Introduction

My Ántonia, first published in 1918, is the third novel in what reviewers sometimes refer to as “The Prairie Trilogy” or “The Great Plains Trilogy” by celebrated American author Willa Cather (1873-1947). The other two books, O Pioneers! (1913) and The Song of the Lark (1915) also feature strong female characters from immigrant families in a Great Plains setting but are otherwise unrelated. My Ántonia is considered one of Cather’s most outstanding novels for its encapsulation of the pioneer experience on the Nebraskan frontier. Known for her novels’ powerful sense of place, Cather elevated regional literature into the mainstream and created heroic portrayals of the often scorned hard-toiling European immigrants. Cather won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her World War I novel One of Ours (1922). Other notable books authored by Cather include A Lost Lady (1923) and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927). This guide is based on the 1918 Houghton Mifflin edition.

Content Warning: This guide contains discussions of suicide and sexual assault that are present in the source text.

Plot Summary

The novel begins with an unnamed narrator unexpectedly encountering a childhood friend, Jim Burden, aboard a train crossing Iowa. Both the narrator and Jim now reside in New York, but they grew up in the same Nebraskan prairie town; Jim is now a lawyer for a Western railroad company. They vividly recall a Bohemian (Czech) immigrant girl, Ántonia, who symbolizes the pioneering conditions of their youth. After losing contact with Ántonia many years ago, Jim has recently renewed his friendship with her, which inspires him to try to write his childhood recollections entitled “My Ántonia.” He promises to allow his fellow train passenger to read the manuscript when he finishes writing it in New York, which he does.

The novel is divided into five books. Book 1 of Jim’s narrative opens with his first train ride from Virginia to Black Hawk, Nebraska, as a newly orphaned 10-year-old boy, accompanied by a young farmhand, Jake Marpole: Jim is moving to the Midwestern prairie to live with his paternal grandparents on their farm. A family of Bohemian immigrants, the Shimerdas, who have recently arrived in America, is also aboard the train and headed to the same destination. Jim is astonished by the vast prairie landscape, the endless tall red grass, and the absence of the markers of civilization, fences and fields, to which he is accustomed. At first, Jim feels erased by the immense natural environment of Nebraska, but soon he experiences a new lightness and freedom on the prairie. His immersion in nature gives him a feeling of complete happiness.

He quickly learns that the Shimerdas are his grandparents’ nearest neighbors. In contrast to the comfortable wooden house built by Jim’s relatives, the Shimerdas’ dwelling is initially a dugout cave: Having been taken advantage of by a fellow Bohemian, Peter Krajiek, the Shimerdas bought his old homestead and farm equipment for more than what they were worth. Although Ántonia is four years older than Jim, Mr. Shimerda asks Jim to teach English to his beloved daughter, and the two children become devoted companions exploring their new Nebraskan world. Their adventures include riding on Jim’s pony, visiting a pair of mysterious Russian immigrants, and killing a large rattlesnake in a prairie dog town.

Despite the Burdens’ gifts of food, the Shimerdas struggle to endure their first winter on the prairie. The refined Mr. Shimerda is often depressed by their hardships, having left behind his skilled work as a violinist and his friends in Bohemia after being urged by his wife to immigrate for better opportunities in America. When he thanks the Burdens for their Christmas gifts, he temporarily enjoys the orderly, secure atmosphere of their home. However, the difficulties of the grueling winter and his homesickness finally prompt Mr. Shimerda to die by suicide. After her father’s tragic death, Ántonia spends less time with Jim since she has to work as hard as her brother Ambrosch, plowing fields in the spring to create the Shimerdas’ farm.

Book 2 takes place in the town of Black Hawk, where 13-year-old Jim moves when his grandparents become too old to do arduous farm work. After the move, Jim’s grandparents rent out their homestead and buy a house in town. Jim is sad that the Burdens no longer need their faithful farmhands, Jake and Otto Fuchs, who have been like his older brothers. However, Jim is overjoyed to see more of Ántonia when Grandmother Burden gets her a housekeeping job at the home of their next-door neighbors, the Harlings, a friendly Norwegian immigrant family. As a high school student, Jim admires the hired girls from Bohemia and Scandinavia who work in town to help pay off their farm families’ debts when he sees them at Saturday night dances. When Mr. Harling tells Ántonia she must stop attending the dances, she gets work in the household of the dishonest moneylender, Wick Cutter, whose plan to rape Ántonia is thwarted by Jim. Jim promises his grandmother to focus on his studies and gives an excellent oration at the high school commencement.

In Book 3, Jim attends college in Lincoln, where a brilliant instructor introduces him to the world of ideas. During his sophomore year, however, he becomes distracted by Lena Lingard, a Norwegian farm girl he had known on the prairie, who has established a dressmaking business in the state capital. His teacher suggests that Jim follow him to Harvard to finish his studies and end the dalliance.

In Book 4, Jim returns to Black Hawk during his summer vacation after completing his Harvard degree before he enters law school. He is disappointed to learn that Ántonia has been deceived and abandoned by her fiancé, Larry Donovan, who has left her with an illegitimate child. He briefly visits Ántonia and tells her of his plan to join a law office in New York after his studies. Twenty years later, in Book 5, Jim finally returns to Nebraska and drives out to visit Ántonia’s farm, meeting her good-natured Bohemian husband, Anton Cuzak, and her numerous, lovable children. Jim had feared that he would lose his precious childhood memories and experience disillusionment by meeting a middle-aged Ántonia, however, Jim finds the pioneering woman undiminished, vigorous, and productive: “a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races” (353). Jim plans to visit her family in the future, understanding that although the natural cycle of seasons and the passage of years has led to changes in the Nebraskan land and people, he and Ántonia “possessed together the precious, incommunicable past” (371).