Truly, a fascinating cross of beautiful wrought iron, it marks the grave of a baby girl, named Carolina. At nine months, she would have been getting ready to walk. It is in the East end, and older part of a cemetery. Walking into the front of this cemetery, one would never have dreamed there would be a marker like this one. Most are of your typical granite, names of grandparents, siblings and even parents of children, with whom I grew up. All very important reminders of past memories. This cross, however was unique. Furthermore, the name, Carolina, is not commonly given to post-war girls of Mid America, and Klingelhoets, whose origin I couldn’t find, is not a surname you come across everyday.
Most of all, this marker is an indicator of the unknown past of a place I thought I knew so well, and a place whose mundane and boring environment from which I was so ever eager to flee. Coming back here, though, I find out things, I would never have dreamed of and glimpses into a past that leaves so much to the imagination. Whoever the Klingelhoets were, they certainly left a beautiful reminder of a child they loved, who walked out of their lives, much to soon.

In Book I, ‘The Shimerda’s’, Cather continues to set up scenes, develop characters and unravel the relationships of her story.  Told through the eyes of Jimmy Burden, he describes in part VIII the misfortunes of money and health, that fall upon the two young Russian neighbors of the Shimerda’s.  After a description of how Peter goes into terrible debt, mostly because of his creditor, Wick Cutter, a “merciless Black Hawk money-lender, the action is set in motion when Ántonia and her father, Mr. Shimerda come to Jimmy’s grandmother’s house to get buttermilk.  As Jimmy describes. “where they lingered…until the sun was low”.  While they are there, Peter the Russian, comes to relate the unfortunate news of Pavel, who after having fallen in his chores, began to cough up blood and became bedridden.  He wants Mr. Shimerda to come, as Pavel has taken a turn for the worse and cannot get out of bed.  Jimmy, upon hearing this news, asks his grandmother if he can go with them.  In the first person, Jimmy explains, “My plan must have seemed very foolish to her, but she was often large-minded about humoring the desires of other people.” Large-minded is a perfect word to describe an open-minded person. The goodness of Grandma’s character continues to shine through as Jimmy, in his storytelling, elaborates, “She asked Peter to wait a moment, and when she came back from the kitchen she brought a bag of sandwiches and doughnuts for us.”   Thus, Jimmie would not have to go without supper and the others would also benefit from her generosity.

The treatment of nature in Cather’s book, is one way she shows the smallness of people in the universe.  As they are moving along in the wagon, Jimmy describes, “After the sun sank, a cold wind sprang up and moaned over the prairie.”  Developing an almost seemingly amorous relationship between him and Ántonia, he says, “We burrowed down in the straw and curled up close together, watching the angry red die out of the west and stars begin to shine in the clear, windy sky.”  Peter is anxious about his brother, Peter.  They continue down the road and the description of the ever powerful nature is resumed.  “Up there the stars grew magnificently bright.”  Speaking of himself and Ántonia, he says, “Though we had come from such different parts of the world, in both of us there was some dusky superstition that those shining groups have their influence upon what is and what is not to be.”

When they arrive to the house, again the description of nature sets the tone for the dreary state of affairs.    “The wind shook the doors and windows impatiently, then swept on again, singing throughout the big spaces.  Each gust, as it bore down, rattled the panes, and swelled off like the others.  They made me think of defeated armies, retreating; or of ghosts who were trying desperately to get in for shelter, and then went moaning on.”  Then, “the coyotes turned up their whining howl”.  In these descriptions, there is another narrator, omniscient in character, showing how Nature itself is a character, playing its part in the series of events. Setting the background and creating mood, and presence, in the dreadful illness of Pavel.  These interludes with the stars, the sun, the wind and the howling wolves, tells us these are not always the thoughts of Jimmy, but the artistic expression of Cather herself, working her artistry, through Jimmy.  It is, like painting a picture of emotion, with her words.  Nature mimics the fears and apprehension of the characters.

When Ántonia meets Jimmie Burden for the first time, she grabs his hand and they run at top speed out to the Squaw Creek.  They arrive there breathless, and Ántonia’s little sister runs with them.  Her name was Yulka. Antonia wanted to give Jimmie a silver ring she wore on her middle finger.  Jimmie insisted he wouldn’t take the ring.  He didn’t want it.  In his words he felt, “there was something reckless and extravagant about her wishing to give it away to a boy she had never seen before.”

Willa Cather, masterfully develops character, plot and movement in the course of her novel, My Ántonia.  Her choice of words describe who the character are, what they are like physically, what they are wearing and every physical attribute, which helps to define their character.  Their personality is defined by the way they speak and interact  with other characters and the way they respond to their environment.  In turn the setting is described  with a highly selective and sumptuous vocabulary.

“I sat down in the middle of the garden, where snakes could scarcely approach unseen, and leaned my back against a warm yellow pumpkin… All about me giant grasshoppers, twice as big as any I had ever seen, were doing acrobatic feats among the dried vines…The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers….I kept as still as I could.  Nothing happened.  I did not expect anything to happen.  I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more.  I was entirely happy.  Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge.  At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.  When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”