Create individual responses to the below discussion posts. Insert assertive responses and quotes from the book, Willa Cather’s My Antonia., to highlight understanding. Responses should be 50 – 60 words each.
Main Post 1:
Hola- hola Coca-cola!
I welcome everyone to our first and only novel of the semester, I could not wait to get started on this book! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have.
I am going to get started with some fun facts about our author, Willa Cather (1873-1947). Cather was one of the country’s most successful journalists and greatest novelists, and My Ántonia is considered one of her greatest works; it was, in fact, nominated for the first-ever Pulitzer Prize but didn’t win it -_- tho she did earn a Pulitzer Price later with One of Ours, another of her works. Cather lived the last 40 years of her life in New York City, she was an intelligent, opinionated and strong independent woman (during the 1900s!).
The intro of My Ántonia is told by a misterious narrator who connects us with the narrator of Book I (“The Shimerdas”), Jim Burden.
Why do you think at the last minute Jim Burden changed his mind and decided to add the word “My”, how do you interpret it at this early point?
Happy reading!
Post 2:
Hello classmates! Hope you are all doing well and enjoying the beginning of My Antonia!
Throughout the novel so far, Cather is very descriiptive of the environment in which the characters are in and how it impacts them, specifically, the American Prairie.
Cather writes about Jim’s experience taking in the prairie “As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the color of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.” (Book 1 pg 16)
My question to you is: how has your experience of nature and your environment shaped you? How do you think it impacted the characters in the beginning of Cather’s novel? Feel free to share any other thoughts about nature and the impact of it on us!
Post 3:
Hello everyone!
Sorry for the late post but I hope everyone is stay safe these days.
Well, I’m surprisingly almost done with the book. I felt like I got engulfed when reading the book that I just couldn’t put it down.
So, I have 1 question for everyone: Who is your favorite character and why?
(I will post more questions later on in the day. I just wanted to start off my first post)
My favorite character is Lena lingard who is an Norwegian immigrant’s daughter and a friend of Ántonia. Even though men are attracted to her beauty, she refused their marriage proposals because she doesn’t want to give up her freedom. She craves her independence. This is my favorite kind of character in books. I felt a women empowerment aura coming from her
Post 4:
In My Ántonia, the first narrator is an unnamed speaker who has grown up with Jim and meets him years later on a train. In response, jim tells his story to this mysterious figure, who then disappears from the book as soon as the introduction is done.
How does this first narrator’s (unnamed speaker’s) disappearance signal other withdrawals within this book, which at times bears a resemblance to a series of departures? Why might Cather have chosen to support her narrative in this fashion?
