My Antonia

by

Willa Cather

The Prairie Symbol Icon
The prairie symbolizes many things in My Ántonia. To immigrants, the vast size of the prairie suggests both the opportunity for a new life and the overwhelming fear that goes with trying to create a new life. The prairie also symbolizes progress and a lost past: as the prairie is developed, its old, winding roads are replaced by straight ones, and the tall grasses are burned down to make room for farmland. Later, when Jim leaves Nebraska, the prairie symbolizes Jim's friendship with Ántonia and his nostalgia for his childhood.

The Prairie Quotes in My Antonia

The My Antonia quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Prairie. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Immigrant Experience Theme Icon
).
Book 1, Chapter 1 Quotes
There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.
Related Characters: Jim Burden (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Prairie, Light
Page Number: 11
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 1, Chapter 2 Quotes
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.
Related Characters: Jim Burden (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Prairie, Light
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 1, Chapter 16 Quotes
The road from the north curved a little to the south; so that the grave, with its tall red grass that was never mowed, was like a little island; and at twilight, under a new moon or the clear evening star, the dusty roads used to look like soft grey rivers flowing past it. I never came upon the place without emotion, and in all that country it was the spot most dear to me."
Related Characters: Jim Burden (speaker), Mr. Shimerda
Related Symbols: The Prairie, Mr. Shimerda's Grave, Light
Page Number: 84
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 14 Quotes
On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk; the handles, the tongue, the share—black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun.
Related Characters: Jim Burden (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Prairie, The Plough, Light
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 170
Explanation and Analysis:
Even while we whispered about it, our vision disappeared; the ball dropped and dropped until the red tip went beneath the earth. The fields below us were dark, the sky was growing pale, and that forgotten plough had sunk back to its own littleness somewhere on the prairie.
Related Characters: Jim Burden (speaker), Ántonia Shimerda
Related Symbols: The Prairie, The Plough, Light
Page Number: 170
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 3, Chapter 1 Quotes
I knew that I should never be a scholar. I could never lose myself for long among impersonal things. Mental excitement was apt to send me with a rush back to my own naked land and the figures scattered upon it.
Related Characters: Jim Burden (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Prairie
Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 4, Chapter 4 Quotes
As I went back alone over that familiar road, I could almost believe that a boy and girl ran along beside me, as our shadows used to do, laughing and whispering to each other in the grass.
Related Characters: Jim Burden (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Prairie, Light
Page Number: 221
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 5, Chapter 1 Quotes
She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions.
Related Characters: Jim Burden (speaker), Ántonia Shimerda
Related Symbols: The Prairie
Page Number: 240
Explanation and Analysis:
In my memory there was a succession of such pictures, fixed there like the old woodcuts of one's first primer: Ántonia kicking her bare legs against the sides of my pony when we came home in triumph with our snake; Ántonia in her black shawl and fur cap, as she stood by her father's grave in the snowstorm; Ántonia coming in with her work-team along the evening sky.
Related Characters: Jim Burden (speaker), Ántonia Shimerda
Related Symbols: The Prairie, The Plough, Light
Page Number: 239
Explanation and Analysis:
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My Antonia PDF

The Prairie Symbol Timeline in My Antonia

The timeline below shows where the symbol The Prairie appears in My Antonia. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Book 1, Chapter 1
The Immigrant Experience Theme Icon
The Prairie Theme Icon
...Before he falls asleep during the ride to his grandparents farm, Jim sees the Nebraska prairie for the first time. He feels "blotted out" by the wide-open spaces and the huge... (full context)
Book 1, Chapter 16
The Prairie Theme Icon
The Past Theme Icon
...that years afterward, roads were built that crossed at that spot, and after all the prairie grass had been eventually cut up by farmers, the grave is the only place where... (full context)
Book 2, Chapter 14
Friendship Theme Icon
The Prairie Theme Icon
The Past Theme Icon
Innocence and Maturity Theme Icon
...flowers. Jim arrives early and realizes how much he's missed the vivid colors of the prairie. (full context)
The Immigrant Experience Theme Icon
Friendship Theme Icon
The Prairie Theme Icon
The Past Theme Icon
Innocence and Maturity Theme Icon
...sun is setting, Jim, Ántonia and the other girls see a black figure on the prairie magnified by the red sun sinking behind it. They realize that the figure is a... (full context)
Book 3, Chapter 1
The Prairie Theme Icon
The Past Theme Icon
...instructor named Gaston Cleric. He rents a room on the edge of town near the prairie and stays in Lincoln his first summer to take a course in Greek. (full context)
Book 5, Chapter 1
The Past Theme Icon
Innocence and Maturity Theme Icon
...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... (full context)