“Yet the past is not dead; it is not even sleeping. A mass of memories and records, of relics and replicas, of monuments and memorabilia, lives at the core of our being.
----- J.H. Plumb. “The Historian’s dilemma” In this era of technology, the amount of new breakthroughs in science are growing exponentially. Machines encompass almost every field including but not limited to art. While most people are enjoying technology, there is a reversal tide of thoughts that emphasizes on the past experiences. Its essence is based on the so called “good old days” that people crave. This phenomenon is known as “nostalgia” Technology and modernity alter people’s lives; then, people realize its disturbing effects such as “competition, stress, separation, and loneliness,” and seem to “return to their past time by imagination and memory”(Suksangdow 1). My Antonia by Willa Cather embodies the incredible nostalgia of these early settlers as they struggle to make a home on the Nebraskan plains at the turn of the 20th century. …show more content…
Cather’s poetic and moving depiction of life on the plains is perhaps the most famous and highly praised aspect of the novel. Throughout the novel, the landscape mirrors Jim’s feeling and also awakens feelings within him.(quote) The landscape symbolizes the larger idea of a human environment, a setting in which a person lives and moves. It is changing, developing, becoming as if the land is a character itself. Finally, the landscape becomes the novel’s most tangible symbol of the vanished past, as Jim, the lawyer in distant New York, thinks back longingly on the landscape of his
----- J.H. Plumb. “The Historian’s dilemma” In this era of technology, the amount of new breakthroughs in science are growing exponentially. Machines encompass almost every field including but not limited to art. While most people are enjoying technology, there is a reversal tide of thoughts that emphasizes on the past experiences. Its essence is based on the so called “good old days” that people crave. This phenomenon is known as “nostalgia” Technology and modernity alter people’s lives; then, people realize its disturbing effects such as “competition, stress, separation, and loneliness,” and seem to “return to their past time by imagination and memory”(Suksangdow 1). My Antonia by Willa Cather embodies the incredible nostalgia of these early settlers as they struggle to make a home on the Nebraskan plains at the turn of the 20th century. …show more content…
Cather’s poetic and moving depiction of life on the plains is perhaps the most famous and highly praised aspect of the novel. Throughout the novel, the landscape mirrors Jim’s feeling and also awakens feelings within him.(quote) The landscape symbolizes the larger idea of a human environment, a setting in which a person lives and moves. It is changing, developing, becoming as if the land is a character itself. Finally, the landscape becomes the novel’s most tangible symbol of the vanished past, as Jim, the lawyer in distant New York, thinks back longingly on the landscape of his