ELIT 48C Class #9

Lie or Lay? What is the difference?

Lie and Lay

• To lay is to place something or put something down, and it must be followed by a noun or pronoun, a thing; to lie is to recline. A lie is an untruth, and to lie also means "to tell an untruth." Examples: Lay that package on the mantel, will you please? Bridgette would like to lie in the hammock near the pool. Sometimes it's tempting to lie when you're in trouble, but a lie only makes things worse. (Hint: Lay sounds like place; lie sounds like recline. But be careful: lay is also the past tense of the verb to lie: Jay lay on the couch all day yesterday.)

AGENDA

Review Historical Context

LectureMy Antonia Books II and III

Themes and Style

DiscussionQHQs

Review: Historical Context

Increasing Immigrant Population

Resistance to Immigrants: cheap labor and untrustworthy

The Homestead Act: 160 acres

Opposing Theories: The “melting pot” versus the “salad bowl”

Frederick Jackson Turner and the image of the American West

DISCUSSION Theme: a main idea or an underlying

meaning of a literary work that may be stated directly or indirectly.

Style: the way a writer writes; the technique which an individual author uses in his writing.

My Ántonia Style: Realism

Jim Burden gives voice to a romanticism, or at least an overly sentimental or positive outlook that seems close to romanticism. The homesteading German, Danish, Bohemian, and Scandinavian settlers were the embodiment of a cultural tradition Cather cherished. However, the novel is saved from sentimentality by the evocative depiction of the harsh realities of pioneer and immigrant life and the complexity of the characters, who are rarely, if ever, only sympathetic or only despicable. British modernist E.M. Forster coined the phrase “round” to describe these complex characters.

Style: Imagery and Symbols

Cather's sparse but allusive style relies on the quality and depth of her images. She consciously uses the land, its colors, seasons, and changes to suggest emotions and moods.

Summer stands for life (Ántonia can’t imagine who would want to die during the summer)

Winter stands for death (Mr. Shimerda commits suicide during the winter).

Animals are used as symbols of the struggle for survival experienced by the Shimerdas during their first winter. The essential grotesque image of the cost of this struggle is that of Mr. Shimerda’s corpse frozen in his blood

His coat and neck cloth and boots are removed and carefully laid by for the survivors.

Other Images or symbols?

Imagery and Symbols

Themes: Coming of Age

• My Ántonia is a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story, that

traces Jim Burden's development from the age of ten.

• It begins when he is orphaned and newly transplanted to his

grandparents' farm in Nebraska, where he first feels erased.

• His escape into romanticism first takes the form of a young boy's

fascination with outlaws, such as Jesse James, and lost

adventurers, such as the Swiss Family Robinson.

• As an adolescent, he remains estranged although conventional.

Bored by the sameness of his small, pioneer town, he is intrigued

by the romantic foreignness of the hired girls, girls he will never

marry, and he keeps away from girls that would be suitable for him.

• As an adult, he remains virtually without a real home. His marriage

is childless; he and his wife live almost separate lives, his being a life of travel on the railway through the land that he loves.

DifferenceIt is through the eyes of Jim Burden, an orphan and thus

something of an outsider himself, that Cather considers differences of class, nationality, and gender.

Even before young Jim arrives in Nebraska, he is met with prejudice against foreigners.

Jake thinks that foreigners spread diseases.

But Cather makes it clear that prejudice was not invented in America.

Otto tells Mrs. Burden, "Bohemians has a natural distrust of Austrians."

And Norwegian Lena feels fated by the Lapp blood of her paternal grandmother. "I guess that’s what's the matter with me; they say Lapp blood will out."

In your groups:Take ten

minutes to review the reading, discussion questions, and the QHQs for today!

The Mystery Guest on the Train

• “I told him that how he knew her and felt her was exactly what I most wanted to know about Antonia. He had had opportunities that I, as a little girl who watched her come and go, had not.”

1. What are the contrasts that are being

developed between the characters in

this section?

2. What is the importance of

independent women in this section,

and why has Cather chosen to

develop these characters here?

Questions

3. Discuss the differences Jim sees between the country girls and the town girls.

4. Explain the importance of the dance pavilion to both Jim and Antonia.

a. Q: Does the dance pavilion strengthen Jim’s and Antonia’s relationship?

5. Explain why Willa Cather has chosen to devote one of the books of her novel to Lena Lingard.

6. Discuss the importance of the narrator leaving Black Hawk for college life.

Discuss My Ántonia in terms of one or more of the modernist manifestos.

• F.T Marinetti: “Manifesto of Futurism”

• Mina Loy: “Feminist Manifesto”

• Ezra Pound: “A Retrospect”• Willa Cather: The Novel

Démeublé• William Carlos Williams:

“Spring and All”• Langston Hughes: “The Negro

Artist and the Racial Mountain”

Mina Loy

“The man who lives a life in which his activities conform to a social code which is protectorate of the feminine– is no longer masculine.”

Mina Loy explains in Feminist manifesto that if a man lives his life conforming to a patriarchy then that man is not to be considered masculine. She also proclaims that [women] who “adapt themselves to a theoretical valuation of their sex as a relative personality, are not yet feminine.” It’s tough for me to tell what she’s saying right off the bat, but I sense that she’s getting at women who prescribe themselves the roles that are consistent with a patriarchal society, then she is not truly feminine because it means she is devaluing herself.

If I’m correct, My Antonia would of been a shining example Mina Loy would have loved.

Langston Hughes

• Willa Cather does follow Hughes’s advice [about voice] in writing a story that embraces what she goes through as a lesbian woman, and the way she plays with the narrator is an intentional representation of how voiceless and powerless women and queer people were.

• Q: When describing D’Arnault’s playing Jim says that “he could never learn like other people, never acquire finish. He was always a negro prodigy who played barbarously and wonderfully,” My QHQ would be: who should determine when something is done the right way? (Reference Hughes, Feminist, and Queer Theories)

Cather and other Modern Manifestos1. Does Cather follow her own advice on My Antonia that

she puts forth in her manifesto The Novel Demeuble?

2. A principle of futurism was that “courage, audacity, and revolt will be the essential elements of our poetry.” In the case of relation to Antonia, these forms of “courage, audacity, and revolt” [don’t] necessarily manifest in any bloody war type of situation, but more in the conscious disregard of female stereotypes.

QHQ: Lena1. Q: Why is it that from all of “the hired girls”, Lena seems

to be the prime target for ridicule and judgment? Is there a possibility that these allegations against Lena hold any truth to them, or is it just mindless gossip?

2. Q: What does Lena mean to Jim? How does Jim’s relationship with Lena contrast to the one he has with Antonia?

3. Q: What does “Camille,” the play that Lena and Jim go to see together, represent in this chapter?

4. Q: Why doesn’t Antonia want Lena Lingard to “run off” with Jim even though she doesn’t show him romantic affection?

Jim

1. Q: Why does Jim Burden marry Genevieve Whitney?

2. Q: Does Jim want to marry Lena or Antonia, but the social oppression does not allow him to marry them, or actually Jim does not want to marry those country girls?

3. Q: Although Jim is enamored with Lena and spends a generous amount of time with her as he did with Antonia, why isn’t his feelings for Lena comparable to the feelings he had for Antonia?

4. Q: Although Antonia grew up with Jim and Lena evoked sexual feelings from Jim, who played a more significant role in shaping the man that Jim is becoming?

QHQ: Antonia

1. Q: What are the implications of Antonia leaving the Harlings to find work on her own?

2. Q: Do you think Antonia’s selfishness (in impulsively leaving the Harlings) is justified or “good”? Or, do you think her selfishness is, well, too selfish? Should she be considering more her family in this decision?

HOMEWORKFinish My Antonia (1918): Book IV and Book V

Post #9: Answer one of the following prompts:

1. Compare and contrast Tiny Soderball and Lena Lingard’s

success with money.

2. Discuss why Willa Cather chose to have Antonia return to the

Shimerda farm as an unwed mother.

3. Discuss the differences between the Cuzak household and the

Shimerda household from many years before.

4. Write your own QHQ