Harry Ruther writes:
Most people associate the cold, fruitless winters that we experience each year with isolation and hostility towards others due to the gray skies and brisk weather. However, in the novel, My Ántonia by Willa Cather, the winter and late fall are the seasons in which bonding occurs most, while the spring represents a time of conflict and tension.
In the time before “the heavy frosts” (25) begin, Jim and Ántonia visit the Russians, Peter and Pavel to whom Mr. Shimerda also frequently visits as well. During this visit, there is no tension and their host is “very hospitable and jolly” (26). Another example of the winter bringing people together occurs at the end of the season when Mr. Shimerda dies. Though this crushed the hearts of the Shimerda family, neighbors from around Nebraska rushed to their side thus showing their close neighborly ties. Following the passing of Mr.Shimerda and right before the start of spring, all the neighbors came together to help the Shimerdas build a new log cabin. These experiences in book one show how in the early winter or late autumn, the relationship between the neighbors is very close despite the cold that is often perceived as a hindrance.
Just as the neighbors are all coming closer together, spring arrives and the families no longer cuddle together for warmth and they become more independent. This becomes apparent in chapter eighteen, when Jake and Ambrosch get into a fight. This fight creates tension between the two families, and thus negatively affects the relationship between Ántonia and Jim.
This change in tension between the two families results from the changing seasons. This gross depiction of spring may foreshadow a bad experience in the spring later on in Jim and Ántonia’s life that causes their separation.
Mr. Colburn responds:
I like your attention to detail here--though you seem to imply that March is either early winter or late autumn--and I like your idea that the seasons are attached to emotions. This idea is somewhat backed up in the book in a few places, like at the end of Part I when Antonia says "I wish my Papa live to see this summer. I wish no winter ever come again," and then Jim says , "It will be summer a long while yet," and "Why aren't you always nice like this, Tony?" (90). Antonia seems to imply that summer is much nicer than winter, almost answering Jim's question before he asks it; but when Jim asks, "Why aren't you always nice like this, Tony?" he seems to be implying that the season can't be the only reason. It has been summer for a while, and neither Antonia nor her family have been very "nice."
While I'm there: the passage just before that one, describing the thunderstorm, recalls the great thunderstorm description in Huck Finn; it also, in an interesting phrase, raises the great modern anxiety about destruction and doom that arrives as if on schedule with the turn of the century: "the mottled part of the sky was like marble pavement, like the quay of some splendid seacoast city, doomed to destruction." (89) Wow! We don't get passages like that in Huck Finn, nor in any nineteenth century fiction, really--and then all of a sudden, in "The Beast in the Jungle," Hemingway stories (the dead lumber town in "The End of Something," for instance), in The Great Gatsby, and in countless other works, doom and destruction are constantly poking their heads in at the oddest times...
It's interesting that you imply that the most bonding happens during the winter. In chapter X, when the Burdens visit the Shimerdas, it's clear that the Shimerdas had not been in contact with others for a while: the Shimerdas clearly welcomed the food the Burdens brought rather than the Burdens themselves, especially when Mrs. Shimerda showed the Burdens the frozen, rotting potatoes and Antonia explained: "We get from Mr. Bushy - at the post-office - what he throw out" (49). Also, Antonia and Jim bonded during the first summer they spent together; they would explore the vast prairie lands and vegetation and have whimsical adventures.
ReplyDeleteI think that Antonia and Jim spent too much time together during the spring; especially during that first summer, when Jim was teaching Antonia and seeing her virtually every day, their relationship grew increasingly intertwined. Thus, inevitable as it was, problems arose, such as Jim's problem with Antonia's superior air about him.
As the two grow up and discover their own niches in society, especially when they entered town life, they find that they are splitting ways; Antonia enjoys farming and Jim likes to study. The gender roles have swapped, as Antonia continues to show physical strength - although she has a desire to study - and Jim prefers to not engage himself in arduous physical labor. Antonia is moving backward in terms of social progression, for agriculture is an archaic occupation. Jim is joining the progressive movement toward higher education and, as we may infer from Jim's encounter with the unnamed narrator, may pursue a white-collar, silk-tie wearing job.
My point is that I don't agree with Harry's theory of temperate behaviors - rather, as Jim and Antonia grow closer together, they both realize that they are destined for different, separate fates. Dichotomies still exist, as I insinuated before: Antonia is heading to the past with traditional agriculture, but is also moving forward by attempting to prove her competence as a female working on the farm. Jim is heading forward toward higher education, and his disregard for physicality - 'disregard' used when compared to Antonia's fervor - is also quite new in society.