By Willa Cather
9/14/2017
Willa Cather is one of the early 20th Century American writers along with contemporaries such as Theodore Dreiser ("Sister Carrie", 1900) and Sinclair Lewis ("Main Street", 1930) who wrote about ordinary people in their days and gave the characters they portrayed distinct faces and voices with a place and time evoking reminiscence of the early days of the settlers.
"My Antonia" is about the immigrant families around the late19th Century in Nebraska who struggled against hostile elements and poverty making a life for themselves with hardworking and dignity. While immigrant experiences are overall similar those who came to settle in this part of the world are filled with stories to tell what they left behind in the old countries they came from.
Mr. Shimerda, a Bohemian, left behind him an intellectual and cultural surroundings more sophisticated than the home he found here in a dugout cave where his family lived like primitive people. The two Russian neighbors Peter and Pavel on the other hand came to the new land to escape the stigma of a nightmarish experience back home which laden them with guilt and scorns from their country men. Immigrants in recent history more or less came to this country in search of a better life. Nonetheless they were not equally rewarded. Those stories made up the first part of the narration of the book.
Antonia, our heroine, the elder daughter of Shimerda, was put to work alongside her older brother doing a man's work starting at a tender young age. Antonia's father later on committed suicide in disillusion of the new world and in a desperate attempt to rid himself from the burden of his large Bohemian family.
A few more female characters in the book however persisted in climbing the upward social ladder on their own. Among them, Lena, a Norwegian immigrant's daughter from another prairie farm, despite the bad girl image bestowed on her by the town and country folks alike, her effort as well as her talent landed her amid the rank of successful fashion designers of the days.
As time moved on and progress gradually emerged in this desolate land, lives in general were moving from rudimentary subsistence to more luxurious environment. The second part of the book' dwells in the transition as our narrator Jim Burden's family moved to a nearby town.
This is a rather universal theme. We can easily find parallels in many other societies. Taiwan, for example, has gone from similar social transformation from early 20th century's simple folk lives in farms or towns to the late century's affluence in urban dwellers.
Aside from the immigrants' experience which the author shed in ample amount and realistic details, I also enjoyed reading the book for her prosy writing which breathes fresh air every page you turn. Her depiction of the countryside often fills with imageries from nature our immigrant farmers surrounding themselves with on a daily basis. We can easily conjure vivid pictures in our mind's eye from passages filled with such florid colors mixing with all sorts of sounds and smell coming from outdoors living and from inside the dwellings of farm structures.
Colors splashed over page after page such as: copper-red grass, gold-washed sky, the blond pastures, ash grove or flowers blooming in pink and purple masses. Intimate account of farm life brings back our own childhood where sunshine was as bright as gold and grass as lustrous green when we were young.
All the while an undercurrent of social structures and mores of a time surfaced in between lines where prejudices against new immigrants and women in general were rampant. It was hard living for the immigrants and their sons and daughters, but in the end those who help themselves also get help when they need it the most. This includes those came from narrator Jim Burden's grandparents who often came to their aid in time of distress. There were also less than decent folks around such as the loan shark in town who fed on the less fortunate. All of them however were real people, characters the author used to know or encountered in her younger days living on Nebraska prairie.
Facing all these difficulties, the handful of immigrants' daughters, including Antonia, ultimately reached their goal of making life better for themselves and provides their offsprings with decent living. Success means different things for each one of them. Antonia was leading a happy life when Jim Burden revisited the prairie years after they separated in their youth. She now built herself a house furnished with necessary amenities and with many children and a husband around. It was a typical American Dream fulfilled for any immigrant at least in those days. Without a doubt this book is an excellent work of art and an important study of a time and place in American history.
Grace
.
No comments:
Post a Comment