Can Immigrants Really Integrate in My Antonia?

¶ … 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. So Jim shows no sympathy to Antonia and tells her family should never have come to America if they don't want to be there. Antonia exclaims that they only came because they were lured by the American Dream: "America big country; much money, much land…" (Cather 983). The Dream, however, appears a lie, as her father realizes. The money is in the hands of "the elect," and the husbands that the mother has desired for her girls will only come from the old country. The immigrants will not rise in society unless they, as a whole, manage to embed themselves in the upper ranks of society. This is one reason Jewish immigrants were successful in rising in American society: they formed tight-knit communities.

However, it might be argued that Jim is not so different from Antonia -- after all, he must work, too. But Jim's employment is of a much richer and rewarding kind. He becomes a lawyer. He is viewed as a master of his own life, whereas Antonia and the immigrants are depicted as being passive recipients of a culture which they do not fully understand and which does not fully understand them.

One reason for this misunderstanding is the past which has shaped the immigrants. That past is effectively colored by religion. The Shimerdas are of the old world and deeply Catholic, whereas much of the American frontier is Protestant. Europe had seen many bloody wars between Catholics and Protestants and the division was evidence of deeply held beliefs that violently clashed. The Catholic beliefs held by the immigrants pertained to clearly defined, thousand year-old ideals and dogmas, which if not followed would mean the possibility of eternal damnation. The Protestant beliefs were less defined and open to interpretation; a sense of being "of the elect" was best felt if one abided by social customs; damnation was for people whose lives were evidently amoral (in the sense that they upset the status quo). Thus, when Mr. Shimerda dies of an apparent suicide, the grief is great for two reasons in Antonia's home: first, his loved ones must suffer the fear that his soul will be in eternal agony in hell; second, they are now deprived of a household head and breadwinner and will be forced to rely upon themselves more than ever just to make ends meet. Whatever was Mr. Shimerda's despair in leaving his homeland and trying to make a new life in the new world, it has not been extinguished with his own life, but on the contrary has now to be shouldered by his wife and surviving children. This may explain why Antonia follows the rash intimations of her heart in leaving the frontier for a young man who later abandons her and leaves her with child. Antonia is seeking some support, still from within the mainstream American society, and every time comes up short. The lure of the American Dream is strong for the immigrants.

But the immigrants also have to deal with internal struggles -- such as the Russians show in the novel. They came to America because of "a great trouble" that had happened to them in their homeland (Cather 964). This "great trouble" was of their own doing: they were sleigh drivers being chased by a pack of hungry wolves and to get away they threw the wedding party to the wolves (literally). They are murderers who "were run out of their own village" (Cather 973) and whose story (like their guilt) has followed them everywhere they go. Pavel unburdens his conscience to Mr. Shimerda then dies and Peter moves away to join other Russians in railway work. This sense of being haunted by dark pasts is common among the immigrants and keeps them at one remove from the mainstream Americans. Jim loves Antonia but even she seems to recognize that they do not belong together.