Miranda: English II, Section F

Blog # 2

My Antonia Essay Brainstorming

Length: 4-5 pages, double spaced

Topics

1. *Gender Roles
How do Cather’s My Antonia and Solomon Butcher’s photograph(s) (on the American Memory Website) blur the lines typically drawn to define the roles of men and women? What does this blurring suggest about life on the Plains in the late nineteenth century and gender roles? Be sure to narrow your focus on only 2-3 characters.
My Antonia & photograph—how do they break through gender barriers
• Antonia, defies gender roles…works in the fields (Jim’s grandmother doesn’t approve)
• Immigrants, forced to work for their families…no other choice-must support families…different lifestyle than town girls
• Victorian Womanhood: women, fragile, weak, gentle, innocent, helpless, etc.
separate spheres: men-public; women-domestic
• Life in the plains in the late nineteenth century defied gender roles mainly because most settlers were immigrants taking advantage of the homestead act, but they rarely had enough money to support themselves and women and children were forced to work in the fields and on the farm so that they could properly support their families
• Antonia…other hired girls
• Parallels with photograph
Photographs: depict working families, including women, children, and young women, according to Victorian Womanhood, women should stay in home all day and not work or sweat, but rather, manage the household. Families and immigrants who settled on the plains usually were very poor and lacked experience with farming. For most families, all family members had to work to farm, harvest, and care for the farm animals in order to support the family. Gender roles: equality, all had to work, there wasn’t a choice. Men often managed farms but women and children worked everyday. Sense of equality in standing up to hardship and obstacles.

2. -Land and Imagery
How do Cather’s My Antonia and Harvey Dunn’s painting “The Prairie is my Garden” and “Winter Storm” (viewable on Harvey Dunn Website) define an American sense of place and contribute to an aspect of a collective American identity? Focus your attention on only a few key, but substantive passages, in the novel to help narrow your focus.
• Jim talks about the land a lot, it certainly defines his identity
• American sense of place and contribution to an aspect of a collective American identity: pioneers; settling the unsettled land; starting afresh; starting a new country; Manifest destiny; homestead act; immigration; settlement
• Parallels with paintings

3. *Immigrants and American Identity
How do Cather’s My Antonia and Anzia Yezierska’s “America and I” (5 page short story) characterize the immigrant’s “voice”. Do these texts affirm the immigrant as an outsider? Or as an insider? For the immigrants represented in these stories, what does it take to be an “American”? Narrow your focus on only a few characters.
• My Antonia: immigrants make their own way, adapt to some American customs and traditions but keep their “old countries” in their hearts and minds
• Outsider or insider: More of an outsider than an insider. Kind of individual to who the person is. Some immigrants want to forget their past…others want to keep it alive. Mr.Shimerda is an outsider, he never finds happiness in the new country, and eventually, he misses his old country so much that he commits suicide. Lena Lingard and Tiny, and the Harlings are insiders they adapt to American culture, clothing, language, and commercial/entrepenuerial mindset and way of life. Tiny and Lena manage their own businesses, and Lena especially adapts to the clothing worn in America. Mr. Harling and Francis are both business people who run a big business. The Shimerdas, on the other hand, preserve their old culture and language. They insist that many things that they have from the “old country” are better than things in the new country. Many of Antonia’s children don’t even speak English, they speak Bohemian and they often eat traditional Bohemian food.
• What does it take to be an “American” (for immigrants)? Well, it takes an extreme adaptation to the customs and American ways of life. It takes an adaptation to the language and mannerisms of the English language. It is kind of complicated, I guess.
• Short story: (to be continued once I have read short story)

4. -Settler Life and Oblinger Letters
How do Cather’s My Antonia and any selection of the Oblinger Letters (from the American Memory website) help vivify settler life? How does this way of life contribute to American identity?
• American identity: settlement, making a way for themselves, esp. immigrants, hardships of settlement

[5. If you have an idea for another topic which needs to include both the novel and another source (visual or written), let me know in advance. I’m happy to help you work something out.] (too late for this one)

Blog # 1: Semester 2

My Antonia

Jim in the wagon on the way to his grandparents house:

“I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man’s jurisdiction. I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it. I did not believe that my dead father and mother were watching me from up there; they would still be looking for me at the sheepfold down by the creek, or along the white road that led to the mountain pastures. I had left even their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on, carrying me I knew not whither. I don’t think I was homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did nor matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, what would be would be.” (page

I think this passage really displays a lot about Jim’s character and the way he is choosing to deal with the situation that he is in. I think overall, this passage is quite sad, but it also displays Jim’s maturity in thinking about the spirits of his mother and father.

In terms of Jim’s character, the passage displays the first time in the book when we see Jim’s relationship with the land and nature, when he says that it seems like they were “outside man’s jurisdiction”. Jim feels so far away from his home and he is observing the vast landscape of the land, seemingly full of nothing but land, and it leads him to accept the fact that he is probably outside of civilization and is just in nature. Jim almost gives into the land, but, to him, it almost doesn’t matter because he lacks roots in any place—he even says that he felt like he had been erased from the face of the earth.

In terms of dealing with the situation that Jim is in, he chooses to accept the situation for what it is. He even says that he feels that he doesn’t even have to pray that because he accepts his new life for what it is, saying: “what would be would be”.

The sadness in this passage is displayed in the passages about Jim’s parents and his lack of identity. I already felt a great deal of sympathy for Jim, even though this was only the 8th page of the book, simply based on the way Jim talks about his parents and when you think about all this young boy has been through, including the way he talks about his lack of identity and feeling erased off the face of the earth. He has just been leading a kind of tragic life. From his parent’s death, to being taken very far away from his home at such a young age, it is no wonder that Jim feels all alone in the world, because he really has no one to go to, and he probably doesn’t even know his grandparents very well. In some ways, Jim is leading a similar life to the immigrating Shimerdas and other immigrants in that he left his home and everything he knew in a place far away from where he is now.

When Jim talks about the spirits of his father and mother and the fact that he doesn’t think that they will be able to find him in such a far away place expresses that Jim really feels like he is being forced to leave everything he knew behind. This is a very sad passage because it is clear that Jim feels like he has no one to talk to and nothing is familiar to him. It must be very sad for Jim that he thinks his parents’ spirits won’t be able to find him. I also think it shows a certain innocence on Jim’s part in the fact that he is worried about his parents finding him even though he is so far away.

What Jim doesn’t understand yet, at his young age, is that when someone you love dies, they are always watching over you, no matter where you are. It doesn’t matter if you are on another continent, they will always be watching over. And the angels watch over you too, and there is so much good in the world, and so many positive people and things, and all you have to do is live and open your heart to what comes your way. Jim Burden shows a great example of this. Even though he has had so much tragedy in his young life, the loss of both of his parents, and the fact that he is moving to a completely new place in which almost nothing is familiar, and he expresses a certain lack of identity and doesn’t really know who he is yet. On top of all that, Jim is able to accept his situation for what it is and he seems to be prepared to live this new life and accept whatever happens. Sometimes losing something or someone you love or having a hard thing happen to you, makes you accept and love life even more and you just feel so lucky to be alive that nothing else seems to matter.

Above all, everyone must remember one thing…

LIFE IS GOOD ALL THE TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ML 9:21 pm 1/16/07
(Ms.Rochette, I am so sorry that I forgot to Blog on Sunday. I completely forgot and I didn’t remember until today during class, when you talked about it and told us that you checked the blogs this morning. Now I blogged today and I’m sorry.)