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.
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