My Antonia and Moby-Dick

It's amazing how sludging through one book can make you so grateful for another book. I distinctly remember HATING My Antonia when I read it in high school. We just read it in my American Novel class though, and I loved it. I don't know if I've just matured enough to enjoy it and understand it or what, but I think it might have something to do with the fact that I had to sludge through Moby-Dick right before that.


After reading chapters upon chapters of descriptions of whales and the anatomy of whales, the pages of description about the prairie seemed like a breeze.

However, I did come up with some interesting thoughts for both books. Since My Antonia is freshest in my mind I'll do that one right now. For all the bad things about Willa Cather, she brings me back home. Her story is set in a small town in Nebraska at the end of the 19th century. I think part of the reason I liked it this time, is that I identify with the narrator. He's left Nebraska and is living in New York and suddenly he's very fond of Nebraska. That's how I am with Kansas. I wasn't necessarily a huge fan of it while I lived there, but since moving to Utah I've started to realize all of the absolutely amazing things about Kansas. At the same time, much like the narrator, I'm scared to go back. Because every time I go back, it's not the same Kansas that I've remembered.

On Saturday I was cleaning my room and found my English Portfolio from high school (a really big folder with every English paper/project I did through all four years) and was reading the paper I wrote for My Antonia. I'm not surprised that I got a B on it because I wrote about how Cather is writing about the inability of marriage to provide a meaningful relationship. When you look at most of the marriages that Jim sees in his childhood and youth that might be true, but his grandparents have an excellent marriage and so does Antonia at the end of the book. So basically my entire point was false. I don't know how on earth I even managed to get a B on that... oh well. I'm almost tempted to completely revise it and turn it in for a paper I need to write for my American Novel class.