My Antonia

On Christmas morning, the hired men come in from feeding the livestock before they sit down for breakfast. Grandfather Burden reads from the Bible, and as Jim listens, “it all seemed like something that had happened lately, and near at hand” (84). Jim finds his grandfather’s prayers particularly fascinating because Grandfather Burden is not typically talkative. Grandfather Burden includes a prayer for the impoverished in big cities, where he says the difficulties are harder than on the prairie. Later, Otto writes a letter in his native language to his mother, which he does every Christmas.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, Mr. Shimerda arrives at the door to thank them for the Christmas presents and for Grandmother Burden’s many kindnesses. Mr. Shimerda enjoys sitting in the comfortable atmosphere of the Burdens’ home, and Jim guesses that Mr. Shimerda has no peace in the crowded dugout where the family resides. When Jim lights the candles on the Christmas tree, Mr. Shimerda crosses himself and kneels by the tree. Grandmother Burden is worried that Mr. Shimerda’s Catholic stance will offend her Protestant husband, who holds narrow religious views. Mr. Shimerda stays for supper, and when he departs, he makes the sign of the cross over Jim.

During a brief interval of good weather in early January, Mrs. Shimerda pays a visit to the Burdens’ home for the first time, accompanied by Ántonia. Mrs. Shimerda examines the Burdens’ furnishings, “commenting upon them to her daughter in an envious, complaining tone” (88-9). Grandmother Burden gives her an iron pot, and Jim does not agree with what he perceives as his grandmother’s capitulation to Mrs. Shimerda. Annoyed by Mrs. Shimerda, Jim is unsympathetic when Ántonia tells him that her father does not look well and will not play his violin in America. Jim responds that people should not immigrate if they do not like this country.

After the Shimerdas leave, Jim tells his grandmother that he hopes Mrs. Shimerda will never return. Grandmother Burden understands Jim’s sentiments but tells him that no one never knows how he or she will behave when they become desperately impoverished.

On Jim’s 11th birthday, which takes place on January 20, a blizzard begins, the worst his grandparents have seen in their 10 years in Nebraska.

On the morning of January 22, Jim awakens to his grandmother’s shrill voice knowing something has happened. Behind the stove, a man is asleep on the bench, covered with a blanket. Grandfather Burden informs Jim that Mr. Shimerda is dead; Ambrosch arrived in the middle of the night with the news, and the hired hands went back with him to help with the situation. Ambrosch is now sleeping in the Burdens’ kitchen.

Otto describes how Mr. Shimerda died by suicide. He dressed impeccably but removed his silk neckcloth. He told his family he was going out rabbit-hunting, but instead, he laid on his bed in the barn and pulled the gun’s trigger with his toe. Grandfather Burden states that Mr. Shimerda’s body cannot be touched until the coroner can be brought from Black Hawk, which will take several days in the freezing weather. Otto rides off to try to fetch the Catholic priest and the coroner “with no roads to guide him” (99) in the storm. Jim sees a side of Ambrosch he has never seen before as Ambrosch silently prays with his rosary.

Jim’s grandparents set out for the difficult journey on horseback to the Shimerdas’ place, accompanied by Jake and Ambrosch, to take the girls some food. Jim remains at home, where he reflects on Mr. Shimerda’s life before he came to America. He feels as if the dead man’s “exhausted spirit, so tired of cold and crowding and the struggle” (101) is resting in the Burdens’ quiet home before finding its way back to Bohemia. When Jim’s grandparents and the hired hands return, Jim learns that the Shimerdas rotate praying beside Mr. Shimerda because they believe his soul is in the torment of Purgatory until they pray it out.

When Otto returns from Black Hawk the next day, he reports that the coroner will arrive at the Shimerdas’ in the afternoon, but the missionary priest is 100 miles away, and there are no running trains. Instead, Otto brings Anton Jelinek, a handsome, sincere Bohemian in his early twenties, who is homesteading near Black Hawk. Dressed in a wolfskin coat and felt boots, Jelinek comes to provide assistance to his countrymen, and he seems “like a miracle in the midst of that grim business” (104), and Jim and his grandfather admire Jelinek’s “frank, manly faith” (107).

Jelinek works with the Burdens’ team of farm horses to break a road through to the Shimerdas’ place, and Otto, the only cabinetmaker in the neighborhood, builds a wooden coffin for Mr. Shimerda. The postmaster and the few neighbors stop by the Burdens’ residence for details about the suicide: They are concerned about where Mr. Shimerda will be buried since they believe that suicides are not permitted burial in a Catholic graveyard. Grandmother Burden is indignant when she learns that the Norwegians decide that Mr. Shimerda cannot be buried in their church graveyard. Everyone is shocked by Mrs. Shimerda’s decision to bury her husband under the stake that marks the southwest corner of their land because Grandfather Burden explains that in the future two roads will cross there. Grandfather Burden learns that it is a Bohemian superstition to bury a suicide at a crossroads.

Mr. Shimerda is buried five days after he died, and Jelinek and Ambrosch spend all day chopping the frozen ground with axes to dig his grave. When Jim and his grandmother arrive at the Shimerdas’ place, Ántonia sobs about her dear papa and throws her arms around Jim, who can “feel her heart breaking” (115). Neighbors ride from miles around to attend the burial, anxious about another snowstorm beginning. Mrs. Shimerda places an open prayer book on her husband’s body and makes the sign of the cross on his bandaged head. Yulka cries, afraid to touch her father’s bandage. When Mrs. Shimerda tries to force Yulka toward the coffin, Grandmother Burden interferes, telling the mother that Yulka is too young and frightened. The coffin is nailed shut and taken in a wagon to the gravesite.

Jelinek persuades Mrs. Shimerda to ask Grandfather Burden to say a prayer in English so the neighbors can understand. Jim thinks that his grandfather gives a remarkable prayer, asking God to soften the heart of any man who had mistreated “the stranger come to a far country” (117). Afterwards, Grandmother Burden asks Otto to sing a hymn, and all the attenders join in. Years later, Jim never sees Mr. Shimerda’s grave “without emotion, and in all that country it was the spot most dear” (119) to him.

Spring arrives after the hard winter, and the prairie has a warm, playful wind. Neighbors helped build a new log house for the Shimerdas in March, and now they use their old cave as a cellar. The Shimerdas now have a chicken house; a windmill, bought on credit; and a milk cow purchased from Grandfather Burden for 10 dollars with 15 more due when they harvest their first crop. Jim teaches Yulka to read since Ántonia is busy with field work. Mrs. Shimerda tries to pry information out of Jim about when to begin planting corn, assuming that his elders are withholding such valuable secrets from her.

Jim waits to see Ántonia when she returns from her workday plowing with a team of horses and notes that she has grown much older in eight months. Although only 15 years old, Ántonia is tall and strong, her skin browned by the sun, with a “draught-horse neck” like “the peasant women in all old countries” (122). When Jim tells her that his grandmother suggests Ántonia attend school, Ántonia retorts that she has no time to learn because she can work like a man now to create a good farm for the Shimerdas. Then, Jim notices that Ántonia is crying, and she asks him to tell her all the good things he learns at school.

When Jim has supper with the Shimerdas, he becomes annoyed by Mrs. Shimerda’s attempt to lower the price of the milk cow and Ambrosch’s dishonesty about having broken Grandfather Burden’s saw. Jim is disturbed by the fact that Ántonia now eats noisily “like a man” (125); Grandmother Burden had warned that heavy field work would coarsen Ántonia, and Jim knows that Ambrosch makes Ántonia do some chores that are inappropriate for females. Ántonia is proud of her strength and makes Jim feel that she is too grown up to have time for him. However, Grandfather Burden is pleased with her, indicating that she will help her future husband advance in the world.

When Jim starts school, he does not find schoolmates very interesting, but he feels that “by making comrades of them, [he] was getting even with Ántonia for her indifference” (117). Ántonia admires Ambrosch as the head of their household and treats Jim as if he is a little boy. One Sunday, Jake and Jim ride to the Shimerdas’ to retrieve Grandfather Burden’s horse collar, which Ambrosch had not returned. Ambrosch nastily offers a badly used collar gnawed by rats, and Jake gets angry because the collar is not in as good a condition as the one Jake had loaned to him. Ambrosch tries to viciously kick Jake in the stomach; in retaliation, Jake hits Ambrosch on the head. Mrs. Shimerda and Ántonia scream and come running. Mrs. Shimerda threatens to go to the law; Ántonia tells Jim and Jake that they are no longer her friends. Jake shouts about their ingratitude and tells Jim, “These foreigners ain’t the same. You can’t trust ‘em to be fair.” (130). Jim angrily vows never to be friends with them again.

Grandfather Burden does not participate in the feud with the Shimerdas: One of the Shimerdas’ new horses gets colic, and he helps to heal it. Grandfather Burden arranges a reconciliation with the Shimerdas by hiring Ambrosch for reaping his wheat and employing Ántonia to help in the kitchen. When Jim and his grandfather visit the Shimerdas’ place, they find Mrs. Shimerda trying to hide the milk cow for which money is still due. Jim’s grandfather tells her that she may keep the cow and need not pay him any more money. The shocked woman takes his hand and kisses it, “somehow that seemed to bring the Old World very close” (136). The Shimerdas seem happy to make peace, and Mrs. Shimerda knits a pair of socks for Jake.

The intense July heat makes excellent corn, and Grandmother Burden and Jim enjoy the weeks that Ántonia works in the Burden kitchen. Every morning, Jim and Ántonia gather vegetables in the garden for dinnertime. Ántonia takes off the sunbonnet that Grandmother Burden makes her and joyfully exclaims that she prefers working out-of-doors rather than in the house: She does not care that Grandmother Burden thinks such work makes her like a man. One night during a beautiful electric storm, Ántonia and Jim watch the clouds from the chicken-house roof: With the lightning flashes, the sky “looked like deep blue water, with the sheen of moonlight on it” (139). Ántonia wishes that her father had lived to see the summer. Jim asks why Ántonia is not always nice like this, and Ántonia replies: “Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us” (140).