My Ántonia Memory and the Past Quotes Page 1
Citations follow this format: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
| Quote #1 I was ten years old then; I had lost both my father and mother within a year, and my Virginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparents, who lived in Nebraska. (1.1.1) |
Because Jim has just been orphaned, an entirely new phase of his life begins as he heads out to live with his grandparents. Moving West to Nebraska represents a "journey" for him in more ways than one.
| Quote #2 There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. (1.1.10) |
The land is, like Jim, raw material out of which something must form. We see how appropriate the empty Nebraskan landscape is for a coming-of-age story. The country – or at least this part of the country – is coming of age along with Jim.
| Quote #3 Once, while [Peter] was looking at Ántonia, he sighed and told us that if he had stayed at home in Russia perhaps by this time he would have had a pretty daughter of his own to cook and keep house for him. (1.5.9) |
Jim isn't the only one hung up on nostalgia for the past. The other characters, too, share his idealistic, romanticized view of days and places gone by.
