Although Jim is an orphan in Willa Cather's My
Antonia, it is interesting that Antonia' family seems to be so much more
worse off than Jim. Hardship comes in many forms.
Jim has
lost his parents and was being sent to live with his grandparents in
Nebraska.
I
was ten years old then; I had lost both my father and my mother within a year, and my
Virginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparents, who lived in
Nebraska.
Jim is traveling by
train with Jake Marpole, someone who had worked on his father's farm. Neither one of
them had been on a train before. Jake buys everything anyone offers him, including
buttons, candy, oranges, etc. For Jim, he purchases a copy of "Life of Jesse James,"
which Jim greatly enjoys. Jim meets interesting people, and takes
turns reading and watching the landscape pass by. It is at this point that Jim first
hears of Antonia and her family. When they arrive at Black Hawk, Otto Fuchs is waiting
for Jim to take him to his grandparents' home. Jim's first sight of the Shimerda family
is as they are being packed into a "farm-wagon" which will take them to their new home.
When Jim gets to their homestead, his welcome at his grandparents' home is a warm
one.
A tall
woman, with wrinkled brown skin and black hair, stood looking down at me; I knew that
she must be my grandmother. She had been crying...Then in a very different tone she
said, as if to herself, "My how you look like your father!" and I remembered that my
father had been her little
boy...
Jim arrival is
pleasant and the home in which he enters and in which he now belongs is safe,
comfortable and pleasant.
In Chapter Three, we learn about
the Shimerdas; they are the first Bohemian family to have moved into the area. They do
not have much: the house is hardly enough to protect them from the weather. Jim and his
grandmother go to welcome them with food. The only man who can speak their language is
Krajiek, and he tells them whatever he wants (not necessarily what is best for
them)—they are at his mercy for all of their needs. The father is very frail and will
not be able to care much for his family. The "house" that Krajiek has sold them
is...
...no
better than a badger hole; no proper dugout at all. And I hear he's made them pay twenty
dollars for his old cookstove that ain't worth
ten.
Krajiek has also sold
them thin livestock—two boney horses and an ox. In essence, he has cheated them. Even
though he can speak their language, he has taken terrible advantage of them and they
have no money left.
While Jim travels on the train with a
sense of excitement for his future, Antonia's family arrives with fears and apprehension
about what the future holds for them. And while Jim has good reason to be optimistic,
Antonia (while seeming not to have that same reason), appears to
easily find reasons to laugh, and also has a natural ability to learn. (Her father asks
Jim's grandmother to teach Antonia English, and this task comes to rest with
Jim.) Having very little, the Shimerdas will depend on their neighbors' generosity to
survive.
Jim leads a comfortable life compared to the
Shimerdas. Jim's grandparents will do their best to help the Bohemian family find ways
to survive. The two youngsters face very different situations at first, but they will
develop a common bond that will last for many years.
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