All About Antonia

     Willa Cather, in her novel My Antonia, offers her view of life during the pioneer times. She portrays herself and all of her views through her characters. Through Jim and his experiences the audience gets a view of life in the good ol' days.

     If the book were told in the point of view of Antonia instead of Jim, the story would have been drastically different. In her perspective, the audience would have gained insight into what it was like to be in a family who was new to the country and struggling for survival. Also, we might have gained a motive behind some of her actions, such as her behavior towards Jim and her dancing escapades. Her thoughts and feelings would have been made known during the tough times, such as when she had to work in the fields like a man or when she was betrayed by her supposed fiance, Larry, and left alone and pregnant. The book would have turned out completely different if we had learned all of the facts firsthand instead of hearing them through as Jim learned them through the grapevine.

     Willa Cather was fairly effective at writing in the point of view of a man, considering she herself is not one. The only way that one could even guess that the author was a woman was that Jim seems to be fairly feminine for a guy. Not to the point of being ridiculously or overly girly, but still more so than some guys would have been. There was not really any description of him doing any manual labor, which could hint at the fact that the author is a girl due to the fact that most woman did not do any sort of field work in that time period. Overall, though, Cather did a good job portraying a man in the book.

     Jim changed the title of the story from Antonia to My Antonia because he was telling the story of his friend Antonia as he saw her. The different people who grew up or lived around Antonia would have viewed her in a completely different way than Jim did. He saw the good in her; the willingness to do anything for her family and how she refused to give up on making something of herself even though she was left alone and pregnant in a time where that was highly frowned upon. However, others viewed her with pity, as the girl who was gullible enough to be tricked out of her money and left pregnant. She would have been seen as cheap and a floozy. Jim wanted to show people how he viewed her; how he loved her. The title My Antonia shows that the story is not about her flaws and mistakes and meant to degrade. It shows Jim's unconditional love towards her.

     My Antonia is a very unique book that would have been completely different if the author had made even one minor change. Cather's novel is very good at showing the lifestyle of a typical family during the pioneer times. The story shows not only the good in life, but also the hard, unforgiving times that occurred so very often in those times. The book is well written and interesting enough that I would recommend it to anybody who likes classic books.