My Antonia Essay: The Spirit of Antonia -- My Antonia Essays

The Spirit of Antonia in My Antonia The life of Antonia Shimerdas, the main character in Willa Cathers My Antonia, could easily be judged a failure. Perhaps measures of wealth, career, watcher and love fall short when held next to Antonia. If one could categorize life by that unnamable light or spirit which Antonia never loses, she would surpass all who disparage her achievements in other areas. Where the spirit comes from, no one can say. Perhaps an ethereal or god-like being takes residence in the persons heart(Helmick 46). Some whitethorn say its simply the chemistry of human beings to vary in levels of energy, which manifests itself as vigor and enthusiasm for living. But even one who attributes the undying light to an teemingness of hormones or simply luck in life will ultimately hit a barrier to such a theory, as is the case with the unfailing heroine, Antonia Shimerdas(Helmick 48). Only rarely does the spirit of life embody itself in the eyes of a woman or man. Stranger s recognize a striking presence in the eyes of Antonia even as a young child. Her penetrating eyes, like mirrors of the soul, remind a passenger conductor of the gleam which emanates from a new dollar. Similarly, when startle meeting his lifelong friend, the narrator, Jim, is struck by her big and warm eyes, which bring forth images of the sun shining on brown pools in the wood (Cather 22). similar many children, the young Antonia exudes a fascination with all natures things. Yet her connection with the land continues to flourish at the time when other children climb down from the trees and enclose the realm of adulthood. In an arduous life of poverty and toil, Antonia embraces her love of the land, harnessing her passio... ...kept, they could not diminish that which made Antonia blaze-her Inner Light, whose mysterious source remains unnamed, but is unceasingly cherished as a testimony to what it means to truly live. Works Cited and Consulted Bloom, Harold, ed. Willa Cathers My Antonia. New York Chelsea House Publishers. 1987. Bourne, Randolph. Review of My Antonia. Murphys Critical Essays 145-147. Cather, Willa. My Antonia. Lincoln University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Fussell, Edwin. Frontier. American books and the American West. Princeton Princeton UP, 1965. Helmick, Evelyn. The Mysteries of Antonia. Blooms Willa Cathers . . . , 109-119. Rosowski, Susan J., ed. Approaches to Teaching Cathers My Antonia. New York The Modern Language Association of America. 1989. Trilling, Lionel. Willa Cather. Blooms Modern Critical Views 7-15.