Ántonia, childhood, and land

        Jim’s enduring love for Ántonia represents his nostalgia for the Nebraskan countryside and his childhood. This sentimental longing for the past, confused with affection for Ántonia, guides him to the path of finding his identity. Ántonia epitomizes a fraction of Jim’s identity, signifying “the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of … childhood” (5).  Years spent with her have comforted him in his new life in college and New York with a wealth of memories about the past. For Jim, Ántonia embodies the landscape and Jim’s childhood that he wants to last forever.

        The relationship between Ántonia and is reminiscent of the precious past that colors Jim’s adult life with melancholy. The old days spent in the prairies reflect a concern with his identity and self. To keep the past alive, Jim must romanticize it. He is attracted to her not based on desire but nostalgia towards the Great Plains and his younger self who used to lean his back against a pumpkin, feeling “entirely happy” with his best friend Ántonia (20). Ántonia perceives the childlike aspects in Jim’s adult body that he longs to obtain. His final words in the memoir, “Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past”, implies the memory of the old times they share together. He loves her for what she symbolizes: his childhood that he will never have again.

       Jim also sees Ántonia as the cultivated land. Ántonia belongs to the farm, is the trees, the land, and the wheat she plants. In Jim’s mind, Ántonia appears in the reoccurring image of the prairies and land, where Ántonia works “like a man” (87) Cather employs masculine features to depict Ántonia’s hard work in the fields: “She kept her sleeves rolled up all day, and her arms and throat were burned as brown as a sailor’s.” (87). Jim, the introverted boy who likes to spend time alone and with girls like Ántonia, does not have the same masculinity. Therefore, Jim has to find his masculinity through her.

          Jim searches for safety in the Nebraska plains because Ántonia’s presence reminds him of the memory in the land. His ambivalence towards growth and maturity makes him feel unsafe and empty when interacting with other women. He then returns to be obsessed with Ántonia, the familiar emotion of home. For example, his encounter with Lena reassures him of his feeling towards Ántonia: “I wish I could have this flattering dream about Ántonia” (169). A beautiful girl with a sheer femininity that is opposite to Ántonia, Lena confronts his sexual desire. Jim describes in his dream:  “I was in a harvest fields full of shocks, and I was lying against one of them. Lena Lingard came across the stubble barefoot, in short skirt, with a curved reaping-hook in her hand...”(168). Lena’s sexual appeal, glowing in her rosy bare flesh, short skirt, and soft kiss, contradicts with the “shocks” and “stubbles” in the barren land that is harvested by the reaping-hook. Ántonia represents the barren land, the background of Lena’s luscious figure, and the land on which Jim always finds a piece of himself. Jim never has a dream like this about Ántonia. He never will be kissing her like Lena, for Ántonia is already in his dream, and always with him as the everlasting farmland in Black Hawk.

          Jim’s childhood replays itself on Cuzak’s boys. Ántonia’s children, they thrive on the land, similar to Jim when he was young. Jim is finally back to Ántonia again after twenty year. Ántonia remains the same old Ántonia, the personified countryside that lures him back. Cather reinforces Ántonia’s fruitful nature as land by delineating the fruit cave:
 
         We turned to leave the cave; Ántonia and I went up the stairs first, and the children waited. We were standing outside talking, when they all came running up the steps together, big and little, tow heads and gold heads and brown, and flashing little naked legs; a veritable explosion of life out of the dark cave into the sunlight. It made me dizzy for a moment. (249)

Cather uses fruit to symbolize Ántonia’s children, reiterating the analogy between the bounty land and Ántonia herself. A nurturing womb, the fruit cave is brimming with vibrant colors; a fertile woman, Ántonia gave birth to Cuzak’s boys, who have the “veritable explosion of life” that is the rebirth of Ántonia’s spirit. Jim cannot distinguish between Ántonia and her children, for they all are products of the cultivated land.  

           Cather shares Jim’s nostalgia for the mood of the past. My Ántonia represents America in its country, materials, and history. For Jim and Cather, the purpose of time is to return to the beginning. Jim’s stories end in the last paragraph as he finds the first road he traveled with Ántonia “on that night when [they] got off the train at Black Hawk” (272). This road, both literally and metaphorically, returns him to Ántonia, to the country land and his childhood.    
                                   
                                                    Work Cited
Cather, Willa. My Ántonia. Germany: GGP Media GmbH, Possneck, 1996. Print.
 

A day of life as an ole idea

Today I was researching ideas for this paper and accidentally stubbled upon a list of books with colleges  their major characters have either mentioned or attended. Jay Gasby in Fitzgerald's masterpiece novel the great Gasby stayed briefly at St. Olaf and then dropped out. It sparks my interest about creating Jay Gasby, or James Gatz ( I have not yet decided which name) as my character. He is a English major, bright and poetic, however is kicked out of school because of plagiarism. The date is set on March 10th, 1928, when the economy is suffering. This day could also include a visit from Fitzgerald as a guest speaker/writer and Gasby tries to impress him with an essay he plagiarizes but has no conscious realization of his dishonesty. 

Transition

My author focuses his chapter on the assimilation and the Indians during the turn of the century. Dawes Act was passed in 1887, when private land property was allocated to individual Native American. However, the government was also authorized to sell any surplus and eventually break up the Indian tribes and assimilate them into the mainstream US culture. It was surprising for me that one of the reason they are pushing this act to pass was that some government officials like Dawes himself was to grant Indians the right and possibility to become US citizens. So citizenship = private land ownership? The process of accessing private property and be able to sell the lands off was the starting point of capitalism and was in the US culture of becoming a US citizen with full rights, which is not true in the Indian cultures where people advocate group cooperation, public property, and tribal union. A lot of them were not able to produce anything from their own land and was force to sell the land, having nothing at the end and no one to turn to. The natives are not technically immigrants since they were the native people on this land. It is interesting to see that they were treated as immigrants when it comes to issues like this. Yet the attitudes towards them were somewhat different from the rest of the immigrant groups such as the Chinese and Italians. Even though an act like the Dawes Act did not really benefit the Indians, at least the Americans passed an act to grant possible rights to them, whereas for the other groups, acts like the Chinese exclusion act was passed. 

the mother

 Abortions will not let you forget.

You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
 children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
 and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

The author starts this poem by asserting  “Abortions will not let you forgot,” and continues to talk about the aborted life. I find the title “the mother” somewhat intriguing because this is the story of a woman who went through abortion, who is not a mother. The detailed description of the mother’s feeling towards the unborn child shows the suffering the mother has. “singers and workers who never handles the air” “you will never scuttle off ghost that come” “dim killed children.” What I get out of this poem is that she tries to convey that even though it was the mother’s own choice to not to give birth, she still attempt to revivify her dead child and by telling the children “I loved you all” and “even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.” Abortion is always a difficult subject and writing a poem with such emotions has to be hard for her. For someone who is prochoice like myself, this poem gives me an image of the difficulties and an enlightening view of the other opinion.  

Chicago and Vaudeville

Beth, Enich, Paige, Mike and I are working hard on our skit for the Tuesday vaudeville performance. We were hesitated to choose this piece from the musical Chicago since it came out much later after vaudeville shows were popular. To our surprise that after some research we found that the original name of Chicago the musical is called, Chicago, a musical Vaudeville. I watched parts of the movies and listened to the whole soundtrack of the broadway version one more time this weekend. The story of Chicago to me, is told in the form and language of vaudeville. Every songs and scene is in the style of a vaudeville act. The main theme of Chicago is that in our country and culture, crime and other dangers could be glamorized into entertainment. Yet the most popular entertainment during the period, is vaudeville, through which this theme is played. Two main characters, Velma and Roxie, became famous vaudeville stars because they had committed crimes of murder. This satirical approach shows that anyone  who was famous for any reason could become a famous vaudeville star.  

Jobs and Ford

Steve Jobs was said to be the technology maketing genius in the 21st century while Henry Ford contributed  greatly to the automobile industry that made us the "nation of motorist". As I was googling Steve Jobs, it was interesting to see that people are not only comparing Steve Jobs to Henry Ford, but also to a great number of other pioneers in the history such as Thomas Edison and Walt Disney. The success Jobs achieved made personal computers and other personal electronic devices easier and more fun to use. Both Ford and Jobs hailed from middle class family and essentially reach the American dream that we have been talking about constantly Amcon. It is not the wealth they made that constituted the American dream but rather the innovations that improve daily life. Jobs, in my personal opinion, has great insights on market advertising and artistic vision, but was still less social effect than Ford. Jobs was smart on what people want. We always want new gadgets with sleek looks and multiple functions. So he made the ipods, iphones, and ipads. And there is multiple generations of these products. Customers were  still super excited to buy the first generation ipad two years ago, even they still felt a little disappointed that a camera was not built in it. Apple had already had products like iphones with camera, why was it so hard to build a camera in the ipads? Of course the next generation of ipads came out, with cameras and 3G. Jobs was a better market strategist and he created products he knew we will buy. Ford, even though not the first one to invent cars with engines, made better models of automobile that we cannot live with out that substantially makes transportation easier.  

Pullman

After reading this chapter I started to wonder if college could be an utopia, or at least could we make a college community into an utopian society? According to Pullman maybe if we only accept middle class while kids we probably would. But I think here at St. Olaf I don't feel there exist any social class, ethnics, and race issues and tension..It could be an utopian in some respect. However we all know that college like St. Olaf are trying really hard to bring up the diversity on their campus, which is one the most important aspect of choosing a college for most seniors. Pullman, in this case, lacks a fundamental diversity that balances the town, eventually resulting in the break down of the company and the town. Pullman had all the money to build his town and constructed it in his will to eliminate poverty and make all the residents middle classed. Like Gilbert suggests that the purpose of Pullman establishing his town was not to create a democratic society but a uniform culture as a model for Chicago. Does utopian and perfect = uniform? No.