The First Narrator in MA is an unnamed speaker who grew up with Jim Burden and meets him years later on a train. Jim tells his story in response to this mysterious figure, who disappears from the novel as soon as the introduction is over.
- Why might Willa Cather begin her novel with an introduction from an unnamed female acquaintance of Jim Burden?
- How does this first narrator's disappearance foreshadow other with drawls within this novel, which at times resembles a series of departures, the events, the mood and the tone of the novel?
- what effect does this device have on the reader? Why might Cather have chosen to frame her narrative this way?
- Why does Jim title his manuscript "My Antonia"? What does he mean when he states, "It's through myself that I knew and felt her"?
Book 1: Chapters 1 - 3
At the start of the novel, Jim Burden is moving to his grandparents' farm new Black Hawk Nebraska as a result of his parents death. Once there, Jim learns that a new family of Bohemian immigrants, the Shimerdas, had moved into a home near Black Hawk. The Shimerdas' journey to their new home was difficult: they were cheated out of money upon purchasing their new farm, inhibited by language barriers and struggled against the hardships of being a new immigrant in the strange and untamed land.
- Compare and contrast Jim Burden's move out west with the Shimerdas move. How would the voice of the book differ if Mr. Shimerda, Jake, Antonia or the grandmother wrote the first few chapters?
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