Point of View

My Antonia is at once the story of Antonia Shimerda, a Bohemian immigrant to the Great Plains in the 1880s, and the story of Jim Burden, the narrator who creates his own image of Antonia. As Jim's memoirs, the novel is the re-creation of a middle-aged lawyer whose failed marriage leaves him unloved and alone. His childhood in Nebraska becomes, in retrospect, the happiest time of his life, the period of potential and expectancy before the disappointments of adulthood. The rose color cast and purple rhapsodies are products of this sentimental and romantic look backward. Ironically, despite the revisionist representation, it is clear that even as a child Jim is already alienated, different, orphaned. This use of a male narrator is typical in Cather's writing and has attracted much critical attention. It may account for Jim's inability to make Antonia his girlfriend or wife, even though...