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Book 4, Chapter 4
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Antonia, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Immigrant Experience
Friendship
The Prairie
The Past
Innocence and Maturity
Gender
Summary
Analysis
Jim avoids going back to see Ántonia for 20 years, afraid to find her "aged and broken." In those years, he hears bits of gossip, so he knows that she has married a man named Cuzak, a cousin of Anton Jelinek, moved back to the prairie, and now has 11 children. At one point, he hears from Tiny, who describes Ántonia's husband as not having "much force," adding that Ántonia had a hard life. Eventually he runs into Lena during one of his many business trips. She persuades him to go see Ántonia.
Jim has a vision of the perfect prairie and of a perfect Ántonia. By trying to preserve these visions, Jim avoids returning to or growing alongside the things that he loves. He is rootless, as his many business trips suggest. To Tiny, a husband without "force" and a "hard life" sound terrible, but perhaps those things don't bother Ántonia.
Themes
Jim stops in Nebraska on the way back from his business trip. When he arrives at the Cuzak farm, Ántonia doesn't recognize Jim at first. When she finally realizes it is him, she is thrilled. For his part, Jim describes her as "battered but not diminished" and as still having the same youthful vigor he always loved about Ántonia.
Antonia introduces Jim to all of her 11 children. The children take Jim to see their "fruit cave," an underground room where they keep their large store of preserves.
When they first arrived, the Shimerdas didn't know how to store food. Ántonia has now become adept at prairie life.
Themes
Ántonia shows Jim the apple orchard. She tells Jim that she and her husband planted all the trees, and that she loves them "as if they were people."
Ántonia is able to fulfill her spiritual bond with the land through her farming.
Themes
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Ántonia shows Jim old photographs of her wedding day, including photos of Ambrosch and Lena. Then she shows Jim one of himself, with Jake and Otto, and one of Jim just before college. That night, Jim sleeps with Ántonia's boys in the haymow. Three "snapshots" of Ántonia stand out in his mind—when he killed the snake; standing by her father's grave; and coming in from the fields.
