Name: __________________________________
Date: _________________
My Antonia – Book 3 – Chapters 1-4 (pg 155-175) – Discussion
1. If Book 1 is about Jim’s childhood, and Book 2 is about his young adulthood, what stage
of Jim’s life is Book 3 about?
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
2. On page 158, Jim says, “Mental excitement was apt to send me with a rush back to my
own naked land and the figures scattered upon it. ...I suddenly found myself thinking of
the places and people of my own infinitesimal past. They stood out strengthened and
simplified now, like the image of the plough against the sun. They were all I had for an
answer to the new appeal. I begrudged the room that Jake and Otto and Russian Peter
took up in my memory, which I wanted to crowd with other things. But whenever my
consciousness was quickened, all those early friends were quickened within it, and in
some strange way they accompanied me through all my new experiences. They were so
much alive in me that I scarcely stopped to wonder whether they were alive anywhere
else, or how.
Explain the significance of this quote. What is Jim’s dilemma? How is his nostalgia negatively
impacting his ability to move forward in life?
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
3. Willa Cather begins the novel with this quote that Jim reads from the author Virgil: “It
opened with the melancholy reflection that, in the lives of mortals the best days are the
first to flee. 'Optima dies ... prima fugit.'” (pg 159). How is this quote fitting for the entire
novel?
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
4. The play that Jim and Lena go to see, Camille, is about an intense love affair. Why do
you think Cather places this scene in the middle of Jim and Lena’s time together? Is it
meant to highlight something about their relationship?
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________