The Role Of The Shimerdas In Willa Cather's My Antonia

Immigrants who entered the United States in the early 1900's often came with merely the clothes on their backs. They had no idea where they would be resting their heads at the end of the day. Typically, where most lived was not glamorous. This is also true for the family of the Shimerdas in the novel My Ántonia by Willa Cather. The Bohemian immigrants came into the small town of Black Hawk, Nebraska where their living quarters were worth much less than they paid. However, their friends, The Burdens', home was severely different. The Burdens were an upper-middle class family consisting of the main protagonist Jim and his grandparents Josiah and Emmaline. They lived on a farm in the vast plains of the Nebraskan prairie. Their estate included a successful garden, a barn, horses, and other farm animals. The home itself had two stories, acquiring the basement as a kitchen and dining room. Emmaline was constantly baking goodies downstairs on the large stove while the men worked the farm. …show more content…
They overpaid for a home that can be described as a cave. It was built into the ground and as Jim's grandmother described, "It's no better than a badger hole; no proper dugout at all" (Cather 13). Upon arrival, their home did not have a garden, as most of their land was of little value for farming. It also had a windmill with no wheel. It had a barn, however, their only animals were an oxen and two bony, old horses, all of which they paid too much for. As for the interior, they also overpaid for a stove and the two girls slept in a pit. In all, the immigrants were tricked into spending all of the money the saved up in order to move on low-quality