Shimerda becomes even more heartbroken and unhappy. Shimerda's only friends, Pavel and Peter, Mr. Antonia suddenly views Jim with more respect, admiring his strength and courage. During one of their many adventures, Jim kills a snake. Together, Jim and Antonia, who is a few years older than Jim, explore the prairie - the animals, the river, and the hunting-grounds. Despite the Shimerdas' hard conditions, Antonia finds much comfort and happiness in the land. Shimerda, Antonia's mother, who had made the family immigrate to America so that Ambrosch, the Shimerdas' eldest son, would have the chance to become a wealthy farmer. Antonia's father takes his family's poverty hard, and he is very homesick for his native land. Shimerda, Jim feels his sadness and exhaustion.

The Shimerdas have a hard life on the farm they are very poor and live in a shabby dugout, but Antonia remains dedicated and determined to improve the conditions of her life and her family's.įrom the first time Jim meets Mr. Shimerda, who Jim finds to be intelligent and genteel, asks Jim to teach Antonia English. Antonia Shimerda, the elder daughter, becomes his good friend and pupil. He is not the only one to discover and explore the country early on, he meets the immigrant Bohemian family, the Shimerdas, who have come to Nebraska at the same time as Jim's arrival. Benda.An orphaned ten-year-old Jim Burden is sent to live with his grandparents on their farm in the country, just outside the town of Black Hawk, Nebraska. The copy presented here is the thirteenth impression of the first edition, printed in March, 1924, with illustrations by Władysław T. Warning: template has been deprecated.- Excerpted from My Ántonia on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The first year in the very new place leaves strong impressions in both children, affecting them lifelong. Both the pioneers who first break the prairie sod for farming, as well as of the harsh but fertile land itself, feature in this American novel. The novel tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, and the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigrants, Ántonia Shimerda, who are each brought as children to be pioneers in Nebraska towards the end of the 19th century. Cather was praised for bringing the American West to life and making it personally interesting. This novel is considered Cather's first masterpiece.

My Ántonia is the final book of Cather's 'prairie trilogy' of novels, preceded by O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark.

My antonia book