My Antonia

“We agreed that no one who had not grown up in a little prairie town could know anything about it. It was a kind of freemasonry, we said.”

Cather’s choice of the word “freemasonry” equates the shared experience of a childhood spent on the Nebraska prairie with the experience of belonging to a secret fraternal organization with special knowledge and customs. In this way, Cather argues for the significance of a particular setting—the Midwestern prairie—in shaping a person’s perspective. She also introduces the nostalgic theme of a bond based on a shared past.

“More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood.”

Cather introduces the Bohemian girl, Ántonia, as symbolizing the Nebraskan frontier experience with its pioneering immigrants. The unnamed narrator gives additional force to Jim’s recollections by agreeing that Ántonia was special and memorable.

“There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.”

Jim Burden’s observation emphasizes the undeveloped nature of the frontier. When Jim does not see fences or fields, he perceives the land as lacking structure and the mark of civilization. This sets up a binary of wild versus tamed, in which a landscape must be tamed by people to be considered part of society.