The only necessary technique that Willa Cather used in My Antonia was love. Of course with that comes a little suspense and adventure, but all the while the reader is asking, Will Jim and Antonia just fall in love already?! At least for me anyway…..
The pair meets each other in the very first chapter, and they share a friendly relationship. Antonia gets an attitude, but all the while Jim continues to have feelings for her. Their lives take them in different directions, but there is that continuous hope that they will be together in the end. I have never a novel with such quotable love scenes. I was almost in tears because of the sweet remarks the two had for each other, but knowing that they couldn't be together. I swear this novel could be made into a movie, and become the romance piece of a generation.
When Jim leaves for Law School at Harvard, Antonia assures him, "Of course it means you are going away from us for good, but that don't mean I'll lose you. Look at my papa here; he's been dead all these years, and yet he is more real to me than anybody else. He never goes out of my life. I talk to him and consult him all the time. The older I grow, the better I know him and the more I understand him (Cather 191)." Before he leaves, he promises her that he will return, and he says, "The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me (Cather 192)." AHHH! As if the lines were taken right out of a book of vows.
Obviously, the use of romance for a technique was smart on behalf of Cather because readers like me can't stop obsessing over the ending. The pair should have ended together, and it is driving me crazy that they didn't.
[Bibliography]
Cather, Willa. My Antonia. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004. Print.
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