¶ … Antonia: Introduction etc.
The landscape of the agrarian lifestyle in Nebraska is such that Mr. Shimerda is the least suited for this type of life. He has the soul of an artist and so longs for a more refined world in which to express himself. He is a man who needs to live among people with ideas who express those concepts in conversation, which is not the world he finds in Nebraska. Indeed, he is like a man sent to this part of the world as a punishment. He admits that at times life on the farm has made him "crazy with lonesomeness" (367). He is refined in a world that does not recognize that refinement as anything but a weakness. This sense of being out of place contributes to his death.
The relationship between Antonia and Jim in the section "The Shimerdas" is an antagonistic on her part because of the skirmish Jim has with Ambrosch. Antonia has a very strong sense of family, and the fight with Ambrosch colors her perception of Jim and makes her highly protective of her family and critical of any outsider that might challenge the family. Antonia had been friendly before, but now she says, "I never like you no more, Jake and Jim Burden" (130). This incident has far-reaching effects, and those effects are evident in Antonia's change of attitude from the first. Her relationship with Jim is strained after this incident.
3. Jim has a particular view of the land in the first section of the novel. At first the expanse is just land, "not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made" (7). Jim begins to differentiate between the expanse of land and broken land, or land being tilled. When he is with Antonia, he takes a different view of the whole state: "The great land had never looked to me so big and free" (48). Jim's view of the land seems to depend on his view of the people he is with at any given time, but overall he becomes more tied to the land as he works it.
4. Jim states at one point, "The country girls were considered a menace to the social order" (201). These girls were distractions for the boys of Black Hawk, expected and expecting to marry Black Hawk girls. However, these country girls were too beautiful and so caused the Black Hawk boys to lose focus and turn their attention way from the girls the community expected them to marry, the country girls thus upset the social order. These girls became the subject of scandalous stories, and so they were criticized in the community for being too alluring and too disruptive.
5. Antonia gains a good deal from her service in the Harling home, and the children gain much from her. Antonia is admitted by the Harlings, and Mrs. Harling wants to help shape the girl. Antonia first gets a second family from the experience. Antonia also learns much about music from Mrs. Harling. The children like Antonia and are contented by her presence and her help in the home. At this stage, Antonia is also still friendly with Jim, and the entire group seems to have achieved a harmony by being together.
6. At the end of the section called "The Hired Girls," Jim says he is proud of Antonia and she is proud of him: "I was so proud of her that I carried my head high" (225). The immediate reason for this is because she is proud of him, and he knows this as she tells him not to hang around Lena too much and shows that she has regard for him after all. He is proud of her because she has a true heart and is still his Antonia.
My Antonia: Part III etc.
1. In college, Jim reads from Virgil's Georgics the section "Virgil's line "Optima dies . . . prima fugit." This passage comes to mean something to Jim about his growing up in Nebraska. The passage is described as a "melancholy reflection that, in the lives of mortals, the best days are the first to flee" (263). Cleric explains how this connects to an individual's patria, and for Jim, Nebraska is his patria. He is reminded of this fact even more when Lena Lingard shows up that night, and the loss of youth and the loss of Nebraska, at least for a time, affects the young man at this time.
2. The land functions as both...
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