Friday, January 2, 2015

My Antonia January 2015

January 2015 Book Selection

The Fairfax Library Book Discussion Group will meet Thursday, January 8th at 7 p.m. to discuss our January book My Antonia by Willa Cather.


Discussion questions are below.

Here are some links for additional background and information:



Willa Cather Foundation with links to info about Red Cloud, NE and the prairies

Willa Cather’s letters have only been opened to the public since 2013. Read a review of those letters here.


Coming up, we have the following books to look forward to reading:


Thurs. Feb. 12          Tenth of December by George Saunders

Thurs. Mar. 12          The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Thurs. Apr 9              At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón (OBOM choice)

Thurs. May 14           The Good Lord Bird by James McBride


Thanks for reading with us. I look forward to seeing you at the Fairfax Library.

Beth Bailey-Gates
Friends of the Fairfax Library




DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
My Antonia by Willa Cather

  1. Why might Willa Cather begin her novel with an introduction from an unnamed female acquaintance of Jim Burden? What effect does this device have on the reader?
  2. Why does Jim title his manuscript "My Ántonia"? What does he mean when he states, "It's through myself that I knew and felt her"?
  3. This book is often seen as a coming-of-age novel. How does Ántonia challenge Jim's growing masculinity?
  4. When does Ántonia's father call her "My Ántonia"? How deeply does his death change her life? Why does it affect Jim so much?
  5. Do you feel the stories narrated by others—such as the story of the young bride and the wolves—are essential to the novel? Why or why not?
  6. How is the land a character in this novel? Is it the hero?
  7. What qualities do Ántonia and Lena share? How do they differ? Why does Jim pursue a romance with Lena and not Ántonia?
  8. Jim's family is low-church Protestant; the Shimerda family is Roman Catholic. What role does religion play in the novel?
  9. Is Ántonia triumphant at the end? Is Jim?
  10. Why do you suppose the image of the plough in the setting sun has become one of Cather's most memorable symbols?
  11. Cather once said that "one's strongest emotions and one's most vivid mental pictures are acquired before one is fifteen." How is this true for Jim Burden and his view of Ántonia?
  12. The novel's epigraph, "Optima dies ... prima fugit," is cited by Jim later in the novel: "the best days are the first to flee." How is this a fitting summation of the novel's theme?
  13. Why is getting "a picture" of Ántonia important enough to Jim and the narrator of the introduction that they decide to write about her? (p. 5
  14. When Jim and Ántonia meet as children, why do they become such close friends?
  15. Why does Pavel's story about the wolves and the wedding party affect Jim and Ántonia so deeply?
  16. Who or what does Cather intend us to see as responsible for Mr. Shimerda's suicide?
  17. Why does Cather repeatedly include images of people and objects silhouetted against the sun? What does the vision of the plough mean to Jim?
  18. Why does Jim prefer "the hired girls" to the Black Hawk girls? Is Frances right when she says that Jim puts "a kind of glamour" over the hired girls? (p. 175)
  19. What is Cather suggesting about gender roles with the characters Frances, Antonia, and Lena?
  20. Why is Antonia so determined to keep going to the dancing tent that she would rather leave her job with the Harlings than stop dancing?
  21. Why does the incident at Wick Cutter's house make Jim feel that he never wants to see Ántonia again and that he hated her almost as much as he hated Cutter
  22. Why does Jim leave Lena Lingard in the end, despite how much he enjoys being with her?
  23. Why does Jim tell Antonia, "I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister—anything that a woman can be to a man"? (p. 240)
  24. What does Jim mean when he says that "Cuzak had been made the instrument of Ántonia's special mission" (p. 270)? What is her mission?
  25. How have immigrants enriched American culture? How have they been transformed by it?
  26. Would you agree with Virgil and Jim that the earliest days are the best and the most quickly gone?
  27. Do you agree that happiness consists of being "dissolved into something complete and great" (p. 20)?