My Ántonia by Willa Cather

First published: 1918

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Regional

Time of plot: Late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Locale: Nebraska

Principal Characters

• Jim Burden, the narrator and Ántonia’s friend
• Ántonia Shimerda, a Bohemian peasant girl

The Story

Jim Burden’s father and mother die when he is ten years old, and the boy makes the long trip from Virginia to his grandparents’ farm in Nebraska in the company of Jake Marpole, a hired hand who is to work for Jim’s grandfather. Arriving by train in the prairie town of Black Hawk late at night, the boy notices an immigrant family huddled on the station platform. Jim and Jake are met by a lanky, scar-faced cowboy named Otto Fuchs, who drives them in a jolting wagon across the empty prairie to the Burden farm.

Jim grows to love the vast expanse of land and sky. One day, Jim’s grandmother suggests that the family pay a visit to the Shimerdas, an immigrant family just arrived in the territory. At first, the newcomers impress Jim unfavorably. The Shimerdas are poor and live in a dugout cut into the earth. The place is dirty, and the children are ragged. Although he cannot understand her speech, Jim makes friends with the oldest girl, Ántonia.

Jim often finds his way to the Shimerda home. He does not like Ántonia’s surly brother, Ambrosch, or her grasping mother, but Ántonia wins an immediate place in Jim’s heart with her eager smile and great, warm eyes. One day, her father, with his English dictionary tucked under his arm, corners Jim and asks him to teach the girl English. She learns rapidly. Jim respects Ántonia’s father, a tall, thin, sensitive man who had been a musician in the old country. Now he is worn down by poverty and overwork. He seldom laughs any more.

Jim and Ántonia pass many happy hours on the prairie. Then, during a severe winter, tragedy strikes the Shimerdas when Ántonia’s father, broken and beaten by the prairie, shoots himself. Ántonia had loved her father more than anyone else in her family. After his death, she shoulders his share of the farmwork. When spring comes, she goes with Ambrosch into the fields and plows like a man. The harvest brings money, and the Shimerdas soon have a house. With the money left over, they buy plowshares and cattle.

Because Jim’s grandparents are growing too old to keep up their farm, they dismiss Jake and Otto and move to the town of Black Hawk. There, Jim longs for the open prairie land, the gruff, friendly companionship of Jake and Otto, and the warmth of Ántonia’s friendship. He suffers at school and spends his idle hours roaming the barren gray streets of Black Hawk. At Jim’s suggestion, his grandmother arranges with a neighbor, Mrs. Harling, to bring Ántonia into town as her hired girl. Ántonia enters into her tasks with enthusiasm. Jim notices that she is more feminine and laughs more often; though she never shirks her duties at the Harling house, she is eager for recreation and gaiety.

Almost every night, Ántonia goes to a dance pavilion with a group of hired girls. There, in new, handmade dresses, the girls gather to dance with the village boys. Jim goes, too, and the more he sees of the hired girls, the better he likes them. Once or twice, he worries about Ántonia, who is popular and trusting. When she earns a reputation for being a little too loose, she loses her position with the Harlings and goes to work for a cruel moneylender, Wick Cutter, who has a licentious eye on her.

One night, Ántonia appears at the Burdens and begs Jim to stay in her bed for the night and let her remain at the Burdens. Wick Cutter is supposed to be out of town, but Ántonia suspects that, with Mrs. Cutter also gone, he might return and try to harm her. Her fears prove correct, for Wick returns and goes to Ántonia’s bedroom, and finds Jim.

Ántonia returns to work for the Harlings. Jim studies hard during the summer, passes his entrance examinations, and in the fall leaves for the state university. Although he finds a whole new world of literature and art, he cannot forget his early years under the blazing prairie sun and his friendship with Ántonia. He hears little from Ántonia during those years. One of her friends, Lena Lingard, who had also worked as a hired girl in Black Hawk, visits him one day. He learns from her that Ántonia is engaged to be married to a man named Larry Donovan.

Jim goes to Harvard to study law and for years hears nothing of his Nebraska friends. He assumes that Ántonia is married. When he makes a trip back to Black Hawk to see his grandparents, he learns that Ántonia, deceived by Larry, had left Black Hawk in shame and returned to her family. There she works again in the fields. When Jim visits her, he finds her the same lovely girl, though her eyes are somber, and she has lost her old gaiety. She welcomes him and proudly shows him her baby.

Jim believes that his visit will be the last time he will see Ántonia. He tells her how much a part of him she has become and how sorry he is to leave her again. Ántonia knows that Jim will always be with her, no matter where he goes. He reminds her of her beloved father who, though he had been dead many years, still lives on in her heart. She tells Jim good-bye and watches him walk back toward town along the familiar road.

Jim does not see Ántonia again for twenty years. On a trip, he finds himself not far from Black Hawk and, on impulse, drives in an open buggy to the farm where she lives. He finds the place swarming with children of all ages. Small boys rush forward to greet him, then fall back shyly. Ántonia has married well, at last. The grain is high, and the neat farmhouse seems to be charged with an atmosphere of activity and happiness. Ántonia seems as unchanged as she was when she and Jim used to whirl over the dance floor together in Black Hawk. Cuzak, her husband, seems to know Jim before they are introduced, for Ántonia had told her family about Jim. After a long visit with the Cuzaks, Jim leaves, promising that he will return the next summer and take two of the Cuzak boys hunting with him.

Waiting in Black Hawk for the train that will take him east, Jim finds it hard to realize the long time that has passed since the dark night, years before, when he saw an immigrant family standing wrapped in their shawls on the same platform. All his memories of the prairie come back to him. Whatever happens now, whatever they had missed, he and Ántonia had shared precious years between them, years that will never be forgotten.

Bibliography

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