My Antonia Essay: Theme of Separation -- My Antonia Essays

Theme of Separation in My Antonia My Antonia, by Willa Cather, is a book tracing the drool of a young man, Jim Burden, and his relationship with a young woman, Antonia Shimerda. Jim narrates the entire story in first person, relating accounts and memories of his childhood with Antonia. He traces his journey to the Nebraska where he and Antonia meet and grow up. Jim looks back on all of his childhood scenes with Antonia with nearly heartbreaking nostalgia. My Antonia, is a book that makes legion(predicate) parallels to the sadness and frailty, but to a fault the quiet beauty in feel, and leaves the endorser with a sense of profound sorrow. One of the main ways Cather is commensurate to invoke these emotions in the lecturer is through the ongoing discipline of time interval. Willa Cather develops her theme of separation through death, the changing seasons, characters leaving and the process of growing apart. Cather sets the feeling of the story at the very beginning a youn g Jim Burdens parents make water died leaving him to go to Nebraska to live with his grandparents. Right from the start Cather plants the seeds of abandonment, with the decision of death, in Jims life. When he arrives in Nebraska he is very pall to life, but he is soon caught up in daily life on his grandparents farm. He is blissfully happy when he first meets Antonia. They construct great friends and share numerous adventures. Cather uses brief, beautifully descriptive and nostalgic recollections of situations and feelings to add the pain and sadness of the separations that she places throughout the book. An excellent example of this is the way Cather builds up to Mr. Shimerdas suicide. Mrs. Cath... ... Mrs. Cathers carefully drawn parallels in the story that build up to Antonia and Jims separation was a truly effective method of pointing out its tragedy. However she also used other tools, such as imagery and short anecdotes to get ahead convey her message. All together t hese elements, plus a good story and plot make My Antonia an excellent all around book, worthy of universe called a classic. Professors Comments Underline titles of novels. Using quotes from the book would strengthen your authorship. Quotes prove to the reader that you have a valid argument. You discuss imagery in your paper to prove certain points about the separation theme. Direct quotes would have been useful. You get to discuss parallelism only on one occasion. This discussion should be expanded.