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A review by jbmorgan86
My Ántonia by Willa Cather
4.0
I looked ahead on my book club's list of readings when I saw "January - My Ántonia by Willa Cather." I wasn't familiar with the book, so naturally I googled it. When I discovered that it was a frontier love story written in 1918, my first reaction was "Well, maybe I'll just skip this month." However, I joined this club in an attempt to expand my horizons a bit. A month later, I am so glad I read this book.
My Ántonia is loosely based on Willa Cather's childhood (in much the same way as To Kill a Mockingbird is loosely based on Harper Lee's childhood). While living in Virginia, young Jim Burden's parents die. He moves to Nebraska (the frontier) to live with his grandparents. While living with his grandparents, he gets to know the Shimerda family, immigrants from Bohemia. In particular, he gets to know young Ántonia Shimerda. They quickly become friends and spend their childhood together. The remainder of the novel tells their life stories as they divert and then converge later in life. This novel is largely about nostalgia. Ántonia is home for Jim Burden.
While the plot is entertaining enough, it is the imagery of the frontier landscape that warrants a 4-star rating:
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. I did not believe that my dead father and mother were watching me from up there; they would still be looking for me at the sheep-fold down by the creek, or along the white road that led to the mountain pastures. I had left even their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on, carrying me I knew not whither. I don’t think I was homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, what would be would be.
I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the reat prairie the colour of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.
I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.
In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow on the mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes of those fields at nightfall.
My Ántonia is loosely based on Willa Cather's childhood (in much the same way as To Kill a Mockingbird is loosely based on Harper Lee's childhood). While living in Virginia, young Jim Burden's parents die. He moves to Nebraska (the frontier) to live with his grandparents. While living with his grandparents, he gets to know the Shimerda family, immigrants from Bohemia. In particular, he gets to know young Ántonia Shimerda. They quickly become friends and spend their childhood together. The remainder of the novel tells their life stories as they divert and then converge later in life. This novel is largely about nostalgia. Ántonia is home for Jim Burden.
While the plot is entertaining enough, it is the imagery of the frontier landscape that warrants a 4-star rating:
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. I did not believe that my dead father and mother were watching me from up there; they would still be looking for me at the sheep-fold down by the creek, or along the white road that led to the mountain pastures. I had left even their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on, carrying me I knew not whither. I don’t think I was homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, what would be would be.
I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the reat prairie the colour of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.
I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.
In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow on the mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes of those fields at nightfall.