Antonia Shimerda Character Analysis in My Antonia Essay Sample

My Antonia, novel by Willa Cather, follows the character Antonia Shimerda, a pioneer who arrives to Nebraska as a teenager and grows up with the land, leading a childhood friend, Jim Burden, to compose her story. Antonia learns numerous vital life lessons throughout the story, which shapes her into a caring mother and homemaker. Antonia learned crucial knowledge as a young child about the importance of hard work. So lets delve a little deeper into Antonia’s character. 

Antonia possesses a strong inner power that leads her to success and allows her to overcome hardship. In this sense, she represents an unstoppable pioneer spirit, much like the plow against the sun. She was one to believe that a person who works hard will become prosperous since her arrival on the prairie. It may refer to a large amount of land and money, but more importantly in this context, wealth refers to everything that is rich in spirit and knowledge. 

The conductor of the train that transports Jim and Antonia to Black Hawk remarks on the girl's beautiful brown eyes.  Subsequently, when Jim meets Antonia for the first time, he is struck by her dazzling, peculiar eyes: "They were big and warm and full of light, like the sun shining on brown pools in the wood"(Cather 23). Cather evokes Antonia with virtues such as warmth, compassion, and earthiness even from the beginning.

Jim now has known Antonia for a few minutes, yet she instantly displays her generosity and impulsiveness by attempting to give him her ring. Later, she demonstrates her immense sympathy by grieving for a small green bug that she knows will not survive the winter. She exhibits her maternal side even more as she mourns for Peter and Pavel and feels protective of Jim. Even when Jim kills the snake, seemingly becoming her guardian, she keeps an eye out for him, alerting him of Lena's potential distraction from his future intentions. She focuses on the positive aspects of life rather than the negative.

When Antonia's father passed away, she is devastated; nevertheless, because she is down-to-earth and practical, she soon heals and substitutes his position in the fields, working with Ambrosch and absorbing male like qualities that leave Jim in disappointment. When Jim accuses her of attempting to be like Ambrosch and complains that she isn't as kind as she used to be, Antonia's hold on reality is strengthened. 

However, Antonia's vitality is difficult to manage. She is naive, youthful, and prefers to do things in her own way. Though she thinks that diligent work brings success, she also believes in treating oneself. This causes a schism with her new family. When she is obliged to choose among working for the Harlings and planning to attend the dances, she chooses the dances and goes to work for Wick Cutter, the town's spiritually perverted moneylender. Antonia has a gut feeling that Cutter would try to entice her, so she seeks assistance from Grandmother Burden and has Jim take her place. Cutter attacks Jim in bed, mistaking him for Antonia, leading to Antonia going to work as a housekeeper for the Gardeners whom were hotel's owners.

Antonia starts dating a man by the name Larry Donovan, who was a railway conductor. She mistakenly believes he loves her, so she accompanies him to Denver and looks after him when he's unwell. Everyone else, including Jim, acknowledges that he is leading her on. When Antonia's money runs out and Larry disregards her, they are proven correct. Regardless of the fact that she is pregnant, Antonia recognizes she must revert back to the farm.

Throughout her life, Antonia has accomplished what has to be done; being a realist, she accepts what happens as the normal flow of events, and she absorbs the repercussions of her acts without objection. When she goes into labor with her child, she locks herself in her room and gives birth with nothing more than a whimper, without seeking aid. She is later so proud of her child that she permits the local photographer to exhibit the baby's photo in a nice frame in his shop.

Once Jim meets Antonia near her father's grave, he recognizes that hardship has enabled her to grow stronger and understanding. We see Antonia as the mother of a big, caring family twenty years later.  Antonia's enormous parental potential has come to fulfillment. "Battered but not diminished"(Cather 332), she represents the earth, all motherhood, and the ideal for which all men strive to be.

Works Cited

Cather, Willa. My Antonia. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1918.

"Ántonia Shimerda Character Analysis In My Ántonia | Sparknotes". Sparknotes, 2022, https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/antonia/character/ntonia-shimerda/.

"Ántonia Shimerda In My Ántonia | Shmoop". Shmoop.Com, 2022, https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/my-antonia/antonia-shimerda.