My Antonia Essays (Examples)

Willa Cather's novel My Antonia (1918) the Nebraska prairie of Jim Burden's, Antonia' Shimerda's, and Lena Lingard's childhood and adolescence functions not just as a vivid, sometimes stark setting for the story. It is also as an extremely important psychological and symbolic reference point for the major characters. The setting of their Nebraska childhood is a reference point, psychologically and physically, from which friendships are forged, important experiences are had, and personalities develop. The idealized setting of Jim's (and Jim's childhood friend Antonia's) earlier life is frozen in Jim's mind. However, within the novel Jim must also move past his nostalgia to develop a mature relationship with Antonia; Nebraska, and his own adult self.

Both Jim and "his" Antonia (the title of the novel serves to underscores how very personal and subjective Jim's memories are, of Antonia, and their childhood environment) lose their parents early in life. In Jim's case,…

Immigration in My Antonia

IMMIGATION AND MY ANTONIA

With America gaining significant economic growth in the 19th and 20th centuries, its popularity among other nations of the world increased dramatically. There was a wave of immigrants entering the country during that period and especially after the Great wars when there were disturbances in the European countries many people left their homeland and entered United States in search of better jobs and a more prosperous future. But not everyone left their country because there was an economic disaster, several left because for political reasons too.

And like all other people who had to abandon their countries for different reasons, immigrants in Willa Cather's My Antonia too faced some significant problems such as prejudice and cultural clash and most of all entering the American workforce was anything but easy for them and not to mention the language barrier which turned every problem…

Cather's My Antonia

Willa Cather's My Antonia is a novel that is essentially about a place -- in this case the Nebraska prairie -- and all of the elements in it are mostly ways of exploring what this place meant to the narrator, Jim urden. Willa Cather, herself, moved to Catherton, Nebraska, at the age of nine, so many of the stories and the general setting of the story itself are largely imbued with Cather's own memories. From the very beginning of the story, Cather's characters admit that the memory of the Nebraska prairie is in itself ineffable. You can only understand it if you've lived it, which is a strange opening indeed to a story that will attempt to explain prairie life to those who haven't lived it. The character of Antonia is essentially linked to Jim's memory of the prairie; she, in fact, embodies the whole of the…

Antonia

The Immigrant's Struggles in My Antonia

The life of the immigrant family is shown to be a difficult one in illa 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…

Antonia, the main character of the novel My Antonia.

My Antonia

The magnum opus, My Antonia is a well-composed masterpiece by the eminent author illa Cather who is well-known for her scholarly depiction of life in the frontiers (Back cover). The distinguished novelist in her masterwork My Antonia has portrayed the strong personality as well as the persisting qualities of a young Bohemian girl named Antonia who migrated from United States to settle down in Nebraska.

This marvelous account addressing various issues has been narrated by one of the characters named Jim Burden who is portrayed as the childhood playmate of the protagonist of the novel named Antonia. According to Jim Burden, Antonia was the eldest daughter of the Shimerda's and a healthy as well as a happy girl with the most beautiful eyes that were "big and warm and full of light, like the sun shining on brown pools…

Thus, while one character had a targetable aim, the other, Antonia, had a symbolic purpose for Jim's life.

Antonia's role in the novel goes beyond that of encompassing the pure nature of childhood. It represents a clear window of strong powerful women. Better said, "This extremely influential character represents a positive compromise with feminist ideals. She is independent and strong while still living as a wife and mother" (Giglio, 2006). In this sense, Antonia is the embodiment of the successful woman, still not the average successful woman. This is largely due to the fact that the expression of her achievements is not always considered to be the common desire for women those days. Still, the symbolist part of this side of the character reflects in fact the social reality of that era and from Cather's point-of-view, it is a fair and clear recollection of her past.

Jim's complex character can…

There is another important aspect of Jim's returning to the West. With each visit, he rekindles the friendship he shared with antonia, and this is very important to him, too. Theirs is a lifelong bond that cannot be broken, and this is a steady theme throughout the novel. Jim and Antonia have always loved each other, but their love is much more than a romantic bond. They enjoy the true and lasting bond of friendship, and it does not splinter even though their lives change dramatically as they grow older. Again, Jim hopes to remember the girl of his youth, and by doing that, he hopes to hold on to his own youth as well. At one point after visiting antonia again, he muses, "In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and…

Country of the Pointed Firs," by Sarah Orne Jewett, "The Awakening," by Kate Chopin and "My Antonia," by Willa Cather. Specifically, it will show the development of the complexity, or the straightforwardness, of the point-of-view. Point-of-view is often as difficult to pinpoint as the characters of great novels. Sometimes, the point-of-view in a novel can shift and change, but the bottom line is -- point-of-view is a compelling way to keep the reader interested in the story, while telling more about the characters. Thus, point-of-view is a central part of the telling of a tale, and that is one of the most important techniques a writer can use to get their point across to the reader.

Point-of-View in Three Works

Point-of-view is one of the devices used to make or break a novel, and these three pieces all use point-of-view effectively and quite differently to set the stage, tell the…

American Lit

Definition of Modernism and Three Examples

Indeed, creating a true and solid definition of modernism is exceptionally difficult, and even most of the more scholarly critical accounts of the so-called modernist movement tend to divide the category into more or less two different movements, being what is known as "high modernism," which reflected the erudition and scholarly experimentalism of Eliot, Joyce, and Pound, and the so-called "low modernism" of later American practitioners, such as William Carlos Williams. Nonetheless, despite the problems of reification involved with such a task, I will attempt to invoke a definitions of at least some traits of modernism, as culled from the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics:

First, [in modernism] "realization" had to replace description, so that instead of copying the external world the work could render it in an image insisting on its own forms of reality... [and] Second, the poets develop…

Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Cather share a bond when it comes to style and framing fiction with language. ords are not simply meant to describe a character or scene; they can help round the story through how they are arranged. Fitzgerald illustrates how language can blossom around particular aspects of characters and ideas. Hemingway and Cather demonstrate how short, concise sentences can enhance a scene by increasing tension. Style emerges as an afterthought but as we study it, we realize it is a deliberate act that is so subtle that most readers overlook it when it comes to reading. Nouns and sentences are structured in a way that helps the reader make an emotional connection with the reader. These writers have different styles but this does not make one better or worse than the other. The variety we see in them represents the vast capability of writing styles around the world.…

81). Ambrose and Corn (1997) further define "functional vision" as vision that can be used to derive input for planning and performing tasks; the extent to which one uses his or her available vision is referred to as "visual efficiency."

eading Skills. According to Carver (2002), "reading usually means to attempt to comprehend language in the form of printed words"; therefore, for the purposes of this study, the term "reading skills" will refer to an individual's ability to comprehend language in the form of printed words.

Chapter Summary

This chapter provided an introduction to the study, including the background and a statement of the problem of vision impairment on students' academic performance; a discussion of the purpose and significance of the study was followed by a description of the research questions that will guide the research process. An assessment of the study's limitations and delimitations was followed by a delineation…

Portrayal of Gothic Femininities in "The Monk"

Written by Matthew Gregory Lewis in 1796, "The Monk" is a classic novel that is from Gothic literature. Female figures are used as symbols in many parts of the story, and the idea "gothic femininity" can be seen several times throughout the story. The setting fits with the Gothic theme as the story's beginning takes place in a mysterious church in Madrid, and the two main characters are both women. Leonella and her niece Antonia have come to the church to hear a great priest named Ambrosio speak, and what follows becomes both a romance and a tragedy. While waiting for Ambrosio to speak the two women tell their stories to a pair of men, Don Lorenzo and Don Christoval, and this conversation starts a chain of reactions that changes many lives. Lorenzo falls in love with Antonia, but she desires the priest…

ent vs. Own

Housing serves as a shelter for all the people and their family, satisfying their main physical need and holding the equipment people need for their daily routines. Although the necessity of having a housing unit is clear, owning a house has become fashionable and is looked upon nowadays as a long-run investment decision which provides stable and rather good return. In this scope, the tenure choice, or the decision whether to own a house or to rent, is a personal choice, which depends on personal financial situation as well as socio-cultural factors as the desire for independence and security connected with owning a house rather than renting.

This issue has raised many discussions among scholars on the factors that influence the tenure decision and whether the decision is rational. Especially such works have become important after several amazing rises in the house prices, which were then followed,…

Magellan/Pigafetti

The book The Voyage of Magellan: The Journal of Antonia Pigafetta, translated by Paula Spurlin Paige, is the first-hand account of an observer who sailed with Magellan's ships on their famous circumnavigation of the globe. Magellan's expedition. from 11519-1522, was the first time this feat had been accomplished. The expedition demonstrated conclusively not only that the Earth was a sphere, but that it could be extensively explored using the best technology of the day: sailing ships. Occurring as it did during the Renaissance, Pigafetta's accounts of the voyage were widely read. His book fueled the growing interest in learning as much as could be learned about virtually everything that could be studied.

In this expedition, Paige reports, Magellan managed to do what Columbus had tried to do but failed (p. vi). Dramatic shifts happened in multiple fields. Just as Ptolemaic thinking had been overturned in astronomy, now it had…

Ceremonies of King Louis XIV

Marriage Ceremonies and King Louis XIV

Marriage to Marguerite of Savoy

Marguerite was the princess of Savoy; she was stunningly beautiful, with her big shimmering eyes, dark face and fairy like attire. She walked so gracefully that she barely touched the ground. Her reception was the most desired thing of all times, the king, queen and all the others at the court were dying to see her reception. Even before going into sound sleep at night the duchess along with her daughter thought of Marguerite, who according to them would become the future queen of France. To attend the morrow at the princess apartment, the king ordered a suit to be made ready for him.

Next day everything happened against the expectations. Before the court, the king appeared and the manner in which he started to make the announcement seemed to be a reserved and…

Vovkun

Depression

This midterm is top ranking in comparison to the others. The outline is very detailed and on the first page, making it easier for me to see what the paper is aout and where the writer wants to go through each section. The different sections are also very convincing in their claims such as writer oriented depression. I liked how he used two well-known writers and their outs of depression and linked them together to where you can see directly and indirectly how depression fueled their career and vice versa. I also liked the use of religion as means of helping people who suffer from depression.

The quotes work very well with each suject. The progression from nature of depression to how depression affects different areas such as religion and literature is well thought out. The iliography is long and varied with sources from texts, journals. Most of…

Essentially concerned with property rights and citizenship, the early American conception was fairly simple in that almost anyone who was not an Indian or a Negro was considered white. Since "white" America was fairly homogenous at the time, meaning mostly Anglo-Saxon, and still had a wide-open frontier, the main threats to white dominance came from the natives and the slave population.

By the time my great-grandparents were arriving around the turn of the century, decades of immigration by Europeans who were not from Great Britain and were usually not Protestant, made the Anglo-Saxon elite began to view the new immigrants as a larger threat to the republic. Therefore, the notion of who was white began to shrink and there was a fragmenting of races into nations. Italians, Celts, Finns, Jews, and Slavs were now all considered distinct races, unfit for assimilation and republican self-governance, as opposed to being part of…

Smith may dislike the stereotype, but she cannot help internalizing it. She feels unfinished because she is regarded as unfinished, and even members of her community urge her to straighten her hair. This is completely different from the joyous, affirmative sigh "I am complete" at the end of Morales' poem. Just as Morales admits that all experiences with racism and discrimination are different, Smith's poem demonstrates how African-American women frequently lack assurance of their sense of self and that their physical qualities are regarded as alien to what is considered 'good' and 'American.' (The young Smith's wearing white to cover up one's tallness seems an attempt to mask blackness and presumed 'badness' with clothing). Morales' instability of identity lies in multiplicity of national cultures, but Smith, even as a young, black girl, but carefully balance her sense as an American and African-American with even greater care and psychological discomfort that…

Government

The Trafficking Victims Protection eauthorization Act

Final Project / Dissertation

Degree: Juris Doctorate Specialized

Major:

Specialization: Constitutional Law

Full Address:

The Trafficking Victims Protection eauthorization Act

This paper reviews the rights and protection that a state and federal government official provides to citizens that have been the subject of human trafficking crimes. Citizens need the protection of the police and other law enforcement officials to report human trafficking crimes and to protect and assist those that need their assistance. This paper will seek to explain the definition of human trafficking, how it works, victim support, issues with upholding and implementing legislature and the solutions which can be used to satisfy the public.

Table of Contents

Introduction

eview

Elements of Human Trafficking

Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000

TVPA (2008)

Mann Act

Travel Act

Alien Smuggling, Harboring and Transportation

United States

New York State's Human Trafficking Law…

Otherness" Quality of Gothic Fiction

Otherness in Wapole and Lewis

The construct of otherness is represented in Gothic fiction in three primary ways: (1) An underlying emphasis on the supernatural is a strong platform to presenting a sense of the other to readers. (2) Moreover, women are portrayed in a manner that characterizes them as being very different from men. (3) The behavior of the characters and the situations in which they find themselves and put themselves is profoundly different from the quotidian experiences of the readers, thereby imparting a separation between fiction and real life that comfortably maintains the characters in some kind of otherland.

The "Otherness" of the Supernatural

With his 1764 writing of the novel The Castle of Otranto, Horace Wapole is said to have invented the Gothic novel genre -- a classification that relies heavily on representation of the supernatural. In the minds of contemporary readers,…

Then she suffered them, with her two women, to disrobe her of her chain of pomander beads and all other her apparel most willingly, and with joy rather than sorrow, helped to make unready herself, putting on a pair of sleeves with her own hands which they had pulled off, and that with some haste, as if she had longed to be gone.

All this time they were pulling off her apparel, she never changed her countenance, but with smiling cheer she uttered these words, 'that she never had such grooms to make her unready, and that she never put off her clothes before such a company.'

Then she, being stripped of all her apparel saving her petticoat and kirtle, her two women beholding her made great lamentation, and crying and crossing themselves prayed in Latin. She, turning herself to them, embracing them, said these words in French, 'Ne crie…

Rice even started attending college before she graduated high school. It was an experience that helped her learn about herself, Felix writes. It is "almost a footnote the musical accomplishments Condi made at fifteen" (Felix 69). The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education maintains that while African-Americans have often perceived as lazy and inarticulate, Rice "made a huge contribution to dismantling the traditional stereotype" (22) while speaking at the National Commission on Terrorism. During the questioning, she "finessed and Cheshire-catted her way through some tough questions" (23) and while she was defending Bush's administration's actions prior to September 11, she remained "forceful and compelling in public testimony before the 9/11 commission" (23). Clearly, the poise that Rice learned as a little girl came in handy when she needed it the most. Many reports about Rice's demeanor during the questioning was nothing but admirable of her grace, charm, and poise.

These…