How Does My Antonia Characterize Immigrants

“You influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don’t realize it. You really are a part of me”(Cathera 206). My Antonia by Willa Cathera captures the story of Jim, the narrator, and Antonia, growing up in the rural lands of Nebraska, and follows their lives through adulthood. Through this novel, the care Jim and Antonia share becomes blatantly apparent and their relationship becomes more and more indescribable. Antonia's perseverance affects Jim’s compassion.

With this interpretation, the focus is Antonia’s lasting effect on Jim- with not as much thought of how the latter affects his older neighbor. Throughout My Antonia, Antonia’s life is shaped by her relationship with Jim. When the Shimerdas first move to the Nebraskan prairies, Jim has just moved in with his grandparents. Jim and Antonia become friends immediately, and it seems as though all will go well for the young girl. Along with being a friend, Jim fulfills Mr. Shimerda’s request of being a teacher to his new neighbor, helping Antonia learn English.

One also sees how each author, in their own ways (with more or less emphasis), describe both the economic motivations, as well as the cultural motivations, which drove the westward expansion. In a sense, their very words become pictures of the kind of socio-economic pressures shared by many Americans to expand westward, as well as the Manifest-Destiny fever in many of those same Americans, hungry for land, desirous for expansion, driven by the ideal of spreading their own culture’s ways into other lands (sometimes onto their indigenous inhabitants). But in the end, they all perceive westward expansion as being, somehow, the only option for early Americans to find the good life; no doubt because of the economic and cultural influences on their thinking.

Celia, A Slave by Melton A. McLaurin is based on true historical events. It is a book about the many challenges slave women had to endure and the effects proslavery had on the conscience and people of the time. Their possible feelings of helplessness, being treated poorly, unfairly and having no rights as a human being. These events took place in the south during a time when slavery was at its peak and was in the process of expanding slavery to neighboring states who in contrast were against slavery. McLaurin discussed a few key issues of the way of life in southern America was, the good and the bad.

The main protagonist of this story is a fourteen year old girl named Lily Melissa Owens who experiences a man versus self conflict since she was four years old. The novel is told from first person point of view where the story is told from Lily’s eyes. Other characters include Terrence Ray Owens, Lilies abusive angry father and Rosaleen an African American maid and stand in mother for Lily. The Boatwright sisters, August, June, and May are important characters also as the story progresses all three sisters change and evolve. Deborah Fontanel Owens plays a major role in this novel even

The closure of the Frontier was motivated by American Manifest Destiny, which was an American idea that America’s destiny was to expand and bring American ideals to new lands. American Manifest Destiny provided the main motivation behind the settlement of the Frontier, as Americans and their government saw the Frontier as an uncivilized, mysterious land that had the potential to be settled by the rising population present in the Eastern United States. The American Federal Government advertised and urged potential settlers to journey West and occupy the land. In addition to the advertisement, legislation passed in 1862, named the Homestead Acts offered distributions of land to applicants that committed to living on the land for a substantial amount of time. As a result, more settlers poured into the area resulting in more communities being constructed in the American Frontier, furthermore, with the construction of railroads in the 1820s-1860s connecting East to, previously, remote areas in the West, travel

My Ántonia by Willa Cather is a well-known novel describing life on the great plains during the late eighteen hundreds. The story is told through the nostalgic eyes of Jim Burden, telling how a Bohemian immigrant named Ántonia Shimerda influenced his youth. Ántonia is a highly complex character, symbolizing multiple ideas, primarily beauty and the courage of pioneers on the Great Plains. Additionally, Ántonia’s characterization is intertwined with the plot of the book, making her more significant than she first appears.

My Antonia details the immigrant lifestyle of the West, in the vast prairies of Nebraska. The immigrant experience in the West is burdensome, as the Shimerdas are consistently undermined by greedy Anglo-Saxons in search of effortless profit. Despite their lack of funds, the Shimerdas are deceived into “paying twenty dollars for [an] old cookstove that ain’t worth ten” (Cather 14). Nevertheless, the Shimerdas continue to toil away despite their many financial hardships. The Shimerdas transitioned from living in a clay home “no better than a badger hole” in their first winter, to equipping themselves with a log house in the following spring (Cather 14, Cather 47).

Just getting out of a war, Americans were scared. In the past, immigrants had been accepted and even welcomed, now they were feared and labeled as a danger (The 1920s Government, Politics, and Law: Overview). Americans cried out for a restriction order keeping immigrants out for fear that they would bring foreign elements to America. The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the amount of immigrants to come to America greatly (Congress, U.S.). Although, some Americans were very against the immigration act and Robert Clancy (an American against both the KKK and Republican decisions) even went as far as to call it "un-American" (Rose.

“Once we became an independent people it was as much a law of nature that this [control of all of North America] should become our pretension as that the Mississippi should flow to the sea” –John Quincy Adams (Henretta, p. 384). In the 1840s, Americans had a belief that God destined for them to expand their territory all the way westward to the Pacific Ocean. This idea was called Manifest Destiny. In the nineteenth century, Americans were recognized for coming together and building up one another for one cause: westward expansion.

The migration of immigrants back then, were mainly because they wanted to find a better work experience. Some would even move to seek a new and improved religion. In the 1800-1880s, one of the main reasons immigrants moved, was because of the rising of taxes in their area which made them want to escape from that. Today, in modern day America, we still move in search for better jobs. Because the world has changed in so many ways, we constantly move, however, one of the main reasons is because of natural disasters that may have occurred in a particular area, which causes groups of families to move out of their old homes into a new location.

The Red Scare in particular made the entirety of American Society anti immigration. The Red Scare was the growing fear of the U.S. having a rise in Communism. There was also a large concern about the growing amount of immigrants coming into the U.S.. To combat this the U.S. established the Emergency Quota Act in 1921 the act established a limit on the number of immigrants accepted from each country. The U.S. would take 3 percent of the population of residents from the origin country into the U.S. each year.

Set in nineteenth century Black Hawk, Nebraska, Willa Cather’s novel My Antonia is the tragic, yet hope-filled memoir of Bohemian immigrant, Antonia Shimerda, as recounted through the memories of her childhood friend, Jim Burden. Arriving in Nebraska with her family, Antonia’s life is hopeful. However, the infertile prairie land disheartens her father causing him to take his life.

In the early 19th century, millions of immigrants from Europe had traveled to the United States to escape difficulties faced in their native lands such as poverty and religious persecution. Italian, German, Irish, and many other eastern European immigrants sought the prosperous and wealthy lifestyle advertised in the land of opportunity, the United States. However, after settling down they often faced the difficulties they had fled from as well as sentiments of prejudice and mistrust from the American people. Most immigrants were discriminated against due to their religious beliefs as well as their language barriers which fostered the beliefs that they were intellectually inferior to Americans.

Her father’s abuse keeps her in fear and ignorance about right and wrong. The story leaves the reader wondering if they should pity Mayella or feel angry toward her for not telling the truth. Every story has many different perspectives and Mayella’s character shows us that things are not always as we think they