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

The Spirit of Antonia in My Antonia The animateness of Antonia Shimerdas, the important character in Willa Cathers My Antonia, could easily be judged a failure. Perhaps measures of wealth, career, spectator and slam f tout ensemble short when held next to Antonia. If unrivaled could categorize life by that unnamable light or nature which Antonia never loses, she would surpass all who belittle her achievements in other areas. Where the spirit comes from, no one potbelly say. Perhaps an ethereal or god-like being takes residence in the persons internality(Helmick 46). Some may say its simply the chemistry of human beings to quit in levels of energy, which manifests itself as vigor and enthusiasm for living. But veritable(a) one who attributes the undying light to an abundance of hormones or simply luck in life will ultimately hit a barrier to such a theory, as is the case with the timeless heroine, Antonia Shimerdas(Helmick 48). Only rarely does the spirit of life embody itself in the eyes of a woman or man. Strangers 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 first concourse his lifelong friend, the narrator, Jim, is struck by her big and warm eyes, which bring forrader images of the sun shining on brown pools in the wood (Cather 22). homogeneous many children, the young Antonia exudes a fascination with all natures things. Yet her club with the land continues to flourish at the time when other children climb mow from the trees and enter 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 carcass unnamed, but is forever cherished as a testimony to what it direction 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. capital of Nebraska University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Fussell, Edwin. Frontier. American Literature 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 font Language Association of America. 1989. Trilling, Lionel. Willa Cather. Blooms Modern Critical Views 7-15.