266 Cather, Willa
very much affected by the way she treats him. For
example, he is hurt when she regards him as a young
boy (he was four years younger), and he is extremely
proud when he kills a big rattlesnake, not so much
because he receives the admiration of friends and
neighbors but because he gets Ántonia’s approval.
She now sees him as her equal. Even the tragic event
of the suicide of Ántonia’s father and his funeral
conjure up for Jim memories of a mystical sense of
connectedness with the dead man’s soul. Ántonia
was her father’s favorite child, and Jim had devel-
oped a special closeness with him because they both
shared a genuine love for Ántonia.
That memories are meant to keep the feelings
Ántonia and Jim have for each other alive is made
most explicit in chapter 4 of book 4 when Jim and
Ántonia meet for the last time before a 20-year
hiatus. Jim vows to himself that he will always
carry with him “the closest, realest face, under all
the shadows of women’s faces, at the very bottom
of [his] memory,” and Ántonia reassures him that
even if he does not come back to visit, “[he’s] here,
like [her] father. So [she] won’t be lonesome.” Their
shared memories accompany Jim during his long
trips across the country as a railways legal counsel.
In the ensuing 20 years, Ántonia marries a fel-
low Bohemian and has 10 children with him. Her
life is hard, and she is not wealthy, but she and her
husband manage to keep a flourishing farm and
a lively family. Jim seems to avoid going to see
Ántonia because he is afraid that reality will mar his
memories of her. However, when he finally meets
her again, he notes that although she has lost her
youth and most of her teeth, she has not lost her
“inner glow.” Jim, therefore, is able to reconcile the
past and the present and is reassured that Ántonia,
like himself, cherishes their childhood memories so
much that her children seem to already know him.
Another interesting aspect of how Cather treats
the theme of memory is that the past and the pres-
ent are intertwined: While memories bring solace
to the disappointments of life, they, in turn, are
colored by the present. In fact, Jim’s recollections
are at times exaggerated and romanticized, as in this
poetic description of Ántonia’s eyes: “They were big
and warm and full of light, like the sun shining on
brown pools in the wood.” He idealizes Ántonia
as a figure out of a fairy tale, the “fairest of them
all,” embodying the qualities of a pioneer woman,
strong and hardworking, spontaneous, generous, and
caring. Jim is aware that his writing is made up of
memories tinged with his feelings and reflections;
thus, he titles the manuscript My Ántonia, instead
of simply Ántonia.
The nostalgic tone in My Ántonia is a reminder
that the past can never be truly recaptured, yet it is
so much part of a person’s life that it cannot be for-
gotten. Only by reconciling the past with the present
can the characters in Cather’s novel find the peace of
mind and happiness that they yearn for.
Maria Ornella Treglianature in My Ántonia
In this pastoral novel, nature—the landscape and the
changing of the seasons—serves not only as a setting
but also as an expression of human feelings and as a
foreshadowing of future events.
When Jim Burden arrives at his grandparents’
farm, his sense of identity is reflected in the vast,
impersonal landscape. He has never seen land with-
out mountain ridges, hills, creeks, or trees, and as he
notes, “there was nothing but land.” He is absorbed
by it: “I felt erased, blotted out.” Its vastness is over-
whelming to this 10-year-old boy whose mother
and father had both died within the past year. Jim’s
identification with the barren, winter landscape is a
way to grieve for the loss of his parents and portrays
his lack of hope, “If we never arrived anywhere, it
did not matter.” The life he had known is over; he
is starting a new one and has no idea of what is to
come. He feels small and insignificant against the
vastness of nature.
Jim is welcomed by his grandparents, and as he
gets settled at the farm, the landscape takes on the
meaning of freedom and contentment that life
on the prairie represents. On the second day at the
farm, Jim goes to the garden with his grandmother
and decides to stay there a little longer. He sits
down in the middle of the garden, leans his back
against a pumpkin, and observes that happiness
is “to be dissolved into something complete and
great.” These words, which were later carved on
Willa Cather’s tombstone, reveal how important the
author thought it was to be in harmony with nature.