Willa Cather’s My Antonia with her writing style, technique and symbolism she doesn’t only pull the reader in with these very nostalgic moments but she also foreshadow a deeper meaning of a character, the central character Antonia and other characters, through another character eyes Jim Burden. The story is tied together through memories and emotions although the book moves from place to place and from person to person it is through Jim or Antonia or both that bring all these places and people together. Jim’s first reaction to the prairie once alone with the place and his thoughts foreshadow the some of the events to  come in both him and Antonia’s life and it foreshadows a return to the place started, a place representative of a heaven.

I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light air about me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would be only sun and sky, and one would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the grass…(pg.42-43)

The prairie then for young Jim and the novels central character Antonia which is tied to Jim (through narration), Jim’s admiration for Antonia and just coming of age with the trails and tribulation, life circumstances and situation begins and ends, goes full circle on the prairie. The reader learns the prairie in Cather through color and the emotions of the characters, Jim is over come with such a peace between the red grass, the air about him and the space, he feels as if he could just float away. The possibilities for these characters are endless which is in some ways a warning for some especially women (not just Antonia but the other prairie girls) who can lose ones-self and get carried away or swept-up in moments, briefly clouded by “slow shadows,” still suggesting temporary circumstances. Continuing on with Jim’s rhapsody before even meeting Antonia this quote still connects this beautiful place and the beautiful characters we will meet through his eyes;

I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. 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. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep. (pg. 44)

This first glimpse of Jim and his feelings when he first encounters the prairie and his lament, lays out, what comes to pass. Not much happens to Jim in his personal life. The happenings are happening around, above and or under him. He tells the story or has the story told to him and he is completely happy with himself, it is Antonia, her father or the other “hired girls” in which breathe life through the story. Although Jim has commentary on life and lives and makes judgments on the judgmental he pretty much follow what is laid out for him to follow, Jim doesn’t make any waves or statements with his life by action, he does what is expected of him to do. When he grows, he grows a part of the system, he has become a part of “something entire.”

 It is his memories or a shared memory that stir emotion in him and the reader. Just him being a part of these stories being able to tell them hear them, he is able to bring these memories to life with Cather help of imagery through color and mood. Like the death of Antonia’s father a figure as grand as any character in the novel although we only know him for a short period in the novel the idea or thought of him and his memory, the nostalgic feeling of his character is brought back to life several times in the novel. Jim thinks of Mr. Shimerda when he writes his graduation speech and again when he is at the lake with Antonia and when he reencounters Antonia after her baby is born and they go by the father’s grave to talk. We see it again when Antonia takes to the field in her father’s boots, when she returns home from a failed affair and she is again in the field in her father’s belongings and when Jim and Antonia are together after twenty years and Antonia takes out a picture that brings back the memory of Otto making a coffin for Mr. Shimerda. It is these shared memories and images that makes the story, makes them “a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge.” Antonia’s father story Jim and so many readers like to think becomes part of “sun and air,” Jim, Lena and Tiny lives ends with “goodness and knowledge” all three of their lives end where or how they perceived it to, success in their eyes. 

Yet, it is Antonia’s story that “dissolved into something complete and great.” Even though throughout the story, it seems Antonia’s life has been hit with one disaster after another, the winter struggles, her father’s suicide, her always seeming to be misrepresented, her almost rape, her failed love, her pregnancy and birth of her illegitimate child, her return to the farm, her story being a hush and whisper of town folk, turns out to be the greatest and most fulfilling of all the characters. She has truly found “happiness.”

Antonia learns with every downfall, in the beginning of the book when we meet her first through the description of the conductor and Jim they both describe what they see in her eyes, “they were big and warm and full of light, like the sun shining on brown pools in the wood.” (pg. 47) Warm and brown like the earth most seasons and full of light, full of life, she was eager to learn and knew how to coaxed what she needed from the situation presented. She learned words from Jim, learned housekeeping and farming from Jim’s grandmother and the Harding’s, she learned to trust her feelings and avoided being raped and learned a hard lesson of love by going through it, bumped and bruise Antonia lived her life naturally and is the symbol of the earth, of true motherhood and life. And although Antonia is (presently seen as) “Poor Antonia” because women are on the new frontier of womanhood, where being a housewife and mother is no longer forced and thus desired by many, where a woman’s success is being able to leave the home make a business and fortune outside of the home, “run with the men.” Willa Cather reminds us that being and doing what comes “most natural” to women housing and mother and even farming planting and bring life human and or food, can still be rewarding.

Jim heart is lightened when he sees the life Antonia has made for herself, he sees the light and love she is surrounded by. The home she has made for her family and that it all seemed to come from love and things she just had naturally and again with Cather help we the reader is left with this triumphant victory as Jim explains

That moment, when they all came tumbling out of the cave into the light, was a sight any man might have come far to see. Antonia had always been one to leave images in the mind that did not fade-that grew stronger with time. In my memory there was a succession of such pictures, fixed there like old woodcuts of one’s first primer: Antonia kicking her bare legs against the sides of my pony when we came home in triumph with our snake: Antonia in her black shawl and her fur cap, as she stood by her father’s grave in the snowstorm; Antonia coming in with her work-team along the evening sky-line. She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true …All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions. (pg. 274)

Again we are treated to a mirage of images, nostalgic and beautifully arrange words that not only speaks in this case of not only a place or character but a deeper character, that serves also as a symbol of a greater human condition, even in a time when woman and men moving away from old traditions, a changing (like the moving grass, insects inside the grass and the moving earth beneath. Jim isn’t heartbroken or jealous he is a stated in the opening paragraph, in the opening quote “entirely happy” with just being allowed to be a part of “something entire”, he “did not expect something to happen.” And he is back on the prairie, where Antonia has made something if the prairie, he felt from his first meeting couldn’t get any bigger, any better anymore full in color, smells and sounds, she did it, she made it bigger, better and fuller. And there he was again Mr. Shimerda (in collective thought) smiling on the both of them.