My Ántonia, Individualism Essay

( individuality Its ascertain over Lena, Jim and ntonia During Their Childhood, Adolescence and Adulthood) The longest journey is the journey inwards. Of him who has chosen his destiny, Who has started upon his quest for the computer address of his being Dag Hammarskjold.1 This individualist journey, Hammarskjold refers to, consists of two very important elements which turn over to individualism (1) having the aw areness of personal accountability before the Lord and the Nazarene and (2) having a self-sufficient nature as a fountainhead of a persons individuality which was required to settle the the Statesn frontier. These mention ingredients mixed with an untamed land tempered the settlers into what we know them today as Americans which may be observed within Willa Cathers My Antonia as the lector follows the lives of collar find out percentages Lena, Jimmy, and Antonia.Cather herself searched for her own individualism which she juxtaposed in this 1918 literary work with t he character Jimmy. Both he and the author of the story were born(p) in Virginia and at an early age were sent to Nebraska to labor union their grandparents. And much homogeneous the author, he had the pleasure of outgrowth up with a variety of immigrants and stories. Such narratives inspired the author through appear her writing career. My Antonia follows the endeavors of the charrly protagonist, Antonia, and her foil, Lena, as they struggle in a tender rustic, language, and culture pursuit happiness and fulfillment in their lives which Cather so often observed in her minorhood immigrant neighbors. Likewise, the subscriber reads about Jimmy with his own personal struggles as he strives for autonomy in a sturdy territory with exact moral codes.Willa Cathers My ntonia addresses the nonion of individualism which is best seen through estimate and indirect impersonation of 3 dynamic characters Lena, Jimmy, and ntonia by means of analyzing three stages of liveness chi ldhood, youth, and adulthood. A remarkable model of single growth is depict in Lena Lingard who lived in the countryside with her newly transplanted Norwegian family outside coloured sell, Nebraska.The reader first encounters Lena through direct characterization as she is described as being bareheaded and barefooted, scantily urbane in tattered array (106)2 when she was just a child looking after her familys herd. In the first part of the book she is introduced as a wild, poorly dressed working little girl in charge of farm tasks much like other foreign girls Lena lived in the Norwegian settlement west of Squaw Creek, and she use to herd her fathers cattle in the open country between his place and the Shimerdas (106).Further along in the novel, there is a clear change in this characters liveliness. She grows-up and changes her worn out rags for dressmaker quality clothing with hat and gloves as she begins a new phase in her life as a dressmakers apprentice in the town of g loomy Hawk So you exhaust bring to town, said Mrs. Harling, her eyes be quiet fixed on Lena. Where are you working? For Mrs. Thomas, the dressmaker. She is acquittance to t distributively me to sew. She says I obligate quite a knack (104). As a unseasoned adult, Lena strikes-out on her own to the city of Lincoln in a supreme final exhibition of the e humancipation she has forged for herself throughout her life through hard work and determination. I live in Lincoln now, too, Jim. Im in avocation for myself.I have a dressmaking shop in the Raleigh Block, out on O Street. Ive made a actual straightforward start (170-171). The path Lena has walked since her childhood, through her adolescence, and then adulthood has illustrated a marked achievement in be approach a self-sufficient young woman who quested for her destiny in an untamed land far from her native home. Lenas personal accountability should besides be explored, being one of the key elements of individualism, as sh e never turned her rear on her family but continuously sent them money from her sewing work After I learn to do sewing, I can make money and help . . . my mother (104).These individualistic elements were key in developing her character as she was noted in taking care of herself as well as her parents and siblings which was required of those immigrants who founded America and became a new breed of people known as Americans. Individualism was also reached by two other primary characters within this continent American literature novel Jimmy and Antonia.Jim consequence, the narrator of the story and also one of the major characters of Willa Cathers My Antonia, is as well and important role model of how a human being can evolve trough his life to find completeness and self-sufficiency. At the startle of the book, Jim had just suffered the loss of his parents and sent to his grandparents. maculation he was in the train on his way to Nebraska he was in deep grieve and uncertain abou t his future. I fathert think I was homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter.Between that existence and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that dark here, I felt, what would be would be. Nevertheless, that sad passage in his life did not let Jim down. In the same train that he was locomotion there was a Bohemian family. One of the members of that family was ntonia Shimerda, who would move his best shoplifter in the surface future. When Jim had enough age to start studying at School, coincidentally his grandparents also had to run to moody Hawk due to Mrs. Burden health situation. There he met new lifters, worked hard on his studies, and also had fun.Despite being sad and scared in the past, Jim managed to overcome these difficulties and successfully improve at take. So much so, that in brief he would move to Lincoln to start his college career. There he met Gaston Cleric who joined him in his new adventure, and helped Jim to ge t over some obstacles that he had to face bit living in Lincoln. At the university I had the ingenuous fortune to come immediately under the influence of a brilliant and inspiring young scholar. Gaston Cleric had arrived in Lincoln only a few weeks to begin with than I . . . (165). Cleric also convinced him to move to Boston to finishing his career, where Jim would finally reach his goal of becoming a professional. Two age after I left Lincoln I completed my pedantic course at Harvard. Before I entered the Law School I went home for the summer vacation.(191) Just after getting his college degree, Jim travelled back to abusive Hawk where he would find everything disparate, his friends either dead or gone, the kids were not the same, and even the town itself was all changed. He left Black Hawk being an adolescent with dreams and now he had returned as a professional. He felt he was complete, despite of the fact that he still had very present that sorrowful night in which he wa s despicable from Virginia to Nebraska. I had only to close my eyes to hear the rumbling of the wagons in the dark, and to be again overcome by that obliterating strangeness. The feelings of that night were so near that I could reach out and touch them with my hand. I had the sense of coming home to myself, and of having found out what a little circle mans experience is.(238) By the clock he came back to Black Hawk he knew that he had seized the opportunities he had and felt that his life had been praiseworthy living. art object back in town, he went to visit his beloved friend ntonia, which also was happy. The happenings in Antonias life, and how she evolved from being a little girl in a foreign country to the women she became will be exhaustively developed next.ntonia Shimerda is the main character that we find in Willa Cathers My ntonia. As well as Lena and Jim she is characterized during different stages of her life (childhood, adolescence and adulthood). One example of thi s characterization is portrayed in how ntonia was developing her new language ( slope) and how it was influenced by the different periods of time she went through, as well as the places she moved to. At the beginning of the story we find ntonia and her family moving from Bohemia to the prairie of Nebraska. In the prairie and as a child she met Lena Lingard and Jim Burden who would become one of the most important persons in her life.Jim was going to be the one in charge of teaching English to ntonia who did not speak much English before the arrival to the prairie ntonia had opinions about everything, and she was soon able to make them known. Almost every day she came running crossways the prairie to have her reading lesson with me. Mrs. Shimerda grumbled, but realized it was important that one member of the family should learn English (24). It is evident that Mrs. Shimerda did not like the idea of ntonia study English. But, she understood it was important for ntonia to learn the l anguage in order to align herself and to find herself in her new country and home, also this would help ntonia to mete out care of her family as she felt it as an obligation.As ntonia was evolving her English was growing with her and with this some traits of her personality too. As explained before in the paper, Jim had to move to Black Hawk due to study reasons, but it was not going to be a long time before ntonia also moved to Black Hawk, but with different intentions from ones of Jim. ntonia moved to Black Hawk to get a bank line, here she runs into Jim and Lena again. Now in her adolescence Jim says that ntonia has very ripe English, Tony learned English so quickly that by the time direct began she could speak as well as any of us (107). This shows that ntonia kept practicing English to improve herself, as she felt that was one way to become better to help her family, and now in Black Hawk and with her job it was evident how the improvement in her English helped her.Howeve r, ntonia would began to attend to dances with her friend Lena and this would exculpate a lot of problems with it for her, including losing her job because she did not want to quit attention to dances as requested by her bosses. The story carried on and further before in the story, when Jim comes back from Lincoln and the time he spent at Harvard to finish his studies, he finds a happily married grown-up ntonia with children. ntonia had married a bohemian guy called Anton and now she has a family, and she is very happy with them. While Jim is speaking with ntonia, he notices that her English has become bad as it use to be when she was a child and she was learning it. ntonia tells him that now she has many troubles with English because at home they speak almost only in Bohemian, I cant think of what I want to say, youve got me so moved(p) up. And then, Ive forgot my English so. I dont often talk it any more.I tell the children I used to speak real well. She said they always spok e Bohemian at home. The little ones could not speak English at alldidnt learn it until they went to school (224). Now in her adulthood ntonia was really worried and a good mother as well as a good married woman who take care of her family. Here is where the change that ntonia suffered from childhood to adolescence to adulthood is characterized, how she passed from a little girl to a loving mother. Throughout this essay three fundamental characters that we find in the novel My ntonia by the author Willa Cather have been characterized, these characters are Lena Lingard, Jim Burden and ntonia Shimerda. The characterization of these characters has been done under the perception of individualism that is represented with each one of them.This perception of individualism of the characters has been shown based on the pursuit for autonomy that each character went through. At the same time three different moments in characters lives were chosen to describe them the childhood, adolescence and adulthood. These moments in characters lives were chosen because they are prior important stages in a persons life. So, it was important to illustrate how the notion of individualism of each character could be characterized in these stages, taking into account crucial aspects that the characters set about in the search for themselves. Examples of these important aspects faced by the characters are a new country, language and culture in the case of Lena and ntonia. Another example is the personal struggles of Jim as he attempts for autonomy in a rugged territory with strict moral codes.