Society in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”

The Adventures Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, sits securely in the heart of American Literature. To the casual reader it is the epitome of a young boy’s want of adventure through and to discover the unknown and so it is, to an extent. But more so than that, the novel is a guide book to escape from an immoral and overly complicated society.  Compared to the conflicts of nature, issues that are necessary for survival, society is an over exaggerated web of immoral social codes. Through the novel Huck searches for a sanctuary; a place where he and Jim can go to be free from slave laws, his father, and the complicated society rules that he does not understand. But in the end, after witnessing many towns, he discovers that there is no such place for him other than the river.

Huckleberry Finn is given multiple opportunities for a family and societal life. After freeing himself from his father, he is adopted by the widow Douglas and Miss Watson where he is taught to be “sivilized.” Huck enjoys going to school and learning how to read and write but is displeased with his education in manners and social conduct. He does not understand why he must always be clean and pressed, why he must grumble (pray) over his food before he can eat, and religion, why he must learn about Moses when he has already died. He feels a deep sense of loneliness in the house with only the rules and two women to keep him company. His only consolation is Tom Sawyer who told him if Huck stayed he could be a part of his band of thieves.  

Huck struggles to find a group that he can belong with, because society has taught him that he must belong to someone. But after escaping from his father again, he decides flee and search for his own place to live. He discovers that his new traveling companion, Jim, has run away from Miss Watson and is torn about what to do. His first response is like that of his society; to turn him in and have him returned to slavery. The more distance he puts between himself and his home town the more he realizes that their thinking is incorrect. On the river he is able to create his one morality and learns that he has been struggling with ideas that are immoral and unnecessary. On the river his only concerns are finding food and shelter and enjoying his free time on the raft.

Huck makes another attempt during his short stay with Tom’s Aunt Sally, feeling genuinely guilty for making her worry about him. But in the end, Tom’s ploy to free an already free Jim proves too much for Huck. He realizes that despite Tom’s boisterousness and love for adventures, he is rigidly in line with the moral and social codes Huck antipathies. Tom’s treatment of Jim shows only slight improvement to slave owners. He treats Jim as a plaything for his adventure not as a man who is suffering. His last link to this possible life is cut and he sets off for the simpler life he and Jim had enjoyed. In consequence, the reader will gain a new look on the society they are a part of and gain a deeper understanding and respect of our predecessors way of life. Our lives today are fast pace which leads to conflict. Instead, like Huck, we need to slow down and enjoy the journey.

 

The Study of the Human Condition and the Need for Interdependence in "The Awakening"

The motives of the character Edna, from The Awakening by Kate Chopin, are frequently brought into question and debated over in literary discussions and articles. She acts selfishly but it is not necessarily completely through her own fault. Through the course of the novel, Edna Pontellier undergoes a journey of self-discovery and self-realization; her awakening. Edna believes she’s discovered that, despite a longing for a man to understand her, she is destined to always remain in solitude. Chopin writes a character who struggles to be independent and shows her spiraling into depression and despondency as a result. On her own, she tries to find a reason to continue fighting her battle but only discovers more reasons to give into the ocean’s invitation. Chopin suggests that on our own we are weak, that man was not made to journey alone.

Edna struggles from the onset of the novel to escape a certain doom. Her actions henceforth are a reaction to this force. On the opening page the reader is introduced to Madame Lebrun’s pet birds that we are told sing as all caged birds do, in the hope of being free. The analogy of setting a caged bird free chases her till the final page. Some believe that this in an uplifting idea of setting what was once behind bars free to fly on its own, but this soon proves to be her downfall. For what was once was kept does not know how to care for itself and has only two outcomes, death or entrapment again. We see this reference on multiple occasions; Mademoiselle Reisz tests her wings to feel for her strength, and her “pigeon house” that she can never leave. At the completion, as Edna walked down the beach toward the sea, listening to its seductive call, a lone bird spiraled above her beating its broken wings, falling into the water; sealing her fate.

            Like the birds, Edna needs someone to rely on. She finds love with Robert Lebrun but lacks the strength and courage to vocalize her needs and plans. Robert is prepared to step into society’s roles of marriage life being unaware of Edna’s wishes. Together she could have been strong but on her own, her plans become destructive not only for herself but, as she determines, for her children back home.

            To accentuate her point, Chopin places Edna between two extremes: Mademoiselle Reisz and Adèle Ratignolle and her husband.   On one side of the spectrum in Mademoiselle Reisz, a woman who has gained her independence and is an accomplished musician. She is a person whom Edna idolizes for much of the novel. The other end holds Adèle and her husband who, together, have formed a family and are living a happy life, a life Edna despises. While Mademoiselle Reisz did complete her goals and is a woman free from man’s possession, she is also angry, cynical, rude, and venomous. The strength and courage that it took to complete her plans left her damaged. Adèle may have the life that Edna loathes, but she has a loving relationship that allows her to be supported in whatever path she chooses to take. 

            For Edna her path would have been living as an artist and as a partner to a man not a possession. With these ideas in mind, reading Chopin’s novel will allow you to understand the importance of companionship, whether it is romantic or friendship. Humans were not made to struggle through life on our own. This novel serves as a warning to those in this situation or those who are watching it happen.

Annotations over Chopin's "The Awakening"

Thornton, Lawrence. "The Awakening: A Political Romance." American Literature 52.1 (1980): 50-66. JSTOR. Web. 29 October 2012.

            Thornton states that the issues Chopin raises in her novel The Awakening, is that romanticism, narcissism, and women’s independence can be political. The reading brings new light to the troubled Edna. He explains that her want of freedom was through false independence of the Grand Isle society and Robert’s sentiments and despite her partial understanding she is hampered by her romantic ideals. Her escape is pulled forward by Mademoiselle Reisz music and the sea that encourages her to flee and lose herself in the fantastical. She sees her escape in the sea and dies with the “intimations of the world” that she could never reach in life. Through this article we learn to read Chopin differently. We can see a young girl who is trying to escape but is constantly pulled back in. He explains her relationship with her child, stating that her children, her “soul’s slavery”, would continue to drag her down but to continue living as she must would destroy her children. He paints her not as a selfish mother but as a young woman trying to find her place.

Donald, Ringe. "Romantic Imagery in Kate Chopin's The Awakening." American Literature 43.4 (1972): 580-588. JSTOR. Web. 23 October 2012.

Donald Ringe argues that despite previous analysis, The Awakening by Kate Chopin is not about the question of sexual freedom or purely a strong feminist novel. It is in fact about the development of self-awareness. Edna begins to develop as she interacts with society but it is not until her trip to the sea does she fully begin to change. The sea invites the soul to the bliss of solitude and a maze of inward contemplation but also can cause unbearable “intense concentration of the self”. Her fear of death brings about awareness and self-importance which she develops to the exclusion of everyone around her. When Robert leaves her she discovers that she is truly alone and will never have a life long relationship. The sea beckons her with the promise of the bliss of eternal solitude and she is finally able to shed her husband and children and stand on her own. The consequence of reading this article is that you gain a better understanding of the themes and the novel’s purpose. Ringe states that it is not about morality or feminist ideas but “the philosophical question raised by Edna’s awakening. It is about the relation of self to the world and the price of becoming completely free.