American Lit comparison

• Inequalities • Class and status and wealth • Passion and spontaneity versus reason and stability • Gender • The American Dream • Morality and immorality • Individual (self-interest) and the community • Relationship with the land • Immigrant Experience

Jim and Nick as narrators and chasers of past nostalgia

Both narrators view the past with sentimentality, but Nick sees disillusionment, while Jim sees beauty in struggle. Reflects how American literature often contrasts idealised vs. lost pasts.

My Antonia p.98 I suddenly found myself thinking of the places and people of my own infinitesimal past. They stood out strengthened and simplified now, like the image of the plough against the sun.

“no disappointments have been severe enough to chill his naturally romantic and ardent disposition” – intro

Similarities:

Both reconnect to their past through literature.

Differences:

I thought about your papa when I wrote my speech, Tony,' I said. `I dedicated it to him.' She threw her arms around me, and her dear face was all wet with tears. I stood watching their white dresses glimmer smaller and smaller down the sidewalk as they went away. I have had no other success that pulled at my heartstrings like that one.

Willa Cather. My Antonia (p. 87)- Jim can reconnect with his past, Nick’s past is dead.

Context: Sentimentalism

To an extent, both Cather and Fitzgerald might see themselves in their characters

Willa Cather about Nebraska- 'that country was the happiness and curse of her life'

Critics:

Sarah Churchwell - "The book likes Antonia but...it does not always like Jim - we are encouraged to distance ourselves" do we like Nick?

Cather’s novel of fractured tales with no structure symbolises an immigrant’s struggle to express their past in a foreign language- or does it show how Jim struggles to describe the past? and in turn Cather’s past?

Mrs Shimerda and Myrtle

`My mamenka make him come. All the time she say: “America big country; much money, much land for my boys, much husband for my girls.”

Krajek and the Shimerdas versus Tom and George Wilson

They hated Krajiek, but they clung to him because he was the only human being with whom they could talk or from whom they could get information.

Willa Cather. My Antonia (p. 11)

Jim as a boy and Tom Buchanan as slightly sexist and extremely sexist (Avril Lavigne)

My Antonia p.15 I was a boy and she was a girl, and I resented her protecting manner.

Similarities:

Differences: Jim resolves his traditionally learned views of women- especially through leaving the bubble of the prairie and black hawk. Tom never leaves his bubble of wealth.

“his sympathetic, solicitous interest in women is as youthful as it is Western and American” – intro

Context:

Critics:

Tiny Soderball and Jordan Baker

both rich of their own means both unhappy?

Tiny Soderball was to lead the most adventurous life and to achieve the most solid worldly success.

She said frankly that nothing interested her much now but making money.

- Tiny Soderball has succumbed to materialistic world

- money is not enough to satisfy fully

- used as a contrast to Antonia's genuine happiness around prairie and family

Willa Cather. My Antonia (p. 112)

The Prairie versus New York

Wick Cutter and Meyer Wolfsheim affected by corruption

Daisy Buchanan versus Lena Lingard and how social class creates barriers

Daisy is trapped by status, while Lena escapes rural poverty. Both highlight women’s roles and independence in American society.

Tom Buchanan versus Mr Shimerda

Tom represents wealthy privilege with no morality, while Mr. Shimerda represents the struggle of those left behind. American literature often contrasts power and exploitation vs. the immigrant experience.

As Fathers- only Mr Shimerda takes an active role in his childrens lives. He wants them to have skills to help them succeed whereas Tom only wants to be so rich himself that his daughter can be dependent on him and then a husband. Mr Shimerda, on the other hand, wants to contribute to Antonia’s freedom.

Te-e-ach, te-e-ach my Antonia!'

Willa Cather. My Antonia (p. 10)

Critics:

the Shimerdas are an anarchaic disintegrating family groups which seems bent on it’s own destruction and yet it produces Antonia who emerges at the end of the novel as the family founder. – John Randall

Mr Shimerda is a man who has the imagination to be a pioneer but not the strength. – John Randall

Nick and Gatsby, J

Jay Gatsby as a self-made man who amasses wealth to recreate and change the past and Antonia Shimerda a hardworking immigrant who builds a life despite hardship

Gatsby’s dream is corrupt and doomed (chasing status), while Ántonia’s dream is rooted in perseverance and fulfillment (hard work and family). Shows two sides of the American Dream: illusion vs. reality.

She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races. Antonia is a source of vitality and warmth "mine" suggests that it is infinite: always something left to give

Willa Cather. My Antonia (p. 132)

Antonia's orchard is a sign of slow-growing organic success- celebration of female success- orchard fruit bearing symbol?- peace vs materialism

Critics:

James E Miller- “My Antonia does not portray, in any meaningful sense the fulfilment of the AMERICAN DREAM”

Lena Lingard and Gatsby

This summer I'm going to build the house for mother I've talked about so long.

Willa Cather. My Antonia (p. 100)

There is an expectation for Lena to settle down and become a housewife, one she rebels against as she wants to have a successful career/ does not want to be constrained as a housewife.

Gatsby bought his dad his house

MANIFEST DESTINY

Fuch describes a legend to Jim that

"sunflowers were introduced into that country by the Mormons" that they sprinkled them as they crossed the plains.

sunflower-bordered roads always seem to me the roads to freedom.

Willa Cather. My Antonia (p. 10).

The new country lay open before me: there were no fences in those days, and I could choose my own way

Willa Cather. My Antonia (p. 10).

the land

as if the shaggy grass were a sort of loose hide, and underneath it herds of wild buffalo were galloping, galloping …

Willa Cather. My Antonia (p. 5)- look at context of buffalos and indigenous communities in America

E K Brown - "Everything in the novel is there to...convey a feeling, not to tell a story, not to establish a social philosophy, not even to animate a group of characters"

Materialism versus transcendentalism

" in the lives of mortals the best days are the first to flee. 'Optima dies ... prima fugit.' Willa Cather. My Antonia (p. 98). Kindle Edition. A reference to Virgil's pastoral poetry. Cather alludes to this much older grander form of poetry, she thus situates her work within a literary tradition that goes beyond the nation

Cather appeals to the literary theory of transcendentalism in order in subvert materialistic ideals. Despite the physical shift in society, the importance of spiritualism remains the same.