My Ántonia 267Indeed, Jim seems to find peace, happiness, and
freedom by identifying with nature and feeling as if
he is one with it.
The sunflower-bordered roads that surrounded
the prairie are another symbol of the freedom
inspired by nature. Fuchs, a handyman on the farm
owned by Jim’s grandparents, tells Jim that when
the Mormon men left Missouri to escape religious
persecution, they scattered sunflower seeds so that
the next summer, when the children and women
followed, they had the sunflower trail to guide them
to their freedom. As an adult writing about his
childhood, Jim is aware that Fuchs’s story is a leg-
end, but he still prefers to remember the sunflowers
as “the road to freedom.” After three years, Jim and
his grandparents move to the town of Black Hawk,
and here it is the river, which runs about two miles
south of their house, that takes on the meaning of
freedom. “That river was to be my compensation for
the lost freedom of the farming country,” he writes.
Nature—especially changes in the weather—is
also employed by Cather to foretell events. For
example, the suicide of Mr. Shimerda, Ántonia’s
father, is foreshadowed in book 1, chapter 6, when
Jim and Ántonia are outdoors on a splendid autumn
afternoon, “a day of amber sunlight, but there was a
shiver of coming winter in the air.” The land is mag-
nificent and imbued with spiritual qualities, “like the
bush that burned with fire and was not consumed,”
but the arrival of winter is foreboding, “two long
black shadows flitted before us or after us.” Ántonia
is shivering in her thin cotton dress, and so they
nestle together on the sun-warmed ground, where
they find an insect that is struggling to survive
the first cold. Then they see Ántonia’s father, who
gives Ántonia, his favorite child, “a wintry flicker
of a smile.” She shows her father the dying insect,
and Jim notices how full of sadness and “pity for
things” his smile is, an image he will never forget.
Mr. Shimerda kills himself a few months later on
the second day of the worst blizzard in 10 years.
The funeral arrangements are delayed because of the
snow, another example of the weather reinforcing
the main characters’ feelings. In this case, it expresses
Ántonia’s grief and foreshadows her hard work on
the farm that lies ahead.
In My Ántonia, detailed descriptions of nature,
including the landscape, the changing of seasons,
and the unpredictable winter storms, portray the
main characters’ psychological states of mind and
foreshadow major events. The natural environment,
which is part of Jim’s life on the prairie, represents
“the edge of the world,” the last frontier, and the val-
ues of freedom and happiness that are traditionally
associated with it.
Maria Ornella TregliasOcial class in My Ántonia
Social class distinction is a subtle yet pervasive
theme in My Ántonia. It is embedded in the friend-
ship and tension between the newly arrived Euro-
pean immigrants and their American neighbors.
Although Jim’s grandparents are welcoming and
generous toward their new neighbors, they maintain
a certain distance from the Shimerdas. The Bur-
dens feel socially superior to the newcomers. Jim
describes Ántonia’s father as a gentle, noble-looking
man, with a dignified manner and not used to the
hard work of the farm. In his own country, he was
a skilled artisan and enjoyed playing music with
his friends. Yet Mr. Shimerda, sensing that he is
being socially ranked by the Burdens, feels the need
to explain that in the old country, “he made good
wages, and his family were respected.” While the
Burdens ask Mr. Shimerda to stay for Christmas
dinner and enjoy his company, they do not extend an
invitation to the rest of his family. Mrs. Shimerda is
obviously not as refined as her husband and is greedy
and envious, which gives the Burdens an excuse to
keep a distance from their neighbors. For example,
when Mrs. Shimerda gives Jim’s grandmother the
most valuable thing she has, dried mushroom chips,
it is meant as a gesture of deep appreciation. How-
ever, when Jim’s grandmother gets home, she throws
away the chips without giving it much thought. She
does not trust the foreign substance, and she does
not recognize Mrs. Shimerda’s gesture. In spite of
her religious piety and kindness, Jim’s grandmother
looks down in the immigrant woman and does not
accept her as her equal.
Jim highlights social class differences between
first-generation immigrant girls who work for fami-
lies in Black Hawk and the girls from the town. He