What interests Laina about My Antonia:

Laina writes:
   The thing I find most interesting about My Antonia by Willa Cather is actually not part of the book thus far at all.  It is, in fact, the absence of Jim's parents.  Usually, when a child, or anyone for that matter, loses a loved one (especially a parent) they think of that person constantly. Jim, on the other hand, rarely seems to reflect back on his life in Virginia anymore, and never on his parents' death.
    Jim is very observing, clever, and caring, yet never refers these traits back to his parents.  He acknowledges the vast plains of Nebraska but never seems to wonder, “What would mother think if she could see such a sight?”  When Jim cleverly kills the snake, he is extremely proud of his accomplishment, but doesn't appear to think, “My dad would be so proud of me.”  Jim's feelings for Antonia are as clear at his young age as they would be of a yearning teenager.  He cares for her strongly and despite their cultural differences, wants to be with her as often as possible.  Yet, he does not have parents with whom to seek advice to guidance.  Nor does he seem to realize or acknowledge their absence.
    A second point I find interesting about the death of Jim's parents is that when Antonia's father dies, instead of growing closer due to this uncommon and horrific similarity, they in fact drift apart.  The loss of a parent, although I thankfully have not experienced it myself, is a horrible tragedy at any age, but especially for a child.  The fact that Antonia and Jim share the experience of this agony but do not seek comfort in one another is quite strange and therefore interesting to me as a reader. 
    I will not lie, My Antonia is not my favorite book, and I feel that there is much missing that would make it, to me, an excellent novel.  Therefore I suppose it would seem fitting that what most interests me about the story is what is absent, versus what is present.  The lack of recollection by Jim of his parents and the fact that the mutual experience between he and Antonia do not bring them closer together puzzles me as a reader and therefore interests me as to why Willa Cather would choose to develop the characters in this way.


Mr. Colburn responds:
Yes--we should look at what is not in the book as much as what is in the book.  This goes back, obviously, to Hemingway's iceberg, and to what Cather said about the thing unsaid.  What isn't directly there on the page may still be under the surface, and may be affecting the reader as much by its absence as it would if it were there.   Laina's right that the absence of Jim's parents in the book is strange and interesting; for me, the big question is whether Jim's parents are part of the book's iceberg, there under the surface and affecting us powerfully, or if their absence weakens the book.

For Laina the absence weakens the book.  I'm not sure it does so for me.  I thought a fair amount about Jim's absent parents in the first few chapters, but even though I haven't consciously thought about them for fifty pages or so, the fact that Jim is an orphan, and that now Antonia is too, may contribute something to the feeling of weighty import that nearly every page of the book has for me.  This is a book in which every little description feels serious!

I also think it's interesting that Antonia is so relatively articulate about her father and her feelings about him.  She says that he's still there with her, and she calls on Jim to validate her memory of her father, too.  It's important for Antonia that Jim knew her papa, and she is, again, quite articulate in talking about what her father meant to her.  Jim isn't articulate about his parents at all; in fact he never mentions them.  Perhaps this is because he is younger, and more shy.  Perhaps it's because Antonia is the "peasant" that Cather is romanticizing (just as Leo Tolstoy romanticized the Russian peasants, and today many people imagine that working-class people are more in touch with their feelings than the effete intelligentsia), while Jim is more head than heart.  Or perhaps it's because Antonia is a woman, while Jim is a man.  That would go along with what seems to be one of the messages of Hemingway's "Indian Camp"--that women are more in touch with their feelings than men, and so will end up in better shape in the long run.

This has taken me away from my starting point, which was: does the fact that Jim never mentions his parents hurt the book, or help it?  What do the rest of you think?