My Ántonia Themes

(Click the themes infographic to download.) The natural landscape and the weather both play a large part in setting the atmosphere and depicting the actions and mindsets of the characters in My...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) My Ántonia takes the form of a fictional memoir, told by adult Jim Burden looking back on his youth in the American West around the turn of the 19th c...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) Many of the characters in My Ántonia are immigrants who have come to the American West from their home countries to make a living farming. They come f...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) My Ántonia subverts traditional gender roles, both for women and for men. Set around the turn of the century in the American West, the novel surprisin...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) My Ántonia explores social issues in a small town in Nebraska around 1900. The central social conflict arises in the form of racist attitudes toward t...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) My Ántonia can be considered a novel of historical fiction (see "Genre") in that it paints a portrait of the culture of a specific time and place: the...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) Love is a tricky business in My Ántonia, as it's never exactly clear just what the novel's narrator (Jim) feels for his childhood friend, Ántonia. Wh...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) My Ántonia upsets many traditional gender exceptions, but one in particular is the expectation that men be active, decisive characters. The novel's na...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) My Ántonia tells the story of white settlers in the American West around 1900. The characters deal with many different forms of suffering. The natural...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) My Ántonia is as much a coming of age story as any other genre. Protagonist Jim Burden begins the novel as a ten-year-old boy and the story follows hi...