Free My Antonia Essays: An Analysis :: My Antonia Essays

My Antonia I guess that My Antonia, written in 1918, is genius of Cathers finest works. Critic H. L. Mencken thought it to be the most(prenominal) accomplished, and shortly after it was produce in 1919 he wrote, Her style has lost self-consciousness her feeling for ferment has become instinctive. And she has got such a grip upon her materials...I kat once of no novel that makes the remote folk of the Western praries more real...and I know of no(prenominal) that makes them seem better worth knowing. One of the high points in the myth is the tragic case of Mr. Shimerdas death. In this character Cather shows an almost obsessive long of hers for the past. A cultered man, Antonias father cannot handle the hardships he encounters in Nebraska, and longs for his life ass in Bohemia. He clings to his Old World wardrobe and foods...a create from raw stuff grey vest, and, instead of a collar, a silk scarf of a puritanical bronze-green, carefully crossed and held together by a red coral pin. Homesick for his native arena Mr. Shimerda shoots himself. Some critics find Cathers recurring preoccupancy with the past destructive, T. K. Whipple said that there was an element of passion in the theme. To pee-pee cared intensely about anything, is not to have lived in vain. I think that the theme of the immigrants longing for the past was very fitting. Many of the settlers of the mid-west praries were immigrants, and most did desperately try to cling to their past while building a in the buff life in the melting pot of America. The hardships of the immigrants were not uncommon. Many were force to go into town to become a hired girl as Antonia did before she returned to the farm labor that she enjoyed, where she discovered city life in the dance clubs. My favorite part about reading My Antonia is the beautiful descriptions of the land and other small details. In this story Jim Burden is not still a narrator for Cather, but for the land. Throughout the story his descriptions bring an silver-tongued style to her writing and capture the reader into the story. Everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but rough, shaggy red grass, most as tall as I. In a phrase that is now on Cathers tombstone, he comes to accept the power of the land over him, saying, That is felicitousness to be dissolved into something complete and great.