In My Antonia, Cather uses symbols from nature to express the essential aspects of the lives of the characters. Three of these symbols include the prairie, the sunset and rattlesnakes. The characters’ lives and relationships are formed through these symbols.
The prairie is vast and was a difficult place to live. The weather is harsh and growing crops was back breaking work. The people who settled there had to be tough and learn to rely on themselves and their neighbors to survive. Antonia’s life was all about the country and the prairie and working the land, "I'm a country girl...and I doubt if I'll be able to manage so well for him in a city. I was counting on keeping chickens, and maybe a cow.” Jim’s life was about growing up with the people of the prairie and moving to the city to
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“That snake hung on our corral fence for several days; some of the neighbors came to see it and agreed that it was the biggest rattler ever killed in those parts. This was enough for Antonia. She liked me better from that time on, and she never took a supercilious air with me again. I had killed a big snake — I was now a big fellow.” This snake can represent the natural dangers of living on the prairie. It can also represent greedy dishonest people, like Krajiek, who took advantage of the immigrants, like the snake that preyed on the prairie dogs. “The Bohemian family, grandmother told me as we drove along, had bought the homestead of a fellow-countryman, Peter Krajiek, and had paid him more than it was worth.” He also cheated the Russians, Peter and Pavel. “They hated Krajiek, but they clung to him because he was the only human being with whom they could talk or from whom they could get information.” Antonia’s family “kept him in their hole and fed him for the same reason that the prairie dogs and the brown owls housed the rattlesnakes — because they did not know how to get rid of
She and her family traveled to the coast to work long hour at large coffee or cotton plantation. Condition was hard back then. If children did not work, they would not eat. Her two brothers died, one from pesticides and the other from malnutrition. When her brothers died they were not allow to bury them.
Further into the chapter, Alison talks about the deer camp her family went to called the Bullpen. Bruce’s new friend Bill showed the children how to shoot his .22. The kids see a large snake, “probably a black rat snake…can grow to seven feet long” (114) in the spring
As shown in the photo, the snake represents an element the cartoon expresses. Blocking off and surrounding the Southern coast of the United States, the snake does not allow for any ships or commerce to be sent into or out of the United States. In other words, this snake is covering states such as Virginia, North Carolina,
and her husband moved to the territory. They traveled on a covered wagon, and encountered many bandits5. She refers to the times that the bandits would try to steal their horses, and after that night they would stay up through the night to keep
The story is told from the omniscient first person point of view. The man has come across this snake while he is out on a walk through the desert. Both the man and the snake had no intentions of harming the other at first, “My first instinct was to let him go his way and I would go mine…”. Then the man puts into perspective that he needs to be the protector of the other people that live with him, “But I reflected that there were children, dogs, horses at the ranch, as well as men and women lightly shod; my duty, plainly, was to kill the snake”.
After Antonia made the statement about making the land a good farm, there is a silence between her and Jim and then Antonia cries. She cries because she realizes that she has been put in a position to have to work almost like a slave just to get by. She realizes she must sacrifice all of her opportunities to learn and go to the schoolhouse just so her family can
Next, The Narrator is keen to emphasise to the hitchhiker “Hogs die hard.” Most murders would not carry such compassion toward a typicaly vulgar and horrid animal; however this man is a clear sympathiser for what seems to be only his hogs. Outside reasoning, the hitchhiker, challenges the Narrator by asserting “Never noticed, Shot and stuck them pretty quick, do right smart jerkin around but there dead by then;” the Narrator, awestruck by the now seemingly rude hitchhiker restated his original comment “Hogs die hard.” This momentary outburst from the hitchhiker shows how the man is set into believing how tough these animals of his are; even though they may not actually be tough at all. This book even hints that the hogs are nothing but symbolism for the man himself being a hog, to which stands to reason that the man believes he is much tougher than he actually is.
Willa Cather used symbolism a great deal in My Antonia. One example can be found in book one, chapter six. Antonia had found a grasshopper. “Tony made a warm nest for him in her hands; talked to him gayly and indulgently in Bohemian. Presently he began to sing for us — a thin, rusty little chirp.
There was a stove in the center of the hutment, and she wasn’t allowed to cook on it. During winter in this crammed space, ice, frost, and snow would blow in through the open windows, and make the poor residents suffer. These terrible conditions of overcrowding and a lack of sufficient homes created terrible conditions of suffering and personal sacrifice to the people of Oak
The water snake is a representative of a dream because of its periscope head preparing for an opportunity to achieve its goal. The heron portrays fate because it takes the water snake by its head to kill it instantly and unexpectedly, like fate crushes dreams. The incident with the heron and the snake foreshadows Lennie’s fate, which is also instant and unexpected. Curley’s wife is like the periscope head, preparing for an opportunity to become an actress, until Lennie started petting her hair and killed her. Lennie’s actions were similar to the actions of the heron and the actions of fate.
Most notably, the “glide of snake belly” is an allusion to a notorious green mamba biting and killing Ruth May (5). Her death provides Orleanna with the strength to leave the Congo and is of enough importance to be addressed in the first paragraph. Orleanna then references the destruction of Kilanga in Judges by a “single-file army of ants” (5). This was the climax of the novel and a major turning point for most characters.
These topic of adolescence through Jim shapes the meaning behind Cather’s story to be about life and
By looking at specific moments throughout the novel, we can see how Jim changed from a man whose life was unfulfilling, to a man whose life comprised of leadership and confidence. As shown in his interview with Harry Nilson, Jim and his family had a haunted past. “My old
Although this large, frightening snake is ultimately feared, and also causes the death of a young character in the novel, its is a symbol of the spirit of the jungle. After Ruth May’s sudden and tragic death, it suggests in the novel that she becomes the trees of the vast jungle watching over everyone. In the final chapter of the story it says “I forgive you, Mother. I shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers” (Kingsolver 543). This quotes gives us reason to believe that it is Ruth May that is narrating this final passage, and that she has become the trees and is now apart of
She had loved to hunt in the forests and swamps in the South, she also admired Mother Nature and it creatures that are part of it. Rawlings had always known that she had the blood of a farmer in her, but she never expected for it to be so hard and rough. Martha had always told her that if she had loved the land, then no one would ever starve. And for comfort, she didn’t really have much of it. Rawlings had an outhouse with no door