The Magnificent Plains and Her People: My Antonia

My Antonia

by Willa Cather

Originally, I put this book on First Son's English novels list for senior year. Because First Son started with the beta high school Mater Amabilis plans, he only had senior year for novels, so I wanted to choose only three of the six or seven recommended. (Find the current high school English plans here.) I knew I wanted this one because the language is so evocative of the ethos and environment of the Great Plains, appropriate for a Kansan homeschool.

I listened to this book on CD from the library in Boston more than twenty years ago, and loved it, so I decided I should read it again.

The narrator moves out to the Nebraska as a young boy, recently orphaned and moving in with his grandparents.

As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colour of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running. (p. 12)

His life is intertwined with a Bohemian family who were on the same train. Antonia, a few years older than he, becomes his dear and life-long friend, though they are often separated. His life away from the land he loves and the people he holds dear seems odd to me, but it allows a perspective of treasured memories and homecomings.

As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like a great golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, the moon rose in the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale silver and streaked with rose colour, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, resting on opposite edges of the world. (p. 206)

Life on the prairies was often difficult, and the book doesn't shirk from tragedy. If you are handing this book to a student without reading it, you should be aware there is a suicide. You may also wish to pre-read the story of Peter and Pavel (in chapter VIII of Book I, The Shimerdas).

She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heard came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions.

It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races. (pp. 226-227)

 This book was even more beautiful than I remembered, and I am grateful I took the time to read it again. In the end, I let First Son choose between this book and Death Comes for the Archbishop, because by that point we knew he was considering the seminary, and he chose the other one. Which is also beautiful!

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