"Cliff Notes - My Antonia" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

Like many Americans, Cather was disillusioned when World War I brought not peace but more materialism to the world. "The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts," she later wrote. Her next group of novels, sometimes called her "middle period," reflect this sadness. She turned away from realism. She tried to create a world of emotions with her characters, images, and symbols.

The most successful of these novels was A Lost Lady (1923), which many readers have termed a small masterpiece. A less well-written novel, One of Ours (1922), had brought her the Pulitzer Prize, securing her literary reputation.

Cather withdrew more and more from the modern world in her writing. She established a comfortable home for herself in New York City where she lived with her friend, Edith Lewis, and a French housekeeper. She traveled a great deal--to New Hampshire, New Brunswick (Canada), Europe, and to the Southwest where she visited her favorite brother.

Her next two novels became bestsellers, although some critics at the time dismissed them as escapist. One, Death Comes to the Archbishop (1927), is now considered to be one of Cather's best works. It is based on historical figures, two French missionaries in New Mexico just after the Mexican War. Interwoven in the story are local legends, stories of saints and miracles, and facts about the region and landscape. The other, Shadows on the Rock (1931) has a similar theme, the spread of French Catholicism in the wilderness, but this time in fifteenth century Quebec.

Cather published three excellent short stories under the title Obscure Destinies in 1932. Further recollections of her Nebraska youth, two of the stories, "Neighbor Rosicky" and "Old Mrs. Harris," may be read as sequels to My Antonia.

The author lived the last fifteen years of her life quietly, surrounded by her friends. Many, like the family of violinist Yehudi Menuhin, were from the world of music. She published two minor novels and a group of essays during this period and continued to receive honors. By the end of her life she had accumulated nine honorary degrees and many literary awards.

Cather wrote that her fiction was her "cremated youth." Yet she insisted that no one had the right to draw connections between her real life and her fiction. Her fierce privacy during her life has not stopped scholars from investigating those connections since her death in 1947. Since then, eight books of her other writings have been published as well as many studies of her life and evolution as a writer.

When she died at the age of 73, her love of the land was reflected in these words from My Antonia carved on her tombstone: "...that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great."


^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: THE PLOT

In the Introduction, the author writes about meeting an old acquaintance, Jim Burden, a New York-based lawyer for a Western railroad. They are on a train and the time is around 1915. They discuss their childhood friend Antonia Shimerda, about whom Jim is writing a memoir. Both feel that Antonia represents "the whole adventure of our childhood." Later in New York, Burden brings Cather the novel that you read now.

Book I also opens on a train--this time in the early 1880s. Ten-year-old Jim has been orphaned and is traveling from Virginia to live with his grandparents on their Nebraska farm. On the same train are the Shimerdas, who are emigrating from Bohemia and will be the Burdens' nearest neighbors. Jim is too shy to meet fourteen-year-old Antonia, the only member of the family who speaks any English. Later, she will become his playmate.

The Shimerdas have come to America at Mrs. Shimerda's insistence so that their eldest son, Ambrosch, can find success. Like his mother, Ambrosch is shrewd and greedy. His father is a cultured man, a weaver who enjoyed playing the violin in the old country.

From the beginning, the unfamiliar prairie landscape deeply affects young Jim. His descriptions of the land and seasons run through the novel like a recurring song. Jim's grandfather is religious, hardworking, and a respected community leader. He and Jim's grandmother have created a productive farm and a pleasant home. Their farm contrasts sharply with the one for which the Shimerdas overpaid, which has only an earth dugout for shelter and no crops, poultry, or cows. The immigrants barely survive their first winter.

Jim teaches English to Antonia, and they have great adventures roaming about the prairie. Jim kills a giant rattlesnake at a colony of prairie dogs. They learn the chilling story of their Russian neighbors, Peter and Pavel. After the first snowfall, they take a long ride over the transformed landscape in Jim's new sleigh, pulled by his pony. Jim's grandparents try to help the Shimerdas through the winter by taking them supplies. But the hardships are too much for the homesick Mr. Shimerda, who commits suicide.

Antonia's life is changed by her father's death. She must work in the fields for her brother Ambrosch instead of getting an education. Jim's grandfather invites Ambrosch to work for him during the threshing season, and his grandmother employs Antonia in the kitchen. During these few weeks the Burdens enjoy Antonia's cheerful personality, and Jim's grandmother begins to take a protective interest in her.

Weary of farming and wanting the best education for thirteen-year-old Jim, the Burdens move into the town of Black Hawk at the beginning of Book II. Grandmother gets Antonia a job with their next door neighbors, the Harlings. (A number of immigrant girls from nearby farms have come to town to earn money for their families--they are known as "the hired girls.") Antonia finds in Mrs. Harling a model for her own life. Jim frequently spends time with the Harlings and Antonia.

Antonia enjoys a social life that summer that includes attending dances. Soon she becomes so popular that stern Mr. Harling forces her to choose between the dances or his employment. She leaves to take a job in the home of the lecherous Wick Cutter.

Jim doesn't enjoy the company of the young people of the town and is not encouraged to socialize with the hired girls. As he prepares for college, he can barely wait to leave Black Hawk. After escaping Cutter's plot to rape her, Antonia returns to live on her family's farm.

Jim is studying at the university in Lincoln at the opening of Book III. A line from his Latin reading sticks in his mind: Optima dies... prima fugit (the novel's epigraph) which means the best days are the first to flee. He acknowledges his nostalgia for the places and people of his youth.

In Lincoln, one of Antonia's friends, Lena Lingard, renews her acquaintance with Jim. He has always found her attractive, and now they spend so much time together that he neglects his studies. His favorite teacher persuades Jim to transfer to Harvard to pursue serious academics.

Book IV finds Jim home for the summer after graduation from Harvard. He hears that Antonia was deserted by Larry Donovan, the train conductor she planned to marry. Although she had returned home pregnant and disgraced, she now cherishes her baby daughter and works uncomplainingly for her older brother. Jim finds Antonia stronger than ever, and they reaffirm their friendship.

In Book V, Jim is a New York lawyer. Twenty years have elapsed, and he decides to visit Antonia again. Now married to a kind Bohemian, she has ten more children and is the mistress of a productive farm. Jim surprises her, and they have a joyous reunion. Delighted by her children, Jim rediscovers his own child-like nature. Antonia represents to Jim all that is nourishing and fruitful about the prairie and its people.


Of the more than fifty characters in My Antonia, only a small number directly affect the lives of the main figures. However, even the most minor characters have been sharply portrayed, and reappear often in the background. Here we will discuss only those who play a significant role in the story.

^^^^^^^^^^MY ANTONIA: JIM BURDEN