My Antonia, by Willa Cather, is a book tracing the story of a young man, Jim Burden, and his relationship with a young woman, Antonia Shimerda. Jim narrates the entire story in first person, relating accounts and memories of his childhood with Antonia. He traces his coming to the Nebraska where he and Antonia meet and grow up. Jim looks back on all of his childhood scenes with Antonia with nearly heartbreaking nostalgia. My Antonia, is a book that makes many parallels to the sadness and frailty, but also the quiet beauty in life, and leaves the reader with a sense of profound sorrow. One of the main ways Cather is able to invoke these emotions in the reader is through the ongoing theme of inevitable destiny and separation.

Cather sets the tone of the story at the very beginning, a young Jim Burden's parents have died leaving him to go to Nebraska to live with his grandparents. Right from the start Cather plants the seeds of abandonment, with the finality of death, in Jim's life. When he arrives in Nebraska he is very numb to life, but he is soon caught up in daily life on his grandparents farm. He is blissfully happy when he first meets Antonia. They become great friends and sh

All of this culminates in the final shock of Jim and Antonia not eloping and living happily ever after. The reader is caught up in Jim's optimism on life and Antonia's vigorous personality, expecting some passionate scene that never comes. Rather, they grow apart in a quiet way, and never discuss the possibility of a relationship, even though they have an incredibly strong one already. Finally, Antonia is completely out of Jim's reach and Jim realizes that she is gone from him with the "finality of death". He does not go into fits over this, rather he accepts it and looks at all the beautiful times he and Antonia shared. Much in the same way that he could marvel at winter"s beauty when all around him it brought down death and sickness.

Another way Cather expresses the inevitability of these separations is through the changing seasons. In summer everyone in the story is happy and Cather uses beautiful, descriptive imagery that brings to life a world that is alive and wonderful. Inevitably though, summer is followed by the sobering fact of winter. Winter, in Cather's narration that becomes synonymous with death, sickness and separation. Winter is always loathed by the characters in the story, but most of them also find a beauty in it. This suggests that in the inevitability of the sadness and partings of

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 885
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)