My Antonia

by

Willa Cather

The Immigrant Experience Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
The Immigrant Experience Theme Icon
Friendship Theme Icon
The Prairie Theme Icon
The Past Theme Icon
Innocence and Maturity Theme Icon
Gender Theme Icon
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 Theme Icon

In 1862, the United States government urged colonization of Nebraska and other territories by creating The Homestead Act, which stated that any person who was an American citizen, or had declared his intention to become one, could claim 160 acres of government land. Some Eastern Americans, like Jim's grandparents, simply moved west, while others, like the Shimerdas, came all the way from Europe to try their luck at farming the Nebraska prairie. Both groups were in search of a better life, and, as depicted in My Ántonia, both can be considered immigrants in that they suffer the trials of a new and unfamiliar life. But while both Jim and Ántonia encounter loneliness and homesickness for the lands they left behind, in My Ántonia the foreign-born immigrants experience the greater struggle. They face extreme poverty, the barriers of not speaking the English language, and the challenge of cultural and religious differences. In many ways, Cather's novel is the story of these immigrants' acclimation to the American Midwest, as seen through Jim's eyes.

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The Immigrant Experience Quotes in My Antonia

Below you will find the important quotes in My Antonia related to the theme of The Immigrant Experience.
Introduction Quotes
During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk kept returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had both known long ago. More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood.
Related Characters: The Narrator - (speaker), Jim Burden, Ántonia Shimerda
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 1, Chapter 10 Quotes
I never forgot the strange taste; though it was many years before I knew that those little brown shavings, which the Shimerdas had brought so far and treasured so jealously, were dried mushrooms. They had been gathered, probably, in some deep Bohemian forest...
Related Characters: Jim Burden (speaker), Ántonia Shimerda, Mr. Shimerda, Mrs. Shimerda, Yulka Shimerda, Ambrosch Shimerda
Page Number: 59
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 1, Chapter 19 Quotes
"Why aren't you always nice like this, Tony?" "How nice?"

"Why, just like this; like yourself. Why do you all the time try to be like Ambrosch?"

She put her arms under her head and lay back, looking up at the sky. "If I live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us."
Related Characters: Jim Burden (speaker), Ántonia Shimerda (speaker), Ambrosch Shimerda
Page Number: 99
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 9 Quotes
If I told my schoolmates that Lena Lingard's grandfather was a clergyman, and much respected in Norway, they looked at me blankly. What did it matter? All foreigners were ignorant people who couldn't speak English.
Related Characters: Jim Burden (speaker), Lena Lingard
Page Number: 141
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 4, Chapter 3 Quotes
"After the winter begun she [Ántonia] wore a man's long overcoat and boots, and a man's felt hat with a wide brim."
Related Characters: The Widow Steavens (speaker), Ántonia Shimerda
Page Number: 216
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: