Pioneer Values in Willa Cather's My Antonia

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.

• Review each lesson in this unit and select archival materials you'd like to use in class. If possible, bookmark these materials, along with other useful websites; download and print out selected documents and duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing.
• A full-length audiobook of My Antonia with chapter search features. 
• The full length feature film version of My Antonia (1995).

• Both an objective close-reading quiz and an in-class/take-home essay test are included. They may be used at any point the teacher deems suitable.
• This lesson assumes that, prior to beginning Activity 1, students have read and annotated My Antonia using close reading techniques such as: paraphrase key sections of the work, expressing in your own words; note the use of imagery, and explain how the imagery enhances the work by adding emotional color or associations to the plain sense; describe the overall tone or mood of the work, the "feeling" that it communicates to you as a reader; and express an opinion about the work—is it good or bad literature, and why? (As an aid to students working on a specific passage of the text, you may wish to consult the annotated hypertext edition, described below.
• Online resources. To gain an overview of Cather's life and literary contributions, as well as a broad sense of the cultural and historical context of My Antonia, begin with the EDSITEment resource Women of the West Museum, which can also be used by students in composing the synthesis and evaluation essays. The site contains biographical information on Willa Cather in an exhibit entitled Women of the West Online.
  
  A range of resources for teaching and studying Cather's The Song of the Lark are available from the EDSITEment reviewed American Collection: An Educator's Site; although focused on resources related specifically to Song of the Lark, this site also links to useful materials on Cather's life and career as a writer, such as the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation, from Red Cloud, Nebraska.
  
  A further source of information and activities related to the study of women in the American West is the EDSITEment lesson plan, Women's Suffrage: Why the West First?. In this lesson, students compile information to examine hypotheses explaining why the first nine states to grant full voting rights for women were located in the West. Although designed for grades 6–8, most of the activities and resources in this lesson can be adapted or are appropriate for older students as well.
• E-texts. A scrupulously edited and annotated hypertext edition of My Antonia (based on the 1994 edition published by University of Nebraska Press) is available from The Willa Cather Electronic Archive, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed American Collection: An Educator's Site. This scholarly edition presents the text in a convenient and attractive format. Explanatory notes and essays, linked to specific locations in the text, provide historical and biographical contexts as well as illustrations, photographs, maps, and facsimiles relevant to My Antonia.
  
  Plain, but suitable for searching, is the text version of My Antonia from Project Gutenberg, a link on the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet Public Library.
   
• Pioneer Values and Literary Form in My Antonia. American literary and historical mythology has enshrined the settlement of the heartland (the Great Plains) with a nostalgic glow, painting a picture of strong pioneers taming an unbroken wilderness through sheer determination and willpower. My Antonia reflects this vision of pioneer life and values in the character of Antonia, the female who takes on traditionally masculine characteristics to take equal part with her brothers in working the Shimerda homestead after her father's death: "Tony could talk of nothing but the prices of things, or how much she could live or endure. She was too proud of her strength."
  
  As this quotation suggests, the settlement of the Great Plains entailed great struggle, and could exact a heavy price. "[Antonia] was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl ... she was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races." Mother of many sons, wife of an immigrant ignorant of the ways of farming, Antonia gave her youth and beauty as a sacrifice to build the American way of life in the heartland.
  
  In this lesson, students will consider how these and other examples illustrate how a literary text portrays and transmits, but also raises questions about, values. Careful attention will be paid to the links between literary forms and the content they convey. For example, how do readers' expectations about genre affect their interpretations of a work's meaning? My Antonia can be read as a memoir, told by Jim Burden, member of an established family in pioneer Nebraska; as a biography of Antonia Shimerda, member of a European immigrant family trying to adapt to the harsh conditions of pioneer life; as a social commentary on the trials and rewards of the American pioneer experience in Nebraska; as a moral tale, by comparing the happiness and satisfaction of Antonia's life of devotion to family with the superficiality of Jim and Lena's lives of self-fulfillment; or as a poetic celebration of the rare beauty of the untouched land found by the pioneers. By focusing on selected passages from the text in terms of one or more of these literary genres, students gain a more precise sense of Cather's methods and meaning. Taken as a whole, the novel encompasses all of these generic possibilities; by combining the conventions of several literary genres, Cather presents a rich and complex portrait of pioneer values, showing us their strengths as well as their costs for the men and women who settled the Great Plains.
  
  My Antonia is a useful novel to teach students about literary form and genre because, despite the interweaving of literary conventions suggested above, the prose of the novel is straightforward and reflects the diction of its characters. Character and plot development are easily traced. The tone is optimistic, in spite of the hardships encountered by all the characters. This optimistic tone is fitting for the exposition of traditional pioneer values of hard work, dedication, faithfulness to family and hope for the future.
  
  The contest between a fertile but sometimes unforgiving landscape and the spirit of those who worked it, is powerfully captured in the brief poem that serves as a preface to Cather's novel, O Pioneers!:

  PRAIRIE SPRING—
  
  EVENING and the flat land,
  Rich and sombre and always silent;
  The miles of fresh-plowed soil,
  Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness;
  The growing wheat, the growing weeds,
  The toiling horses, the tired men;
  The long empty roads,
  Sullen fires of sunset, fading,
  The eternal, unresponsive sky.
  Against all this, Youth,
  Flaming like the wild roses,
  Singing like the larks over the plowed fields,
  Flashing like a star out of the twilight;
  Youth with its insupportable sweetness, Its fierce necessity, Its sharp desire, Singing and singing, Out of the lips of silence, Out of the earthy dusk.

Activity 1. Mapping the Great Plains: Nebraska

After you have begun your reading and discussion of My Antonia, ask students to produce, either individually or in pairs, a map of Nebraska in the late nineteenth century, then trace Jim's journey from the Blue Ridge (Virginia) to Nebraska. Suitable maps of Nebraska may be found on the online exhibit, Solomon D. Butcher Photographs of the Nebraska Homestead Experience, a link on the EDSITEment resource, American Memory Collection.

Additional maps suitable for this assignment can found on the following websites:

• Map of the Toledo, Wabash, and Gt. Western Rail Road Line, and its connections. This 1859 map of the Toledo, Wabash, and Great Western Railroad line, and its connections throughout the northeastern and north-central United States, also shows the gold mines of Kansas and Nebraska. (From the EDSITEment-reviewed American Memory Collection.)
• This Map of Nebraska from the EDSITEment-reviewed National Geographic Xpeditions, is a printable map and is suitable for classroom use. It can be displayed in a detailed or basic view.
• This Locator Map of Nebraska, from the EDSITEment resource New Perspectives on the West, contains a wealth of information on the American West.

By examining the path of Jim's journey, can students predict some of the possible dangers and surprises? How can this map of his journey help us to better understand Jim's perspective? (And why is it so important to keep Jim's perspective in mind as we read this novel?)

Activity 2. Living in the Great Plains

Next, ask students to read and annotate historical background information gained from the some of the Internet addresses described above to gain insight into pioneer living conditions. So that students develop a shared focus and common body of evidence, it is recommended that they incorporate primary and secondary resources found in archives of Prairie Settlement: Nebraska Photographs and Family Letters, part of the American Memory Collection's special exhibit, "Prairie Settlement: Nebraska Photographs and Family Letters, 1862–1912," from the Nebraska State Historical Society.

Students can record notes in a journal, or can tie historical artifacts to specific passages in the text of the novel, perhaps modeling their annotation on the example of the annotated hypertext edition of My Antonia, as discussed in the "Preparation Instructions" section.

As an alternative to or extension of students' independent annotation of the text, you can assign groups of students to one of the following tasks:

• Class Presentation. Divide students into groups of three. Assign each group one of the following topics: laws on homesteading, portrait of a "typical" homestead, educational opportunities for homesteaders, especially females. Each group prepares a ten-minute oral presentation, using at least one visual aid, on its topic.
• Quiz. Divide students into groups of two. Have each group produce a 5-question quiz, with answers.

Depending on the options chosen, students can then present their findings in class in one of several formats: an individual oral report, a presentation by each group, or an exchange of quizzes.

(For further ideas about projects for learning about pioneer living conditions in nineteenth-century Nebraska, see "Extending the Lesson" below.)

Activity 3. Tracing the Autobiographical Aspects of My Antonia

Students can use information gathered thus far to explore parallels between Cather's own life and that of the Great Plains pioneers depicted in the novel. Further biographical materials are available from the following sources:

• Women of the West Museum, an EDSITEment-reviewed website that contains numerous accounts of the lives of women in the West in the 1800s (including Willa Cather). The contents of this online museum are also available as a downloadable PDF.
• The Song of the Lark, a resource from the EDSITEment-reviewed American Collection: An Educator's Site, presents the text and related materials for the study of Willa Cather's partially autobiographical novel about a young woman's struggle to achieve her destiny.
• Information on the links between Cather's life and works is available on The Willa Cather Electronic Archive, a link from the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet Public Library.

If each student or small group of students has access to a computer (if, for example, the class is held in the school's computer lab), students may go to the websites noted below and take notes individually. If this option is not available, you can go to the websites and collect resources, providing students with handouts or providing the information as a lecture.

However the biographical contexts of this novel are learned, there are several options for considering the links between Cather's life and the persons and events described in her novel. One option is for students to record notes in a journal, tying biographical information to specific passages in the text of the novel, and perhaps modelling their annotation on the example of the annotated hypertext edition of My Antonia (discussed in the "Preparation Instructions" section).

As an alternative to or extension of students' independent annotation of the text, you can assign groups of students to one of the following activities:

• Present to the Class. Dividing students into groups of four, assign each group one of the following topics:
  • Important Values of Pioneer Life
  • Life story of Willa Cather
  • Comparison of My Antonia to the Song of the Lark
  • Life stories of women during the Western expansionEach group prepares a fifteen-minute oral presentation, using at least two visual aids, on its topic.

• Design a Quiz. Divide students into groups of two. Have each group produce a 5-question quiz, with answers.

Depending on the options chosen, students can then present their findings in class in one of several formats: an individual oral report, a presentation by each small group, or an exchange of quizzes (one possibility is to collate the quizzes and choose the best five questions for use as a study guide).

Activity 4. Concluding Activities: Classroom Debate, Essay Exam, or Writing Assignment

There are several possible capstone activities for this lesson, each of which asks students to analyze the cultural context of a work of literature and to respond to the guiding question: How does Willa Cather represent and interpret the values of fortitude, hard work, and faithfulness that we associate with pioneer life?

• Classroom critical debate. Divide students into two groups. Assign each group one either the "pro" or "con" stand on this thesis: My Antonia is a thinly-disguised retelling of the life of Willa Cather. Allow the groups ten minutes to prepare, using this class lecture notes and any other information gained during the previous lessons. Use the balance of the class for the debate itself. The teacher may judge the debate or bring in an expert to do so. The debate may be videotaped.
• Essay exam. Download and distribute the Essay Exam for Willa Cather's My Antonia, available here as a PDF.
• Writing Assignment. The following are some examples of writing assignments that ask students to synthesize the research they completed for the activities above:
  • Write a 350-word formal essay, correctly citing all reference materials in MLA format, on this topic: "Pioneer Living Conditions in Nineteenth-Century Nebraska"
  • Invent a character of your own, and write a 450-word short story detailing pioneer living conditions from that character's perspective.
  • Write a 350-word formal essay, correctly citing all reference materials in MLA format, on this topic: "Willa Cather's Life: An Illustration of the Key Values of the Heartland."
  • Write a 450-word short story detailing pioneer living conditions from a woman's point of view.

• A follow-up writing assignment is a good way to extend and reinforce the discoveries made by groups and the class as a whole. One option would be to ask students to formulate a thesis backed up by evidence in response to the research/guiding question of this lesson. You could also have students focus their attention on a single word, formulating a thesis about how Shakespeare's use of the word reveals something about the motives of Macbeth's descent into evil. But you might want to allow for more flexibility in the assignment, because as students investigate the permutations of words like sleep, they may make discoveries that lead in slightly different directions. The important thing to stress, however the assignment is formulated, is that students should have: 1) a main point that is a statement (not a question); 2) evidence that supports that statement. From the collated class document and from additional searches they can now do with online or print concordances, they should find ample material to support their main point.
• There are some things the Internet does extraordinarily well. One of those things is to perform quick searches of very long texts. This lesson has focused on Macbeth, but of course you can use this as a model for searching all kinds of texts found online. There are two things that students who use this powerful technology need to keep in mind: 1) you need a direction, a guiding/research question; 2) you need to analyze your results and be selective.
• As you talk about the larger sources of fear and evil in this play, your class will eventually need to come to grips with the three witches. Who or what are they? Are they embodiments of evil or, as some have suggested, projections and manifestations of Macbeth's own deepest wishes and fears? To learn more about witches and witchcraft in the seventeenth-century, visit the EDSITEment-reviewed site, Witchcraft in a Salem Village. While most of the archived materials are from late-seventeenth-century America, but the colonists conceptions about witches are inherited from English traditions that would have been familiar to Shakespeare and his patron, King James I, who was deeply interested in the subject.