The two keep up, Jim shunning younger girls for Ántonia and her friend Lena, to whom he is attracted. Harling, teaching her domestic arts she has not learned on the farm. Later, Jim’s grandparents move to town and Ántonia also takes up a job, working as a housekeeper with Mrs. Their friendship continues in the moments she is free, including an incident in which Jim, who happens to be carrying a shovel, kills a deadly and huge rattler, becoming a hero to her and all. Ántonia and her brother Ambrosch are left to eke out a living, and they do, by Ambrosch brute force and Ántonia’s hard work, through which she becomes somehow even more vibrant. Tragedy quickly shadows Ántonia’s life when her sickly and unhappy father, several weeks after a beautiful Christmas Day visit, takes his life.
And thus begins a deep friendship between the two lasting a lifetime. Jim is quickly enlisted to teach Ántonia English so she can help with the family’s transactions in the community. This story, described in the opening narrative as a manuscript describing his friendship with Ántonia, given to a friend from the same town in Nebraska months after a train ride in which they had spoken of her. Ántonia Shimerda was a young girl, four years older, of Bohemian immigrants living nearby.
Jim Burden was an orphaned boy who came to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. Summary: Jim Burden’s narrative of his relationship growing up on the prairie with Ántonia Shimerda, one he would live with throughout his life. Boston: Mariner, 1995 (Originally published in 1918, no publisher web link available). My Ántonia, Willa Cather (Foreword Kathleen Norris).
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