¶ … Antonia
The Immigrant's Struggles in My Antonia
The life of the immigrant family is shown to be a difficult one in Willa Cather's My Antonia. The families are haunted by a longing for the past and the dread of the difficulties of the future on a landscape that is both foreign and forbidding. This paper will illustrate how Cather's novel highlights the struggles that immigrants faced when residing and settling in the American frontier.
One of the biggest challenges that the immigrants faced was the obvious language barrier. This is evidenced by Antonia's quick and yearning desire to learn the English language, to which end Jim is befriended. Jim represents mainstream America, in one sense, and the promise that his future has in store for him is what the Shimerdas and the other immigrant families do not have. By desiring to learn the language of the new land, Antonia shows a desire to be integrated into this new society. But there is a definite division between her and mainstream society. For example, Jim's family leaves the countryside to move into town to live. Antonia also leaves the countryside and moves to town, but she does so to work -- as a servant in a mainstream American family's home. Thus, in spite of her attempts to learn the language and fit in, Antonia, because of her immigrant status and financial situation (having newly come to the country and left all their past in the old world, the Shimerdas possess little in the way of savings -- unlike families who have dwelt for generations in America) she must work as a servant of the society she desires to be part of.
This disparity is made clear over one Christmas season, when Antonia's father's condition worsens: "My papa sad for the old country. He not look good. He never make music any more" (Cather 983). Jim has been put off by Antonia's mother's obvious covetousness when the woman examined Jim's grandmother's things....
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