My Antonia Flashcards
(6 cards)
“I had killed a big snake — I was now a big fellow.”
P1C7 Cather establishes this as a turning point in Jim and Antonia’s relationship, the values of agrarian life and the seeds of maturity
“America big country, much money, much land for my boys, much husband for my girls.”
Mrs Shimerda’s reasoning/mantra for moving to America which Mr Shimerda can’t agree with — immigrants are lied to by the American Dream
“Mr Shimerda had not been rich and selfish; he had only been so unhappy that he could not live anymore.”
P1Ch14 Contrasts his religion with his suicide and links to George Wilson’s suicide (religion comforting and oppressing the working class). Makes the point of him not being “selfish” - reflecting the lie of the American Dream sold to immigrants
“The country girls were considered a menace to the social order.”
They subvert stereotype and threaten societal structure (eg Ole Benson and his wife) their freedom is unnatural to the somewhat urban middle classes
“Optima dies prima fugit.”
Epigraph in My Antonia Virgil, Latin for “the best days are the first to flee” and summarises the moral of the novel, that nostalgia powers our spirit
“We possessed together the precious, incommunicable past.”
Final line of the novel, expresses the closeness both Antonia and Jim still have to the past, the desperation they have for their childhoods despite them being a time of turmoil. “Incommunicable” is ironic, as Jim/Cather just described it all to the reader - the truth is lost in memory “My” Antonia
