Dog Symbolism In My Antonia

In My Antonia, the prairie was used to represent many aspects in the novel. One of the aspects that the prairie represented was that when it came to immigrants, the prairie would symbolize a new beginning. The prairie would signify a new life as well as the fears and struggles that would come along in trying to create this new life in a different land. We could sense this symbolism in chapter one when the author writes: “There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made”. Throughout the novel, the prairie is also used to represent the moment when Jim is leaving Nebraska and is representing the relationship he had with Antonia as friends, as well as the nostalgia he had for his upbringing. …show more content…
With what I was able to understand, light symbolized change in the novel. For example, when Jim had recently met Antonia, he associated her eyes with the sun, and for the rest of his life, he would relate warmth, vigor, and light to Antonia. Another moment that light was used as a symbolism was at the end of the novel. Around the end of the novel, when Jim leaves Antonia for good, there’s a moment where he stands along the prairie roads in the “slanting sunlight” and meditates on the “incommunicable” past that he once shared with Antonia. A passage for when this symbol would be this one (book 2, chapter 14): “On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk; the handles, the tongue, the share, black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the