My Antonia, by Willa Cather

br In Willa Cather 's My Antonia the lines between the real American West of the late 19th century and the West of Jim Burden 's youth are blurred with myth and remembrance . By filtering the tale through Jim 's memories and perceptions of Nebraska and the people he knew , the historical background of the novel becomes more the stuff of a boy 's dream than a historical reality . On the one hand , there is the American West of legends as personified by Otto Fuchs and others like him who scoured the west

in the search of adventure . On the other hand , there is Antonia who is largely stationary and unwilling to move from the land to which she has a measure of kinship . While Otto represents the change and adventure of Manifest Destiny , Antonia represents the land and the permanence of man in the wilderness . For Jim Burden , the lands itself is a character in and of itself , with which he becomes more and more distant , like an old friend one loses touch with . Antonia becomes the bridge between for Jim . The development of Antonia from immigrant to landowner , of the land from untamed wilderness to financial asset , and the growth of Jim from orphaned boy to solitary man overlap to create a narrative based more in sentiment than history

When Jim first arrives in Nebraska , his narrative is filled with images of the land and the people that surround him . It is obvious that much of Jim 's...