My Antonia Analysis Essay

In the novel, My Antonia, is an upcoming of age story told from the eyes of Jim Burden. Jim reflects back on his childhood and remembers his dear friend Antonia. Willa Cather uses Jim as the narrative so he can relate the themes such female inequality, the immigrant experiences, and agriculture and farming. Female inequality was not something that Willa Cather had, but she added it in this novel to where women were actually seen as the strongest and the mean were the weakest. Willa Cather switched the roles and allowed the women to be the head of the house. The women earned the money, call the shots and even work out in the field along with the men. In this novel, Cather made it known that women could do everything a man could do, maybe even …show more content…
Cather used this in her book to also show how the immigrants were used to a harsher and more of tough life then the Americans had.
“There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries were made. I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man's jurisdiction. I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it […]. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out” (1.1.10). (Cather) The landscape and the weather played a major part in this novel. Willa Cather used the prairie as the setting of the book to make it more easy to relate to the harsh times that they had farming. There was nothing around except land, so the people were depended on the farmers. But they had a harsh winter which also shows the hard struggles that the immigrants had to face while living on the land. “The relationship between man and the natural world is both humbling and awe-inspiring for the characters, which respect and admire the beauty of the prairie landscape.” (