Throughout the first reading assignment for My Ántonia Willa Cather uses vivid imagery to accentuate Jim Burden’s journey. The first signs of imagery are noted in the introduction where an unknown narrator describes the Nebraskan fields as “never-ending miles of ripe wheat.” There, under the “burning summers when the world lies green and billowy beneath a brilliant sky,” Burden’s childhood rears his love for the great country and he soon begins “to lose himself in those big Western dreams.” He later becomes a lawyer for the railroads, retaining his “fresh color and sandy hair and quick-changing eyes.” The imagery is carried through into the first four sections of the first book. In section one, Burden describes a friendly passenger conductor who “wore rings and pins and badges of different fraternal orders” and Otto Fuchs, his grandfather’s hired man, who “wore a sombrero hat, with a wide leather band and a bright buckle.” Cather uses the next section to depict the physical elements of Burden’s new home and new family.
