Lieutenant Frederic Henry is an American ambulance driver in World War I who meets British nurse Catherine Barkley. They fall in love but are separated as Henry must return to the battlefield. The chaotic retreat of Italian forces leads Henry to abandon the army to reunite with Catherine. They settle happily in Switzerland but Catherine dies in childbirth, leaving Henry devastated in the rain.

1. American Novel
About the Author
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), born in
Oak Park, Illinois, started his career as a writer
in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of
seventeen. After the United States entered the
First World War, he joined a volunteer
ambulance unit in the Italian army. Serving at
the front, he was wounded, was decorated by the
Italian Government, and spent considerable time
in hospitals. After his return to the United States,
he became a reporter for Canadian and
American newspapers and was soon sent back to
Europe to cover such events as the Greek
Revolution.
During the twenties, Hemingway became a
member of the group of expatriate Americans in
Paris, which he described in his first important
work, The Sun Also Rises (1926). Equally
successful was A Farewell to Arms (1929), the
study of an American ambulance officer's disillusionment in the war and his role as a
deserter. Hemingway used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the
background for his most ambitious novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Among his later
works, the most outstanding is the short novel, The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the story of
an old fisherman's journey, his long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, and his
victory in defeat.
Hemingway - himself a great sportsman - liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters -
tough, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways
of modern society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith. His straightforward
prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective
in his short stories, some of which are collected in Men Without Women (1927) and The
Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938). Hemingway died in Idaho in 1961.

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Plot Summary
Lieutenant Frederic Henry is a young American ambulance driver serving in the Italian army during
World War I. At the beginning of the novel, the war is winding down with the onset of winter, and
Henry arranges to tour Italy. The following spring, upon his return to the front, Henry meets
Catherine Barkley, an English nurse’s aide at the nearby British hospital and the love interest of his
friend Rinaldi. Rinaldi, however, quickly fades from the picture as Catherine and Henry become
involved in an elaborate game of seduction. Grieving the recent death of her fiancé, Catherine longs
for love so deeply that she will settle for the illusion of it. Her passion, even though pretended,
wakens a desire for emotional interaction in Henry, whom the war has left coolly detached and
numb.
When Henry is wounded on the battlefield, he is brought to a hospital in Milan to recover. Several
doctors recommend that he stay in bed for six months and then undergo a necessary operation on
his knee. Unable to accept such a long period of recovery, Henry finds a bold, garrulous surgeon
named Dr. Valentini who agrees to operate immediately. Henry learns happily that Catherine has
been transferred to Milan and begins his recuperation under her care. During the following months,
his relationship with Catherine intensifies. No longer simply a game in which they exchange empty
promises and playful kisses, their love becomes powerful and real. As the lines between scripted
and genuine emotions begin to blur, Henry and Catherine become tangled in their love for each
other.
Once Henry’s damaged leg has healed, the army grants him three weeks convalescence leave, after
which he is scheduled to return to the front. He tries to plan a trip with Catherine, who reveals to
him that she is pregnant. The following day, Henry is diagnosed with jaundice, and Miss Van
Campen, the superintendent of the hospital, accuses him of bringing the disease on himself through
excessive drinking. Believing Henry’s illness to be an attempt to avoid his duty as a serviceman,
Miss Van Campen has Henry’s leave revoked, and he is sent to the front once the jaundice has
cleared. As they part, Catherine and Henry pledge their mutual devotion.
Henry travels to the front, where Italian forces are losing ground and manpower daily. Soon after
Henry’s arrival, a bombardment begins. When word comes that German troops are breaking
through the Italian lines, the Allied forces prepare to retreat. Henry leads his team of ambulance
drivers into the great column of evacuating troops. The men pick up two engineering sergeants and
two frightened young girls on their way. Henry and his drivers then decide to leave the column and
take secondary roads, which they assume will be faster. When one of their vehicles bogs down in
the mud, Henry orders the two engineers to help in the effort to free the vehicle. When they refuse,
he shoots one of them. The drivers continue in the other trucks until they get stuck again. They send
off the young girls and continue on foot toward Udine. As they march, one of the drivers is shot
dead by the easily frightened rear guard of the Italian army. Another driver marches off to
surrender himself, while Henry and the remaining driver seek refuge at a farmhouse. When they
rejoin the retreat the following day, chaos has broken out: soldiers, angered by the Italian defeat,
pull commanding officers from the melee and execute them on sight. The battle police seize Henry,
who, at a crucial moment, breaks away and dives into the river. After swimming a safe distance
downstream, Henry boards a train bound for Milan. He hides beneath a tarp that covers stockpiled
artillery, thinking that his obligations to the war effort are over and dreaming of his return to
Catherine.
Henry reunites with Catherine in the town of Stresa. From there, the two escape to safety in
Switzerland, rowing all night in a tiny borrowed boat. They settle happily in a lovely alpine town
called Montreux and agree to put the war behind them forever. Although Henry is sometimes
plagued by guilt for abandoning the men on the front, the two succeed in living a beautiful, peaceful
life. When spring arrives, the couple moves to Lausanne so that they can be closer to the hospital.
Early one morning, Catherine goes into labor. The delivery is exceptionally painful and complicated.
Catherine delivers a stillborn baby boy and, later that night, dies of a hemorrhage. Henry stays at

3. American Novel
her side until she is gone. He attempts to say goodbye but cannot. He walks back to his hotel in the
rain
Character List
Lieutenant Frederic Henry - The novel’s narrator and protagonist. A young American
ambulance driver in the Italian army during World War I, Henry meets his military duties
with quiet stoicism. He displays courage in battle, but his selfless motivations undermine
all sense of glory and heroism, abstract terms for which Henry has little patience. His life
lacks real passion until he meets the beautiful Catherine Barkley.
Catherine Barkley - An English nurse’s aide who falls in love with Henry. Catherine is
exceptionally beautiful and possesses, perhaps, the most sensuously described hair in all of
literature. When the novel opens, Catherine’s grief for her dead fiancé launches her
headlong into a playful, though reckless, game of seduction. Her feelings for Henry soon
intensify and become more complicated, however, and she eventually swears lifelong
fidelity to him.
Rinaldi - A surgeon in the Italian army. Mischievous, wry, and oversexed, Rinaldi is
Henry’s closest friend. Although Rinaldi is a skilled doctor, his primary practice is seducing
beautiful women. When Henry returns to Gorizia, Rinaldi tries to whip up a convivial
atmosphere.
The priest - A kind, sweet, young man who provides spiritual guidance to the few soldiers
interested in it. Often the butt of the officers’ jokes, the priest responds with good-natured
understanding. Through Henry’s conversations with him regarding the war, the novel
challenges abstract ideals like glory, honor, and sacredness.
Helen Ferguson - A nurse’s aide who works at the American hospital and a dear friend of
Catherine. Though Helen is friendly and accepting of Henry and Rinaldi’s visits to Catherine
early in the novel, her hysterical outburst over Henry and Catherine’s “immoral” affair
establishes her as an unhappy woman who is paranoid about her friend’s safety and
anxious about her own loneliness.
Miss Gage - An American nurse who helps Henry through his recovery at the hospital in
Milan. At ease and accepting, Miss Gage becomes a friend to Henry, someone with whom he
can share a drink and gossip.
Miss Van Campen - The superintendent of nurses at the American hospital in which
Catherine works. Miss Van Campen is strict, cold, and unpleasant. She disapproves of Henry
and remains on cool terms with him throughout his stay.
Dr. Valentini - An Italian surgeon who comes to the American hospital to contradict the
hospital’s opinion that Henry must wait six months before having an operation on his leg.
In agreeing to perform surgery the next morning, Dr. Valentini displays the kind of self-
assurance and confidence that Henry (and the novel) celebrates.
Count Greffi - A spry, ninety-four-year-old nobleman. The count represents a more
mature version of Henry’s character and Hemingway’s masculine ideal. He lives life to the
fullest and thinks for himself. Though the count dismisses the label “wise,” Henry clearly
values his thoughts and sees him as a sort of father figure.

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Ettore Moretti - An American soldier from San Francisco. Ettore, like Henry, fights for the
Italian army. Unlike Henry, however, Ettore is an obnoxious braggart. Quick to instigate a
fight or display the medals that he claims to have worked so hard to win, he believes in and
pursues the glory and honor that Henry eschews.
Gino - A young Italian whom Henry meets at a decimated village. Gino’s patriotic belief
that his fatherland is sacred and should be protected at all costs contrasts sharply to
Henry’s attitude toward war.
Ralph Simmons - An opera student of dubious talent. Simmons is the first person that
Henry goes to see after fleeing from battle. Simmons proves to be a generous friend, giving
Henry civilian clothes so that he can travel to Switzerland without drawing suspicion.
Emilio - A bartender in the town of Stresa. Emilio proves a good friend to Henry and
Catherine, helping them reunite, saving them from arrest, and ushering them off to safety.
Bonello - An ambulance driver under Henry’s command. Bonello displays his ruthlessness
when he brutally unloads a pistol round into the head of an uncooperative engineer whom
Henry has already shot.

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Themes
The Grim Reality of War
As the title of the novel makes clear, A Farewell to Arms concerns itself primarily with war,
namely the process by which Frederic Henry removes himself from it and leaves it behind.
The few characters in the novel who actually support the effort—Ettore Moretti and Gino—
come across as a dull braggart and a naïve youth, respectively. The majority of the
characters remain ambivalent about the war, resentful of the terrible destruction it causes,
doubtful of the glory it supposedly brings.
The novel offers masterful descriptions of the conflict’s senseless brutality and violent
chaos: the scene of the Italian army’s retreat remains one of the most profound evocations
of war in American literature. As the neat columns of men begin to crumble, so too do the
soldiers’ nerves, minds, and capacity for rational thought and moral judgment. Henry’s
shooting of the engineer for refusing to help free the car from the mud shocks the reader
for two reasons: first, the violent outburst seems at odds with Henry’s coolly detached
character; second, the incident occurs in a setting that robs it of its moral import—the
complicity of Henry’s fellow soldiers legitimizes the killing. The murder of the engineer
seems justifiable because it is an inevitable by-product of the spiraling violence and
disorder of the war.
Nevertheless, the novel cannot be said to condemn the war; A Farewell to Arms is hardly the
work of a pacifist. Instead, just as the innocent engineer’s death is an inevitability of war, so
is war the inevitable outcome of a cruel, senseless world. Hemingway suggests that war is
nothing more than the dark, murderous extension of a world that refuses to acknowledge,
protect, or preserve true love.
The Relationship Between Love and Pain
Against the backdrop of war, Hemingway offers a deep, mournful meditation on the nature
of love. No sooner does Catherine announce to Henry that she is in mourning for her dead
fiancé than she begins a game meant to seduce Henry. Her reasons for doing so are clear:
she wants to distance herself from the pain of her loss. Likewise, Henry intends to get as far
away from talk of the war as possible. In each other, Henry and Catherine find temporary
solace from the things that plague them. The couple’s feelings for each other quickly pass
from an amusement that distracts them to the very fuel that sustains them. Henry’s
understanding of how meaningful his love for Catherine is outweighs any consideration for
the emptiness of abstract ideals such as honor, enabling him to flee the war and seek her
out. Reunited, they plan an idyllic life together that promises to act as a salve for the
damage that the war has inflicted. Far away from the decimated Italian countryside, each
intends to be the other’s refuge. If they are to achieve physical, emotional, and
psychological healing, they have found the perfect place in the safe remove of the Swiss
mountains. The tragedy of the novel rests in the fact that their love, even when genuine, can
never be more than temporary in this world.

6. American Novel
Symbols
Rain
Rain serves in the novel as a potent symbol of the inevitable disintegration of happiness in
life. Catherine infuses the weather with meaning as she and Henry lie in bed listening to the
storm outside. As the rain falls on the roof, Catherine admits that the rain scares her and
says that it has a tendency to ruin things for lovers. Of course, no meteorological
phenomenon has such power; symbolically, however, Catherine’s fear proves to be
prophetic, for doom does eventually come to the lovers. After Catherine’s death, Henry
leaves the hospital and walks home in the rain. Here, the falling rain validates Catherine’s
anxiety and confirms one of the novel’s main contentions: great love, like anything else in
the world—good or bad, innocent or deserving—cannot last.
Catherine’s Hair
Although it is not a recurring symbol, Catherine’s hair is an important one. In the early,
easy days of their relationship, as Henry and Catherine lie in bed, Catherine takes down her
hair and lets it cascade around Henry’s head. The tumble of hair reminds Henry of being
enclosed inside a tent or behind a waterfall. This lovely description stands as a symbol of
the couple’s isolation from the world. With a war raging around them, they manage to
secure a blissful seclusion, believing themselves protected by something as delicate as hair.
Later, however, when they are truly isolated from the ravages of war and living in peaceful
Switzerland, they learn the harsh lesson that love, in the face of life’s cruel reality, is as
fragile and ephemeral as hair.

7. American Novel
Key Facts
Full title · A Farewell to Arms
author · Ernest Hemingway
type of work · Novel
genre · Literary war novel
language · English
time and place written · 1926–1928; America and abroad
date of first publication · 1929
publisher · Charles Scribner’s Sons
narrator · Lieutenant Frederic Henry
point of view · Henry narrates the story in the first person but sometimes switches to the
second person during his more philosophical reflections. Henry relates only what he sees
and does and only what he could have learned of other characters from his experiences
with them.
tone · As the autobiographical nature of the work suggests, Hemingway’s apparent attitude
toward the story is identical to that of the narrator.
tense · Past
setting (time) · 1916–1918, in the middle of World War I
setting (place) · Italy and Switzerland
protagonist · Frederic Henry
major conflict · While there is no single, clear-cut conflict, friction does arise when Henry’s
love for Catherine cannot quell his innate restlessness.
rising action · Henry and Catherine’s flirtatious games prepare and sometimes foreshadow
their love for each other; their last days together before Henry’s return to the front zero in
on the demands of love versus Henry’s life outside his relationship with Catherine.
climax · Broadly speaking, the Italian retreat, but more specifically, Henry’s capture and
near-execution by the battle police

8. American Novel
falling action · Henry’s decision to flee and quit the army marks his farewell to arms and
his commitment to Catherine.
themes · The grim reality of war, the relationship between love and pain, feelings of loss
motifs · Masculinity, games and divertissement, loyalty versus abandonment, illusions and
fantasies, alcoholism
symbols · While Hemingway avoids the sort of symbol that neatly equates an object with
some lofty abstraction, he offers many powerfully evocative descriptions that often
resonate with several meanings. Among these are the rain, which scares Catherine and into
which Henry walks at the end of the novel; Henry’s description of her hair; the painted
horse; and the silhouette cutter Henry meets on the street.
foreshadowing · Catherine’s conviction that dreadful things are going to occur; the rainfall
that scares her in the night; the doctor’s warning that Catherine’s hips are narrow; Henry’s
musing on how life kills the good, the gentle, and the brave

9. American Novel
About the Author
Upton Sinclair was born in Baltimore on 20th
September, 1878. His alcoholic father moved the
family to New York City in 1888. Although his own
family were extremely poor, he spent periods of
time living with his wealthy grandparents. He later
argued that witnessing these extremes turned him
into a socialist.
A religious boy with a great love of literature, his
two great heroes were Jesus Christ and Percy
Bysshe Shelley. An intelligent boy he did well at
school and at 14 entered New York City College. Soon afterwards he had his first story
published in a national magazine.
Upton Sinclair was a famous novelist and social crusader from California, who pioneered
the kind of journalism known as "muckraking." His best-known novel was "The Jungle"
which was an expose of the appalling and unsanitary conditions in the meat-packing
industry. "The Jungle" was influential in obtaining passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act.
Sinclair's interests ranged over a wide variety of topics, in his many books and articles. He
would receive a Pulitzer Prize for a later novel about Hitler's rise to power. His
contemporary, the writer Edmund Wilson, would say of him: "Practically alone among the
American writers of his generation, [Sinclair] put to the American public the fundamental
questions raised by capitalism in such a way that they could not escape them."
The nomination of an avowed socialist to head the Democratic party ticket was more than
the California establishment could tolerate. Sinclair's radical candidacy was opposed by
just about every establishment force in California. The media virtually demonized Sinclair
through a concerted propaganda campaign based largely on smears and falsehoods.
Sinclair's candidacy also set off a bitter political battle both within the Democratic party
and with many groups who were opposed to various aspects of the EPIC plan. Sinclair was
denounced as a "Red" and "crackpot" and the Democratic establishment sought to derail
his candidacy.
Despite all of this, Upton Sinclair was very nearly elected Governor of California in 1934. He
probably would have won, except for two last-minute political errors in judgment. When
President Roosevelt announced in June 1934 that he would propose a national social
insurance system in the next session of Congress, Sinclair quite reasonably declared that he
would be willing to defer his plan in favor of the President's national solution. This was
perhaps reasonable, but it was impolitic, as it undermined his strongest issue. Then too,
Sinclair felt duty-bound to announce his opposition to the rival Townsend Plan because the
Townsend Plan was based on a regressive sales tax. Since the Townsend Plan and the EPIC
supporters were often one and the same people, this was in effect an attack on his own core
constituency.

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When the votes were counted, Upton Sinclair got 37% of the vote, the Republican candidate
got 48% and a third-party progressive candidate took another 13%. Had it been a two-man
race, or had Sinclair been less intellectually honest and more of a politician, he would likely
have become Governor of California and the EPIC pension plan might well have become the
California model.
(In a classic exercise in political hubris, Sinclair detailed his EPIC plan in a book published
in 1933, with the confident title "I, Governor of California And How I Ended Poverty: A True
Story of the Future." Following the election he would publish another book with the
humbled title "I, Candidate for Governor and How I Got Licked.")
Undeterred by his loss in the 1934 California election--and not really humbled either--in
the 1936 election cycle Sinclair authored another version of his "I, Governor" booklet. This
one had an even more expansive aim, and an inflated title to go along with it, "We, People of
America and How We Ended Poverty: A True Story of the Future."
Over the next few years Sinclair funded his college education by writing stories for
newspapers and magazines. By the age of 17 Sinclair was earning enough money to enable
him to move into his own apartment while supplying his parents with a regular income. In
January 1901 he borrowed $200 from his uncle and printed a thousand copies of
Springtime and Harvest. Following two newspaper articles he managed to sell enough
copies to repay the loan.

11. American Novel
Plot Summary
Jurgis Rudkus and Ona Lukoszaite, a young man and woman who have recently immigrated
to Chicago from Lithuania, hold their wedding feast at a bar in an area of Chicago known as
Packingtown. The couple and several relatives have come to Chicago in search of a better
life, but Packingtown, the center of Lithuanian immigration and of Chicago’s meatpacking
industry, is a hard, dangerous, and filthy place where it is difficult to find a job. After the
reception, Jurgis and Ona discover that they are more than a hundred dollars in debt to the
saloonkeeper. In Lithuania, custom dictates that guests at a wedding-feast leave money to
cover the cost, but in America, many of the impoverished immigrants depart from the feast
without leaving any money. Jurgis, who has great faith in the American Dream, vows that
he will simply work harder to make more money.
Jurgis, who is young and energetic, quickly finds work, as do Marija Berczynskas, Ona’s
cousin, and Jonas, the brother of Ona’s stepmother, Teta Elzbieta. The family signs an
agreement to buy a house, but it turns out to be a swindle; the agreement is full of hidden
costs, and the house is shoddy and poorly maintained. As the family’s living expenses
increase, even Ona and young Stanislovas, one of Teta Elzbieta’s children, are forced to look
for jobs. Jobs in Packingtown involve back-breaking labor, however, conducted in unsafe
conditions with little regard for individual workers. Furthermore, the immigrant
community is fraught with crime and corruption. Jurgis’s father, Dede Antanas, finds a job
only after agreeing to pay another man a third of his wages for helping him obtain the job.
But the job is too difficult for the old man, and it quickly kills him.
Winter is the most dangerous season in Packingtown and even Jurgis, forced to work in an
unheated slaughterhouse in which it is difficult to see, risks his life every day by simply
going to work. Marija is courted by Tamoszius, a likable violinist, but the couple is never
able to marry because they never have enough money to hold a wedding. Marija’s factory
closes down and she loses her job. Distressed about the terrible conditions of his family
members’ lives, Jurgis joins a union and slowly begins to understand the web of political
corruption and bribery that makes Packingtown run. Hoping to improve his lot, Jurgis
begins trying to learn English. Marija regains her job, but she is fired when she complains
about being cheated out of some of her pay. Ona is now pregnant, and her job has become
increasingly difficult for her. Her supervisor, Miss Henderson, oversees a prostitution ring,
and most of the other girls at the factory are made to be prostitutes. Ona gives birth to a
healthy boy, whom she and Jurgis name Antanas after Jurgis’s late father, but she is forced
to return to work only seven days later.
In Packingtown, any mishap can bring ruin upon a family. Jurgis sprains his ankle and is
forced to spend nearly three months in bed, unable to work. Even though poor working
conditions caused the accident, the factory simply cuts off Jurgis’s pay while he
recuperates. Unable to tolerate the misery, Jonas abandons the family, disappearing
without a word. Kristoforas, the youngest son of Teta Elzbieta, dies of food poisoning. Jurgis
at last recovers and returns to work, but the factory refuses to give him his job back. After a
long, frustrating search for employment, Jurgis is forced to take a job at the fertilizer plant,
the foulest place in all of Packingtown. He begins to numb himself with alcohol.

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Ona is pregnant again. One night, she doesn’t return home from work, and Jurgis discovers
that Phil Connor, her boss, kept her after work and forced her to sleep with him. Jurgis
attacks Connor and is arrested. After an unfair trial, Jurgis is sentenced to a month in
prison; the family will again be forced to scrape by without his wages. In prison, Jurgis
befriends a criminal named Jack Duane. When he is released, Jurgis discovers that his
family has been evicted from its home and is living at the run-down boardinghouse in
which they first stayed when they arrived in Chicago. When he enters the boardinghouse,
he finds Ona screaming; she is prematurely in labor, and the effort of giving birth kills her
and the child. In agony, Jurgis disappears on a drinking binge.
At last, Teta Elzbieta convinces Jurgis to think of his son, and he again begins searching for
a job. Through the philanthropy of a wealthy woman who takes an interest in the family,
Jurgis finds a good job at a steel mill. He dedicates himself to Antanas and feels renewed
hope in life. But his hopes are shattered when Antanas drowns in the mud-logged street. In
despair, Jurgis abandons his surviving family members and wanders the countryside as a
tramp.
In the winter, Jurgis returns to Chicago, where he finds a job digging freight tunnels. After
injuring himself at work, he is forced to spend some time in the hospital. When he is
released, he has no money and cannot find work, so he becomes a beggar. One night, a
wealthy young man named Freddie Jones gives him a one-hundred-dollar bill, but when
Jurgis asks a bartender to change it for him, the man cheats him, giving him ninety-five
cents back. Jurgis attacks the man and is again sent to jail. In prison, he meets Jack Duane
again. When the two men are released, Jurgis becomes Duane’s partner, and the two
commit burglaries and muggings. Jurgis is eventually recruited to work for the corrupt
political boss, Mike Scully. When a series of strikes hits Packingtown, Jurgis crosses the
picket lines, undermining the efforts of the union but making a great deal of money as a
scab.
One day, Jurgis sees Phil Connor again and attacks him. He is again sent to prison and,
because Connor is a crony of Mike Scully, Jurgis’s meager political connections do not help
him. After being released, he is forced to live on charity. By this time, Jurgis has completely
lost touch with his family. One day, however, he meets an old acquaintance who tells him
how to find Marija. He learns that Marija has become a prostitute to help support Teta
Elzbieta and the children. She is also addicted to morphine. Jurgis wants to see Teta
Elzbieta again but not until he finds a good job.
One night, his spirit all but crushed by privation and misery, Jurgis wanders into a socialist
political rally, in which an orator delivers a speech that fills Jurgis with inspiration. Jurgis
joins the socialist party and embraces its ideal that the workers—not a few wealthy
capitalists—should own factories and plants. Jurgis finds a job as a porter at a socialist-run
hotel and is reunited with Teta Elzbieta. He attends a socialist rally in which the speaker
sums up Jurgis’s new beliefs: if more people convert to socialism, the speaker declares, then
“Chicago will be ours!”

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Character List
Jurgis Rudkus - A Lithuanian immigrant who comes to America with his wife, Ona. Jurgis
is a strong, determined individual with a faith in the American Dream of self-betterment,
but his health, family, and hopes are slowly destroyed by the miserable working and living
conditions in Packingtown. Jurgis, who doesn’t elicit much more from the reader than pity,
is an obvious instrument that Sinclair uses to express his vision of the exploitation of the
worker by capitalism and his redemption by socialism.
Ona Lukoszaite - Teta Elzbieta’s stepdaughter and Jurgis’s wife. A kind, lovely, and
optimistic girl, Ona is ruined by the forces of capitalism that work against the family,
particularly after she is raped by her boss, Phil Connor.
Teta Elzbieta Lukoszaite - Ona’s stepmother and the mother of six others. A resilient,
strong-willed old woman, Teta Elzbieta is one of the strongest and most important
characters in The Jungle. Sinclair uses her to represent the redemptive power of family,
home, and tradition.
Marija Berczynskas - Ona’s cousin, who travels to America with the rest of the family
because her employer in the old country is unkind to her. Marija is a large, strong woman,
capable of standing up for herself; because she first tries to fight back against the corrupt
bosses, she represents a spirit of defiance among the immigrants that is slowly crushed.
Phil Connor - Ona’s boss, who sexually harasses her at the factory where she works. A
bullying, depraved man, Connor represents the moral corruption of power in Chicago as
well as the complicated relationship between politics, crime, and business. He has ties to all
three and, thus, has the power to destroy Jurgis’s life.
Dede Antanas Rudku - Jurgis’s father, who travels to America with the rest of the family.
A proud man, Dede Antanas is prevented by his old age from obtaining a job through
normal means. He has to resort to the humiliation of paying a man a third of his wages in
return for a job, whose unsanitary and unsafe working conditions destroy his health.
Antanas Rudkus - Ona and Jurgis’s son. Antanas is a strong, sturdy little boy, but he
drowns in the mud in the street while Jurgis is at work. The death of Antanas signals the
death of hope in Jurgis’s life.
Grandmother Majauszkiene - The family’s Lithuanian neighbor when they move into
their house. A concerned old woman, Grandmother Majauszkiene has lived in Packingtown
for many years and has seen one generation after another of immigrants ground into ruin
by the merciless labor practices of the factories. She became a socialist before she even
came to America.

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Juozapas Lukoszaite - One of Teta Elzbieta’s two crippled children, injured when a wagon
ran over one of his legs when he was a toddler. Juozapas unwittingly helps the family when
he meets a rich lady while foraging for food in the local dump.
Kotrina Lukoszaite - One of Teta Elzbieta’s children, who is forced to care for the children
and do household chores. When Jurgis is sent to prison, Kotrina has to go to work selling
newspapers on the streets with her able-bodied brothers.
Stanislovas Lukoszaite - One of Teta Elzbieta’s children, a young boy of about fourteen.
Stanislovas shirks his responsibilities as a wage earner because he is terrified of frostbite.
Jurgis often has to beat him to make him go to work.
Jonas - Teta Elzbieta’s brother, who first encourages the family to travel to America. After
months of poverty in Packingtown, Jonas disappears, and the family never hears from him
again. His absence deprives the family of a key wage earner and throws them into a greater
financial crisis.
Jack Duane - A polished, charismatic criminal whom Jurgis meets during his first prison
term. Jack later introduces Jurgis to Chicago’s criminal underworld, where money comes
easily to Jurgis for the first time in America.
Miss Henderson - The forelady in Ona’s factory. Cruel and bitter, Miss Henderson is the
jilted mistress of one of the factory superintendents. She also runs a brothel and arranges
to get jobs for some of the prostitutes who work for her. She hates Ona because Ona is a
“decent married girl,” and she and her toadies try to make Ona as miserable as possible.
Tommy Hinds - The proprietor of a small Chicago hotel and a well-known proponent of
socialism. Jurgis obtains a job as Hinds’s porter not long after his conversion to socialism.
Ostrinski - A Polish immigrant who speaks Lithuanian. After Jurgis hears a rousing speech
at a socialist political meeting, Ostrinski is assigned the task of teaching Jurgis about
socialism.
Nicholas Schliemann - A spokesperson for socialism. Nicholas gives a long explanation of
socialist philosophy to a magazine editor who has written against socialism in the past. He
functions as a mouthpiece for Sinclair’s own political philosophy.
Mike Scully - A corrupt, wealthy democrat in Chicago who owns the festering dump in
which Juozapas and other children forage for food. Scully makes money off the housing
scheme to which Jurgis’s family falls victim. He works at rigging elections, and Jurgis
becomes one of his henchmen during his brief stint in the Chicago criminal underworld.
Jokubas Szedvilas - The failing proprietor of a delicatessen in Packingtown who knows
Jonas from the old country. A kind but troubled man, Jokubas represents the harsh reality
of capitalism and reveals the naïveté of Jurgis’s dreams of success.

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Themes
Socialism as a Remedy for the Evils of Capitalism
The main theme of The Jungle is the evil of capitalism. Every event, especially in the first
twenty-seven chapters of the book, is chosen deliberately to portray a particular failure of
capitalism, which is, in Sinclair’s view, inhuman, destructive, unjust, brutal, and violent. The
slow annihilation of Jurgis’s immigrant family at the hands of a cruel and prejudiced
economic and social system demonstrates the effect of capitalism on the working class as a
whole. As the immigrants, who initially possess an idealistic faith in the American Dream of
hard work leading to material success, are slowly used up, tortured, and destroyed, the
novel relentlessly illustrates that capitalism is to blame for their plight and emphasizes that
the characters’ individual stories are the stories of millions of people. The Jungle is not a
thematically nuanced or complicated novel: capitalism is simply portrayed as a total evil,
from its greedy destruction of children to its cynical willingness to sell diseased meat to an
unsuspecting public. Sinclair opts not to explore the psychology of capitalism; instead, he
simply presents a long litany of the ugly effects of capitalism on the world.
In Sinclair’s view, socialism is the cure for all of the problems that capitalism creates. When
Jurgis discovers socialist politics in Chapter 28, it becomes clear that the novel’s attack on
capitalism is meant to persuade the reader of the desirability of the socialist alternative.
When socialism is introduced, it is shown to be as good as capitalism is evil; whereas
capitalism destroys the many for the benefit of the few, socialism works for the benefit of
everyone. It is even speculated that a socialist state could fulfill Christian morality. Again,
there is no nuance in the book’s polemic: The Jungle’s goal is to persuade the reader to
adopt socialism. Every aspect of the novel’s plot, characterization, and conflict is designed
to discredit the capitalist political system and illustrate the ability of a socialist political
system to restore humanity to the downtrodden, exploited, and abused working class.
The Immigrant Experience and the Hollowness of the American Dream
Because the family that Sinclair uses to represent the struggle of the working class under
capitalism is a group of Lithuanian immigrants, the novel is also able to explore the plight
of immigrants in America. Jurgis, Teta Elzbieta, and their family come to America based on
the promise of high wages and a happy, good life. From the outset, they maintain an
unshakable faith in the American Dream—the idea that hard work and morality will yield
material success and happiness. But Sinclair exposes the hypocrisy of the American Dream

16. American Novel
as the family members attempt to plug themselves into this naïve equation: virtually every
aspect of the family’s experience in Packingtown runs counter to the myth of America to
which they subscribe. Instead of a land of acceptance and opportunity, they find a place of
prejudice and exploitation; instead of a country where hard work and morality lead to
success, they find a place where only moral corruption, crime, and graft enable one to
succeed materially.
Because he wants his readers to sympathize with Jurgis, Sinclair goes to great lengths to
ensure that this immigrant family doesn’t seem alien or foreign to the American mind. He
repeatedly emphasizes that their values of hard work, family togetherness, honesty, and
thrift are those of the American reading public. Sinclair doesn’t attack the American Dream;
instead, he uses the disintegration of the family to illustrate his belief that capitalism itself
is an attack on the values that support the American Dream, which has long since been
rendered hollow by the immoral value of greed.
Symbols
Packingtown and the Stockyards
Perhaps the novel’s most important symbol is the animal pens and slaughterhouses of
Packingtown, which represent in a simple, direct way the plight of the working class. Just as
the animals at Packingtown are herded into pens, killed with impunity, made to suffer, and
given no choice about their fate, so too are the thousands of poor immigrant workers
forced to enter the machinery of capitalism, which grinds them down and kills them
without giving them any choice. Waves of animals pass through Packingtown in a constant
flow, as thousands of them are slaughtered every day and replaced by more, just as
generations of immigrants are ruined by the merciless work and the oppression of
capitalism and eventually replaced by new generations of immigrants.
Cans of Rotten Meat
Historically, The Jungle’s most important effect was probably the passage of the Pure Food
and Drug Act of 1906, enacted in response to public outcry over the novel’s portrayal of the
meat industry’s practice of selling rotten and diseased meat to unsuspecting customers.
Sinclair uses the cans of rotten and unhealthy meat to represent the essential corruption of
capitalism and the hypocrisy of the American Dream. The cans have shiny, attractive
surfaces but contain a mass of putrid meat unfit for human consumption. In the same way,
American capitalism presents an attractive face to immigrants, but the America that they
find is rotten and corrupt.
The Jungle
The novel’s title symbolizes the competitive nature of capitalism; the world of Packingtown
is like a Darwinian jungle, in which the strong prey on the weak and all living things are
engaged in a brutal, amoral fight for survival. The title of the novel draws attention
specifically to the doctrine of Social Darwinism, an idea used by some nineteenth-century
thinkers to justify the abuses of wealthy capitalists. This idea essentially held that society
was designed to reward the strongest, best people, while inferior people were kept down at
a suitable level. By relating the story of a group of honest, hardworking immigrants who
are destroyed by corruption and evil, Sinclair tries to rebut the idea of Social Darwinism,

17. American Novel
implying that those who succeed in the capitalist system are not the best of humankind but
rather the worst and most corrupt of all.
Key Facts
full title · The Jungle
author · Upton Sinclair
type of work · Novel
genre · Social criticism, political fiction, muckraking fiction
language · English
time and place written · 1905–1906, Chicago and Princeton, New Jersey
date of first publication · 1906
publisher · Sinclair published the novel at his own expense after several publishing firms
rejected it.
narrator · Though the narrator is anonymous, his sympathy for the laborers and
vilification of capitalists identifies him as Sinclair’s mouthpiece.
point of view · The third-person narrator focuses on what Jurgis Rudkus does and what he
feels, learns, and experiences. The quasi-omniscient narrator also provides commentary on
the social forces that affect characters’ lives, though often this commentary is framed as
knowledge that Jurgis gains at some future point.
tone · Sinclair’s attitude toward the story is obvious: the victimized working class is
righteous, and the oppressing capitalists are evil. Sinclair’s perspective is identical to that
of the narrator.
tense · Past

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setting (time) · Early 1900s
setting (place) · Packingtown, the meat-packing sector of Chicago
protagonist · Jurgis
major conflict · Jurgis and his family attempt to pursue the American Dream, but wage
slavery and the oppression of capitalism shatter every aspect of their lives.
rising action · Phil Connor’s rape of Ona; Jurgis’s having to spend Christmas in jail away
from his family; Ona’s death during childbirth
climax · Upon hearing of Antanas’s death, in Chapter 21, Jurgis feels destroyed by
capitalism.
falling action · Jurgis’s abandonment of his family and turn to dishonest means to survive;
Marija’s turn to prostitution
themes · Socialism as a remedy for the evils of capitalism; the immigrant experience and
the hollowness of the American Dream
motifs · Corruption; family and tradition
symbols · Packingtown and the stockyards symbolize the exploitation of workers; the idea
of the jungle symbolizes the capitalist idea of the survival of the fittest; cans of rotten meat
symbolize the disingenuous face of capitalism; Teta Elzbieta symbolizes the family, while
Jonas symbolizes capitalism’s destruction of the family.
foreshadowing · The grim setting of Packingtown foreshadows the family’s eventual
destruction; the conversation with Grandmother Majauszkiene about the housing swindle
foreshadows their eviction; Jurgis’s experiences with vote-buying and crime early in the
novel foreshadow his later participation in similar schemes.

19. American Novel
About the Author
Willa Cather was born on December 7, 1873 in Back Creek Valley (a small farming
community close to the Blue Ridge Mountains) in Virginia. She was the eldest child of
Charles Cather, a deputy Sheriff, and Mary Virginia Boak Cather. The family came to
Pennsylvania from Ireland in the 1750's.
In 1883 the Cather family moved to join Willa's grandparents William and Caroline and her
uncle George in Webster County, Nebraska. At the time her family included Willa's two
brothers, a sister, and her grandmother. Ayear later they moved to Red Cloud, a nearby
railroad town, where her father opened a loan and insurance office. The family never
became rich or influential, and Willa attributed their lack of financial success to her father,
whom she claimed placed intellectual and spiritual matters over the commercial. Her
mother was a vain woman, mostly concerned with fashion and trying to turn Willa into "a
lady", in spite of the fact that Willa defied the norms for girls and cut her hair short and
wore trousers. While living in the town Willa met Annie Sadilek, whom she later used for
the Antonia character in My Antonia. Many of Willa's characters are inspired by people she
met in her youth. Another notable example is Olive Fremstad, an opera singer, who
inspired the character Thea Kronborg in The Song of the Lark.
Willa graduated from Red Cloud High School in 1890. She soon moved to the state capitol in
Lincoln in order to study for entrance at the University of Nebraska. At this time Willa was
actually interested in studying medicine. In Red Cloud she had spent time with and learned
from a local doctor, and she dreamed of becoming a physician. But, when one of Willa's
stories for a writing class got published, she discovered a passion for writing had been
fermenting within her. In college, Willa spent time editing the school magazine and
publishing articles and play reviews in the local papers. In 1892 she published her short
story "Peter" in a Boston magazine, a story that later became part of her novel My Antonia.

20. American Novel
After graduating in 1895, she returned to Red Cloud until she was offered a position editing
Home Monthly in Pittsburgh.
While editing the magazine, she wrote short stories to fill its pages. Between 1901 and
1906, Willa worked as a high school English teacher. During this time she wrote the stories
that would be published in her first collection, called the Troll Garden (1905). These stories
brought her to the attention of S.S. McClure, owner of one of the most widely read
magazines of the day. In 1906 Cather moved to New York to join McClure's Magazine,
initially as a member of the staff and ultimately as its managing editor. During this time she
met Sara Orne Jewett, a woman from Maine who inspired her to later write about
Nebraska. In 1912, after five years with McClure's, she left the magazine to have time for
her own writing. After the publication of Alexander's Bridge, also in 1912, Cather visited
the Southwest where she was fascinated by the Anasazi cliff dwellings.
In 1913 O Pioneers was published and in 1917 she wrote My Antonia while living in New
Hampshire. By 1923 she had won the Pulitzer Prize for her One of Ours, and in this year her
modernist book A Lost Lady was published. At the time her novels focused on the
destruction of provincial life and the death of the pioneering tradition.
Perhaps overwhelmed by so much success, Cather suffered a period of despair reflected in
the darker tones of the novels written during this period. Despite her problems, she wrote
some of her greatest novels during this period, such as The Professor's House (1925), My
Mortal Enemy (1926), and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).
Willa Cather’s fiction is infused with many of her deeply-held beliefs and values. Among
these values are a reverence for art, for history, and for the “pomp and circumstance” of
organized Catholic and Episcopalian religion. Cather also felt strongly that peoples and
civilizations who live in harmony with their natural environments are, and should be,
sources of inspiration. She decried materialism and the advent of modern mass culture,
which she believed blunted human intellectual achievement and polluted public taste.
From early on in her career, Cather received not only with widespread popular success, but
also astonishing critical success. This pattern began to change in the 1930s with the advent
of Marxist Criticism. Marxist critics suggested that Cather did not understand or show
concern for modern social issues, and they made fun of the romanticism which infused her
stories. Whether or not Cather was affected by such criticism, these years were made more
difficult by the death of her mother, brothers and her good friend Isabelle McClung.
Cather maintained an active writing career, publishing novels and short stories for many
years until her death on April 24, 1947. At the time of her death, she ordered her letters
burned. Though thousands of letters escaped destruction, Cather's will prevents their
publication. Willa Cather was buried in New Hampshire; in Red Cloud, the Willa Cather
Pioneer Memorial Foundation was created to honor her memory.

21. American Novel
Plot Summary
Jim Burden, a successful New York City lawyer, gives an acquaintance a memoir of his
Nebraska childhood in the form of a recollection of their mutual friend, Ántonia Shimerda.
This memoir makes up the bulk of the novel.
Jim first arrives in Nebraska at the age of ten, when he makes the trip west to live with his
grandparents after finding himself an orphan in Virginia. On the train out west, Jim gets his
first glimpse of the Shimerdas, a Bohemian immigrant family traveling in the same
direction.
As fate would have it, the Shimerdas have taken up residence in farm neighboring the
Burdens’. Jim makes fast friends with the Shimerda children, especially Ántonia, who is
nearest to him in age and eager to learn English. Jim tutors Ántonia, and the two of them
spend much of the autumn exploring their new landscape together.
In late January, tragedy strikes with the suicide of Mr. Shimerda. After an emotional funeral,
the Shimerdas retreat into despair, and the Burdens struggle to be as accommodating as
possible. As a result of the hardships that the Shimerdas suffer, Ántonia and Jim find that a
wedge has been driven between them.
A couple of years later, the Burdens decide to move into town, and shortly thereafter
Ántonia takes a job as a housekeeper with a neighboring family, the Harlings. Jim begins to
see more of Ántonia once again, especially when a dancing pavilion comes to town and
enlivens the social scene.
Jim’s high school years quickly come to a close, and he is offered a spot at the university in
Lincoln. He makes a great success of his high school commencement speech and spends the
summer hard at work in preparation for his course of study. Before leaving, he takes one
last trip out to the countryside with Ántonia and her friends, where they gather to
reminisce about old times together.
In Lincoln, Jim throws himself into his studies, which take up the majority of his time in the
first year and a half of his course. In the spring of his second year, he begins to see a good

22. American Novel
deal of Lena Lingard, a mutual friend of his and Ántonia’s who has always intrigued Jim.
After a few months of theatergoing and dalliances about town, Jim decides that he needs to
make a fresh start of things and prepares to transfer to Harvard University for his final two
years of college.
While Jim is away, Ántonia gets engaged to a local boy and moves to Denver in order to be
with him. Days before the wedding, the boy -abandons Ántonia, and she returns to
Nebraska heartbroken. She covers up an unexpected pregnancy throughout its term, but in
giving birth to a daughter incurs the disapproval of her family. However, she resolves
to take care of her baby and continues to work on the farm with her brother.
After graduating from college, during the summer before entering law school, Jim returns
to Nebraska to be with his grandparents. Upon hearing of Ántonia’s situation, he decides to
drive out to the countryside and visit her. They spend a happy day together reliving old
times, and Jim parts with a promise to visit her again very soon.
Twenty years pass before Jim is able to visit Ántonia again. In the intervening period, he
establishes himself as a prosperous New York City lawyer, and Ántonia marries and has
many children with a man named Cuzak, also of Bohemian origin. Jim’s visit to the Cuzak
farm is a happy one, with plenty of laughter and stories. Ántonia and Jim renew their old
ties, and Jim resolves to be in closer contact with the Cuzaks in the -coming years.
As he prepares to leave Nebraska and return to New York City, Jim walks along the
outskirts of town, near the overgrown road that leads to his childhood home. At peace with
himself in this familiar landscape, he feels that his life has come full circle, and he reflects in
the moonlight on all that his past with Ántonia has meant to him.

23. American Novel
Character List
Jim Burden - The author of the youthful recollection that makes up the body of the novel.
As a youth in Nebraska, Jim develops a close friendship with a Bohemian immigrant girl,
Ántonia Shimerda. Jim is an intelligent, introspective young man who responds strongly to
the land and the environment in which he lives. Unlike most other boys his age, Jim is more
interested in academics and reflection than in roughhousing; in fact, he seems to prefer
spending time alone or with girls such as Ántonia. At the time of the narrative’s
composition, Jim is married, but without children, and working as a legal counsel in New
York City.
Ántonia Shimerda - The focus of Jim’s recollection, and one of his closest childhood
friends. Ántonia moves to Nebraska from Bohemia with the rest of her family in her early
teenage years. Intelligent, optimistic, loyal, and kindhearted, the naturally gregarious
Ántonia is forced to accept a difficult life after the death of her father. At the time Jim writes
the narrative, she is raising her large family on the Nebraska prairie, not far from where
she and Jim grew up.
Lena Lingard - A Norwegian immigrant’s daughter and a friend of Ántonia’s. Lena has a
brief liaison with Jim in Black Hawk and a more extended relationship with him in Lincoln,
where she sets up her own dressmaker’s shop. Lena is pretty and blonde, and craves
independence and excitement. Men are always attracted to her, but she refuses to marry
and give up her freedom.
Josiah Burden - Jim’s grandfather. Josiah is a strongly religious man, silent and given to
hard work.
Emmaline Burden - Jim’s grandmother. Emmaline shows great concern and compassion
for the Shimerdas and is a loving maternal figure for Jim.

24. American Novel
Otto Fuchs - The Burdens’ hired hand, who looks like a cowboy out of one of Jim’s books
but is actually an Austrian immigrant. Good-natured despite his rough appearance, Otto
decides to seek his fortune in the West after the Burdens move to Black Hawk.
Jake Marpole - Another hired hand of the Burdens. Jake makes the trip from Virginia to
Nebraska along with Jim and accompanies Otto out west after the Burdens move to Black
Hawk. Jake has a powerful temper but generally displays a good-natured and even childlike
innocence about the world.
Mr. Shimerda - The patriarch of the Bohemian immigrant family. A melancholy man given
to artistic and scholarly pursuits, Mr. Shimerda feels very much out of place in foreign land.
His depression eventually leads to suicide, leaving his family members to pick up the pieces
and struggle to make a living on their own.
Mrs. Shimerda - The matriarch of the Bohemian immigrant family. Mrs. Shimerda is a
brusque, bossy, and often curt woman. After the suicide of her husband, she is forced to
make do with the little that she has in an attempt to provide for her family.
Yulka Shimerda - The youngest of the Shimerda children. Yulka is a pretty, young girl who
later helps Ántonia raise her baby.
Ambrosch Shimerda - The Shimerdas’ oldest son. Mrs. Shimerda and her daughters dote
on Ambrosch, claiming that he is brilliant and the reason they came to America. Ambrosch
shares his mother’s curt and presumptuous attitude, but becomes the unquestioned head
of the family after Mr. Shimerda’s suicide.
Marek Shimerda - The younger of the two Shimerda brothers. Marek’s physical
deformities are accompanied by a handful of psychological instabilities and
mental deficiencies.
Tiny Soderball - One of the hired girls in Black Hawk and a friend to Ántonia and Lena.
After working with Mrs. Gardener in the Boys’ Home, Tiny travels west and makes a small
fortune during the Alaskan gold rush.
Russian Pavel - Tall, gaunt, and nervous, Pavel is an immigrant who falls ill under the care
of the Shimerdas. He had been ostracized and forced to leave his native Russia after a
frightful incident involving a wolf attack on a wedding party.
Russian Peter - Pavel’s housemate, and a fat, happy man. Like Pavel, Peter was forced into
exile from his native Russia following a wolf attack on a wedding party. Peter eventually
finds himself severely in debt and sells off his belongings, leaving America for a job as a
cook in a Russian labor camp.
Mr. Harling - The patriarch of the Harling family, neighbors to the Burdens in Black Hawk.
A businessman of keen ability, Mr. Harling disapproves of Ántonia’s frequent carousals at
the dancing pavilion and eventually forces her to leave her post as their housekeeper
because of her lifestyle.
Mrs. Harling - The matriarch of the Harling family, and a charismatic and active woman.
Mrs. Harling develops a strong affection for Ántonia, and she provides myriad activities for
her children, Ántonia, and Jim, to take part in.

25. American Novel
Frances Harling - The oldest of the Harling children. Frances has a sound business mind
and manages her father’s accounts with a great deal of skill.
Charley Harling - The only Harling son. Charley is of a military persuasion and eventually
goes on to a successful career at the Naval Academy in Annapolis.
Julia Harling - The middle Harling daughter. Julia is Jim’s age and has a penchant for
music.
Sally Harling - The youngest Harling daughter, and something of a tomboy.
Larry Donovan - Ántonia’s fiancé, and an arrogant and selfish young man. After being
fired from his job as a railroad conductor, Donovan leaves Ántonia on the eve of their
wedding, running away to Mexico in search of a quick fortune.
Mrs. Gardener - The proprietress of the Boys’ Home in Black Hawk.
Samson d’Arnault - A blind, black pianist. D’Arnault comes to Black Hawk on a blustery
March weekend and gives a concert at the Boys’ Home that brings down the house.
Wick Cutter - The leading moneylender in Black Hawk and a shady character.
Gaston Cleric - Jim’s tutor at the university in Lincoln. Cleric eventually moves on to a
teaching position at Harvard University and brings Jim along with him. His premature
death from pneumonia has a strong effect on Jim.
Widow Steavens - The Burdens’ tenant at their old farmhouse. Widow Steavens develops
a close relationship with Ántonia in the time surrounding the breaking of Ántonia’s
engagement.
Anton Jelinek - A Bohemian homesteader and friend of the Shimerdas who later moves to
Black Hawk and becomes a saloon proprietor.
Peter Krajiek - A Bohemian immigrant and neighbor to the Burdens who sells the
Shimerdas their first farm in America and cheats them out of several comforts.
Cuzak - A Bohemian immigrant to America who marries Ántonia and raises a large family
with her.

26. American Novel
Themes
Humankind’s Relationship to the Past
The central narrative of My Ántonia is a look into the past, and though in his narration Jim
rarely says anything directly about the idea of the past, the overall tone of the novel is
highly nostalgic. Jim’s motive for writing his story is to try to reestablish some connection
between his present as a high-powered New York lawyer and his vanished past on the
Nebraska prairie; in re-creating that past, the novel represents both Jim’s memories and his
feelings about his memories. Additionally, within the narrative itself, characters often look
back longingly toward a past that they have lost, especially after Book I. Living in Black
Hawk, Jim and Ántonia recall their days on the farms; Lena looks back toward her life with
her family; the Shimerdas and the Russians reflect on their lives in their respective home
countries before they immigrated to the United States.
The two principal qualities that the past seems to possess for most of the characters in the
novel are that it is unrecoverable and that it is, in some way, preferable to the present.
Ántonia misses life in Bohemia just as Jim misses life in Nebraska, but neither of them can
ever go back. This impossibility of return accounts for the -nostalgic, emotional tone of the
story, which may have been autobiographical as well, informed by Cather’s own longing for
her Nebraska childhood. But if the past can never be recovered, it can never be escaped,
either, and Jim is fated to go on thinking about Black Hawk long after he has left it.
The other important characteristic of the past in My Ántonia is that it is always personal:
characters never look back toward bygone eras or large-scale historical conditions, but
only toward the personal circumstances—places, people, things—that they remember from
their own lives. As a result, a character’s emotions are destined to color his or her
memories for the rest of his or her life, a fact that is made thematically explicit in the novel
by Jim’s decision to call his memoir “My Ántonia” rather than simply “Ántonia." In thus

27. American Novel
laying claim to Ántonia, Jim acknowledges that what he is really writing is simply a
chronicle of his own thoughts and feelings.
The novel ends on an optimistic note, however, with Jim’s return to Nebraska twenty years
after he last saw Ántonia and his mature decision to visit more often and to keep Ántonia in
his life. This decision implies that, by revisiting his past, Jim has learned to incorporate it
into his present, to seek a real relationship with Ántonia rather than transform her into a
symbol of the past in his own mind. The past, the novel seems to suggest, is unrecoverable,
but the people who shared one’s past can be recovered, even after a separation of many
years.
Humankind’s Relationship to Its Environment
Related to the novel’s nostalgic feeling for the past is its in-depth exploration of
humankind’s relationship to its environment. What characters in My Ántonia miss about
the past is not simply lost time but a lost setting, a vanished world of people, places, and
things, especially natural surroundings. The characters in My Ántonia respond powerfully
to their environments—especially Jim, who develops a strong attachment to the Nebraska
landscape that never really leaves him, even after two decades in New York.
As Cather portrays it, one’s environment comes to symbolize one’s psychology, and may
even shape one’s emotional state by giving thoughts and feelings a physical form. The river,
for example, makes Jim feel free, and he comes to prize freedom; the setting sun captures
his introspective loneliness, and the wide-open melancholy of Nebraska’s plains may play a
role in forming his reflective, romantic personality—if it does not create Jim’s personality,
it at least comes to embody it physically. Thus, characters in My Ántonia often develop an
extremely intense rapport with their surroundings, and it is the sense of loss engendered
by moving beyond one’s surroundings that occasions the novel’s exploration of the
meaning of the past.
On a more concrete level, My Ántonia explores the lives of immigrants on the United States
frontier in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Nebraska prairie of the novel is an
ethnic hodgepodge combining American-born settlers with a wide range of European
immigrants, especially eastern and northern Europeans such as the Bohemian Shimerdas,
the Russians Peter and Pavel, and the Norwegian Lena. The novel creates a sympathetic
portrait of the many hardships that immigrants faced, including intense homesickness (a
form of longing for the past), inability to speak English, and a bewildering array of cultural
and religious differences that the novel’s immigrants must overcome if they wish to fit in
with the often quite judgmental American settlers who make up the economic and cultural
mainstream in Black Hawk. Because of the rigid (and, in Jim’s eyes, preposterous) social
hierarchy of Black Hawk, simply getting by can be very difficult for the immigrants, who
lack the same opportunities as the Americans—Jim goes to school, for instance, while
Ántonia must help her family eke out an existence after her father’s suicide.
Still, though Cather’s portrait of the immigrant experience is sympathetic, it never quite
rises to the level of advocacy: Jim is describing a vanished past, not agitating for social
change, and he himself shares many of the cultural assumptions of the American-born
settlers. Thus, My Ántonia has little in common with more socially inflammatory works
about the hardships faced by immigrants such as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which was
written to bring about social change. My Ántonia is a much more personal story and is more
concerned with re-creating an emotional reality than with awakening the nation to a moral
outrage.
The Traditional Nature of Frontier Values

28. American Novel
My Ántonia evokes the living conditions and mindset of the nineteenth century, as well as
the simple, hardworking, homespun ethic of that era’s settlers, an ethic Cather approves of
strongly even if she does not always approve of its application, for instance, the -prejudicial
treatment of the hired girls in town. The novel also explores the social assumptions of the
frontier people on matters such as race (in the passage about Samson d’Arnault) and
gender (in the passages about the hired girls, and in Jim’s general desire to spend time with
girls rather than with boys). These rigid traditional social assumptions require that Jim
learn to fight and swear so that he will seem more like a boy. Nevertheless, despite their
shortcomings, the settlers share values of family, community, and religion that make Black
Hawk a close-knit and positive community, not unworthy of the nostalgia in which it is
bathed throughout the novel.
Symbols
The Nebraska Landscape
The most important and universal symbol in My Ántonia is the Nebraska landscape.
Cather’s poetic and moving depiction of it is perhaps the most famous and highly praised
aspect of the novel. The landscape symbolizes the larger idea of a human environment, a
setting in which a person lives and moves. Jim’s relationship with the Nebraska landscape
is important on its own terms, but it also comes to symbolize a great deal about Jim’s
relationship with the people and culture of Nebraska, as well as with his inner self.
Throughout the novel, the landscape mirrors Jim’s feelings—it looks desolate when he is
lonely, for instance—and also awakens feelings within him. Finally, the landscape becomes
the novel’s most tangible symbol of the vanished past, as Jim, the lawyer in distant New
York, thinks back longingly on the landscape of his childhood.
The Plow
The plow, which Jim and Ántonia see silhouetted against the enormous setting sun,
symbolizes the connection between human culture and the natural landscape. As the sun
sets behind the plow, the two elements are combined in a single image of perfect harmony,
suggesting that man and nature also coexist harmoniously. But as the sun sinks lower on
the horizon, the plow seems to grow smaller and smaller, ultimately reflecting the
dominance of the landscape over those who inhabit it.

29. American Novel
Key Facts
full title · My Ántonia
author · Willa Cather
type of work · Novel
genre · Frontier fiction, autobiographical fiction
language · English
time and place written · 1917, New Hampshire
date of first publication · 1918
narrator · The main part of the story is Jim Burden’s memoir narrated in his first-person
voice, from the perspective of an older man looking back on his childhood. The introduction
to the novel is narrated by an unnamed individual, one of Jim’s childhood acquaintances.
Like Jim, this narrator uses a friendly, first-person voice.
point of view · Except for the introduction, written from the perspective of the unnamed
narrator, the entire novel is written from Jim’s perspective.

30. American Novel
tone · Jim’s attitude toward his story is somewhat sad, extremely nostalgic, and full of
yearning for a lost past. Throughout Book V, as he narrates the story of his reunion with
Ántonia, he becomes much more optimistic and less elegiac in mood.
tense · Past
setting (time) · 1880s–1910s
setting (place) · In and around Black Hawk, Nebraska; also Lincoln, Nebraska
protagonist · Jim Burden
major conflict · Jim has an extremely close, loving relationship with his childhood friend
Ántonia, but their friendship is tested by the different paths their lives take them down, as
Jim acquires an education while Ántonia is forced to work to help support her family. As a
secondary conflict, Jim, a middle-aged lawyer, looks back longingly toward his childhood
with Ántonia but feels he has lost it forever; his feelings of nostalgia impede him from
reestablishing contact with the real Ántonia, now the matriarch of a large family in
Nebraska. On a more concrete level, Ántonia must struggle against various hardships, such
as the death of her father and her fiancé’s betrayal of her.
rising action · Many modernist authors broke from dramatic or narrative conventions; My
Ántonia does so by avoiding a conventional plot shape with rising action, climax, and falling
action. Still, as Ántonia’s life becomes fraught with increasing hardship, we might say that
her father’s suicide, the betrayal of her fiancé, and the birth of her child act as rising action.
In Jim’s life, his move to Black Hawk, his time with Lena, and the dances all serve as rising
action in his transition from childhood to adulthood.
climax · The structure of My Ántonia does not yield one singular moment of dramatic
intensity in which the conflict is resolved. The novel becomes calmer and less conflicted as
the final books progress, -leading to a warmly optimistic conclusion that is not the result of
any definitive struggle. The closest thing the novel has to a climactic moment is Jim’s
reunion with Ántonia, twenty years after their last meeting.
falling action · If Jim’s reunion with Ántonia is taken as the climax, then the falling action
is his time at the Cuzak farm as he grows to know and admire Ántonia’s husband and
children, and resolves to spend more time with them.
themes · Humankind’s relationship to the past; humankind’s relationship to environment;
the immigrant experience in America; the traditional nature of late nineteenth-century
American frontier values
motifs · Religion, childhood, and adulthood
symbols · The Nebraska landscape, the plow
foreshadowing · The information divulged in the Introduction contains the blueprint for
everything to come in the novel; in a sense, the whole novel is foreshadowed. Also,
Ántonia’s statement to Jim that things will be easy for him but hard for her foreshadows his
eventual departure for college and a high-powered job and her difficult life on the prairie.

31. American Novel