American Literature critics (Great Gatsby and My Antonia)

James E Miller

• Great Gatsby comparison with My Antonia

• worth the dream?

Gatsby’s Daisy is not worthy of his dream, Jim’s Antonia is perhaps worth more

Randall

• imagination

• My Antonia

• lack of strength

Mr Shimerda has the imagination to be a pioneer but not the strength

Joan Acocella

• My Antonia

• blessing and curse

• the dream

all the while that Cather is describing life’s terrors, she never stops asserting it’s beauties.. the dream is still there; we just can’t have it

Sarah Churchwell

• Great Gatsby

• Daisy is a rotten pomegranate

Daisy Buchanan, for all her charm and allure, remains a symbol of moral decay and superficiality that pervades the society depicted in the Great Gatsby

Drew

• Prelapsarian

• My Antonia

The prairie is the Garden of Eden (compare to fresh green breast vs valley of ashes- sense of innocence, the New World is post-lapsarian because of the rising corruption of morals and environment)

Christine Ramos

• Tom

• Great Gatsby

• ashes

by attempting to maintain his way of life, Tom has reduced whole people to ashes without any consequences

Claire Stocks

• Great Gatsby

• If Gatsby has no fans Nick is dead

Nick wants to portray Gatsby as great and to ignore or edit anything that might undermine that image

Stuckey

• My Antonia

• symbolic painting

Antonia is converted into a beautiful picture by Jim

Lucenti

• refuge

• My Antonia

Antonia becomes a pure ideality, a safe refuge to which Jim can return again and again.

Sarah Churchwell

• Antonia fan club

• My Antonia

• Jim haters

The book likes Antonia but it does not always like Jim- we are encouraged to distance ourselves

James E Miller

• My Antonia

• The Dream

My Antonia does not portray in any meaningful sense the fulfilment of the American Dream

Kelly McCormick

• My Antonia

• Immigrant experience

• footrprint

• dream

Each immigrant’s story represents a footprint in the journey of the American Dream

Peterman

• My Antonia

• pregnant energy

Larry Donovan can only make her pregnant; he cannot misdirect her energy

Whipple

• My Antonia

• evil land

(the land) a great antagonist (The American psyche is troubled by guilt, is it just a karmic response to its mistreatment)

Charles

• My Antonia

• Jim peaked on the prarie

for him (Jim), the sinking sun affords symbolic illumination for his own golden age

Charles

• My Antonia

• Mr Shimerda

• identity

• doom

the very marks of aristocracy forecast his doom

Reginald Dyck

• uneasiness

• change

• My Antonia

the novel reflects the uneasiness its readers felt toward the changing US culture

Joseph Uro

• My Antonia

• P & P

• Knight rebels

Pavel and Peter break from the chivalric code and they are the ones that survive

Catherine Holmes

• My Antonia

• picnic

• connection

• cutter

the picnic teaches the rewards of connection; the Wick Cutter episode teaches its price

Lambert

• my Antonia

• women’s success

Cather succeeded because she could imagine women achieving identity and defining their own purpose

Tredell

• My Antonia

• routes

Shows a spectrum of possibilities for woman rather than prescribing one route

Toby Tanner

• Great Gatsby

• Green light

The green light offers Gatsby a suitably inaccessible focus for his yearning

Toby Tanner

• Great Gatsby

• Mr Nobody from Nowhere

Can anyone in this book be said to be Mr or Ms Somebody from somewhere? They are all restless nomads from the Midwest, simply with more of less money ... he wants to show America desecrated, mutilated, violated".

Lionel Trilling

• AMERICA

• Great Gatsby

Gatsby stands for America itself

Michael Holoquist

• Great Gatsby

• erect

• belong

• forever

Gatsby is someone who is seeking to erect his own selfhood, and an identity that is whole, immaculate and lasting

A.E. Dyson

• Great Gatsby

• rootless

In one sense, Gatsby is the apotheosis of his rootless society. He really believes in himself and his illusions.

(apotheosis- culmination/climax, is being American searching for roots? Jim’s connection to Antonia is a way for him to connect, most of America lacks roots, rootlessness- what makes him the figure of the ‘`the Great Gatsby’ yet everyone in the novel is trying to escape being rootless)

James E Miller

• My Antonia

• the road

• the past

this road (at the end of the novel) is America’s road, leading not into the future but into the past, fast fading from memory

James E Miller

• My Antonia

• something missed

• national

• Jim

his melancholy sense of loss and longing for something missed in the past is a national longing

Amy Ahearn

• My Antonia

• past

• childhood

• symbol

Antonia is emblematic of the past, representing the whole adventure of childhood which the narrator wants to recapture