Examples Of Juxtaposition In My Antonia

Willa Cather wrote an amazing novel in the writing of My Antonia. She brought together a group of characters of all ages and genders and transformed them in front of the reader’s eyes. She proved that a person didn’t have to come from riches to be successful in her story, but that hard work could help a person who would reach for the stars attain that goal. Cather gave us the insight of a world that nobody alive will every truly understand and quite frankly one that we don’t want to relive. Willa Cather uses juxtaposition in her novel My Antonia such as living situations, gender roles, and the diverse culture differences of an American boy and a foreign girl, whose purpose in life is to accomplish the American dream.

Jim Burden was only ten

Jim was forced to leave everything he had ever known due to the fact of his parents dying and move to the Midwest, not only to live with his grandparents but also to restart his life altogether. Jim who was a young American boy had many no real responsibility when it came to working on his grandparents’ farm. When he first arrives he is allowed to sleep most of the next day, and was even offered to be bathed by his grandmother. Jim basically became spoiled upon entry to his new environment. “The first night at the house Jim was informed by Otto that his grandparents had bought him a pony as a welcoming present” (Cather 53). A person would expect that when Jim and his grandmother walked to the garden that Jim being a young boy would have been

The Americans looked at this land as their birth right and believed that it was theirs despite owing money for everything. However as Cather wrote “the foreign farmers in our county were the first to become prosperous. After the fathers were out of debt the daughters married the sons of neighbors,- usually of like nationality,- and the girls who once worked in Black Hawk kitchens are to-day managing big farms and fine families of their won; their children are better off than the children of the town women they use to serve” (121). This passage really shows how two groups of people who in reality were the same lived completely different lives, and set forth goal and sacrifices that not only benefited them, but benefited their entire