People's personalities are affected by their surrounding environments. Those who were raised in the country possess a unique love for the land, which makes them feel at home, even after moving into the city. Creating childhood memories from growing up in the environment of the Nebraska plains shaped Jim Burden's character in Willa Cather's My Antonia.

The introduction of the novel foreshadows the significance the prairie had on Jim as he reminisced with the narrator about what it was like to grow up in a little prairie farm. During Jim's train ride to Nebraska, the site of the wide rolling plains scared him making him feel lonely and isolated. Jim's identity is so undeveloped that when confronted with the vast sky and prairie he feels erased and blotted out. He had left his past and had to become an entirely new person in a new country. As he...