In the following essay, Dykema-Vander Ark, a doctoral candidate at Michigan State University, looks at how the stones of Jim Burden and Antonia intertwine throughout Cather's novel to address themes of childhood friendship permanence and the quest to find meaning in life.

"I first heard of Antonia on what seemed to me an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America" So begins Jim Burden's story of "his" Antonia, and it is no accident that Jim's recollections are rooted in a journey. Willa Cather's My Antonia was inspired by her own travels back to her childhood home of Red Cloud, Nebraska, and the novel is full of change, transition, and travel. Many of its characters are immigrants, classified by their very movement, and the divergent Journeys through life of Jim and Antonia are its central focus. Jim's narration of his story is, itself, a Journey...