What does Jim Burden do for a living?

What does Jim Burden do for a living?

Jim, a lawyer from New York, travels by train through the West. He meets an old friend on the train and they reminisce about a girl they used to know named Ántonia. Jim says he’ll write down his memories of Ántonia.

What is Jim’s Burden In My Antonia?

Plot summary. Orphaned Jim Burden rides the trains from Virginia to Black Hawk, Nebraska, where he will live with his paternal grandparents. Jake, a farmhand from Virginia, rides with the 10-year-old boy. On the same train, headed to the same destination, is the Shimerda family from Bohemia.

Why did Antonia move to town?

As a result of the hardships that the Shimerdas suffer, Ántonia and Jim find that a wedge has been driven between them. A couple of years later, the Burdens decide to move into town, and shortly thereafter Ántonia takes a job as a housekeeper with a neighboring family, the Harlings.

How does my Ántonia end?

Book 4 ends with Jim promising to come back and visit Ántonia soon. Then twenty years pass without him doing so. He justifies this by explaining that he was scared: “I did not want to find her aged and broken; I really dreaded it. In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions.

Is Jim in love with Antonia?

Jim has a romanticized affection for Ántonia but not quite a romantic affection. He is unable to imagine her in the same light as Lena Lingard, for whom he feels a coarser but perhaps more practical passion. Still, the idealized love that Jim feels for Ántonia eclipses the strength of Ántonia’s feeling for him.

Why did Mr Shimerda kill himself?

He existed on the periphery of life, in a world in which he was completely out of his element. Jim observes simply that, in the end, Mr. Shimerda killed himself because “he had… been so unhappy that he could not live any longer” (Chapter XIV).

Who is Jim’s wife in My Antonia?

Lena Lingard
Lena Lingard Lena has a brief liaison with Jim in Black Hawk and a more extended relationship with him in Lincoln, where she sets up her own dressmaker’s shop. Lena is pretty and blonde, and craves independence and excitement. Men are always attracted to her, but she refuses to marry and give up her freedom.

Who does Antonia have a crush on when she first comes to town?

Ántonia soon comes to work for the Harlings, and Jim and Grandmother are very happy to see her. Ántonia likes working in town and learning English, and she plays with the children a lot. Jim is jealous because Ántonia has a crush on Charley Harling and is always trying to do nice things for him.

Who does Antonia marry?

Bearing a child out of wedlock and raising it alone is shameful iaccording to Black Hawk standards, but Antonia is able to rise above the humiliation. She meets and marries Anton Cuzak. She and Cuzak have ten or eleven children together, and own a large farm. Antonia rules the household with a gentle, loving hand.

Is My Antonia a true story?

MY ÀNTONIA, by Willa Cather, is a story about friendship, love, and immigration. In this early-20th-century novel, Cather provides a biographical narrative of Antonia Shimerda, a character based upon Annie Pavelka, a real-life childhood friend of Cather’s.

What does Antonia represent to Jim?

In the novel, Antonia is important to Jim because she is the personification of all the things that he holds dear. In his mind, she is a connection to his new home in Nebraska and his early teen years; she could even be considered his first love interest.

Who is Pavel and Peter in My Antonia?

Peter and Pavel are the two Russian farmers who live close to Jim and Ántonia. They are important characters in that they provide another view of the immigrant life.

How many children does Antonia Have My Antonia?

eleven children
After many years of hardships and eleven children, Antonia becomes a battered woman physically, but she is still the same fiery woman inside. The last book conjures up the many memories of the past, through reminiscing and photographs. Antonia’s children are named after characters of the previous chapters.

Why did Peter and Pavel leave Russia?

In the 1918 novel My Ántonia by Willa Cather, Peter and Pavel are two Russian immigrants living on a small farm in America. Peter loves America, but after Pavel dies of a work-related injury, Peter ends up selling the farm and leaving to work as a cook on a train.

What happens to Peter and Pavel?

The memory of the horror of that evening plagues both Pavel and Peter. Pavel dies mere days after Ántonia and Jim’s visit, and, with Pavel gone, Peter sells off everything and leaves America.

Why does Jim wait 20 years to visit Ántonia what finally leads him to visit her?

Why did Jim wait twenty years to go back to see Antonia? He was afraid to see the affects of 20 years on her. How was Antonia when Jim finally saw her twenty years later? She had lost some teeth but she was full of life and energy.

What happened to Peter and Pavel?

Where is Peter and Pavel?

Russian
Peter and Pavel are the two Russian farmers who live close to Jim and Ántonia. They are important characters in that they provide another view of the immigrant life.

Who did Antonia marry?

What does Jim call the road leading to his grandparents farm?

He calls it “Ántonia” at first but then changes it to “My Ántonia.” Jim first hears of Ántonia on a journey across America by train. He is ten years old and his mother and father have recently died, so now he’s moving from his home in Virginia out to Nebraska to live with his grandparents.

What makes Jim feel erased?

Although the journey pleases and excites him, he sinks into a deep depression as the wagon carrying him to his grandparents’ farm bumps along through the pitch-blackness. He feels erased from existence, blotted out.

Lena Lingard Lena has a brief liaison with Jim in Black Hawk and a more extended relationship with him in Lincoln, where she sets up her own dressmaker’s shop. Lena is pretty and blonde, and craves independence and excitement. Men are always attracted to her, but she refuses to marry and give up her freedom.

Who is Tony in My Antonia?

Ántonia Shimerda
Emmaline BurdenJimmy BurdenJosiah BurdenLena Lingard
My Ántonia/Characters

Where does Jim Burden live after his parents die?

After Jim Burden’s parents die, his Virginia relatives send the ten-year-old boy to live with his grandparents on their Nebraska farm. He travels by train in the care of teenage Jake Marpole, who was a “hand,” a man hired to do chores, on his father’s farm.

Who are Jim Burden’s grandparents in my Antonia?

Jim’s grandparents, who live on a farm in Nebraska. Mrs. Burden is 55 when her grandson arrives. This is the first time they see him, having moved to Nebraska ten years earlier. Mr. Burden is a religious Protestant and a successful farmer, who becomes a deacon in the Baptist church when they move to town.

Why was Jim afraid to return to Antonia’s farm?

He is afraid to return, afraid he will be disappointed. After two decades, however, Jim’s curiosity overcomes him, and he visits Ántonia and her family on their farm in Nebraska. Although Jim has prospered materially, he seems spiritually empty.

How is Jim Burden Related to the pioneer gone soft?

To Ántonia, the road to success in life has many possible branches; to Jim and other Black Hawk citizens, there is only one acceptable road. Jim symbolizes the pioneer gone soft. Jim’s memories of Ántonia comprise the main body of the novel. He admires her and is drawn to her in such a way that his memories of her have been burned into his mind.

After Jim Burden’s parents die, his Virginia relatives send the ten-year-old boy to live with his grandparents on their Nebraska farm. He travels by train in the care of teenage Jake Marpole, who was a “hand,” a man hired to do chores, on his father’s farm.

Where does Jim Burden live in my Antonia?

At the age of ten, Jim Burden travels by cross-country train to live with his grandparents on the Nebraska frontier. He has just recently lost both his parents, and he is accompanied by a farmhand named Jake. On the same train is a Bohemian family that barely speaks English and that is going to the same place.

Who are the main characters in Jim Burden?

Character Analysis Jim Burden. Whereas Ántonia represents the pioneer who builds an abundant, promising future from a wasteland, Jim Burden represents the established settlers who have grown complacent, superior, and rigid in their thinking.

To Ántonia, the road to success in life has many possible branches; to Jim and other Black Hawk citizens, there is only one acceptable road. Jim symbolizes the pioneer gone soft. Jim’s memories of Ántonia comprise the main body of the novel. He admires her and is drawn to her in such a way that his memories of her have been burned into his mind.

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