Summary

Jim Burden’s father and mother die when he is ten years old, and the boy makes the long trip from Virginia to his grandparents’ farm in Nebraska in the company of Jake Marpole, a hired hand who is to work for Jim’s grandfather. Arriving by train in the prairie town of Black Hawk late at night, the boy notices an immigrant family huddled on the station platform. Jim and Jake are met by a lanky, scar-faced cowboy named Otto Fuchs, who drives them in a jolting wagon across the empty prairie to the Burden farm.

Jim grows to love the vast expanse of land and sky. One day, Jim’s grandmother suggests that the family pay a visit to the Shimerdas, an immigrant family just arrived in the territory. At first, the newcomers impress Jim unfavorably. The Shimerdas are poor and live in a dugout cut into the earth. The place is dirty, and the children are ragged. Although he cannot understand her speech, Jim makes friends with the oldest girl, Ántonia.

Jim often finds his way to the Shimerda home. He does not like Ántonia’s surly brother, Ambrosch, or her grasping mother, but Ántonia wins an immediate place in Jim’s heart with her eager smile and great, warm eyes. One day, her father, with his English dictionary tucked under his arm, corners Jim and asks him to teach the girl English. She learns rapidly. Jim respects Ántonia’s father, a tall, thin, sensitive man who had been a musician in the old country. Now he is worn down by poverty and overwork. He seldom laughs any more.

Jim and Ántonia pass many happy hours on the prairie. Then, during a severe winter, tragedy strikes the Shimerdas when Ántonia’s father, broken and beaten by the prairie, shoots himself. Ántonia had loved her father more than anyone else in her family. After his death, she shoulders his share of the farmwork. When spring comes, she goes with Ambrosch into the fields and plows like a man. The harvest brings money, and the Shimerdas soon have a house. With the money left over, they buy plowshares and cattle.

Because Jim’s grandparents are growing too old to keep up their farm, they dismiss Jake and Otto and move to the town of Black Hawk. There, Jim longs for the open prairie land, the gruff, friendly companionship of Jake and Otto, and the warmth of Ántonia’s friendship. He suffers at school and spends his idle hours roaming the barren gray streets of Black Hawk. At Jim’s suggestion, his grandmother arranges with a neighbor, Mrs. Harling, to bring Ántonia into town as her hired girl. Ántonia enters into her tasks with enthusiasm. Jim notices that she is more feminine and laughs more often; though she never shirks her duties at the Harling house, she is eager for recreation and gaiety.

Almost every night, Ántonia goes to a dance pavilion with a group of hired girls. There, in new, handmade dresses, the girls gather to dance with the village boys. Jim goes, too, and the more he sees of the hired girls, the better he likes them. Once or twice, he worries about Ántonia, who is popular and trusting. When she earns a reputation for being a little too loose, she loses her position with the Harlings and goes to work for a cruel moneylender, Wick Cutter, who has a licentious eye on her.

One night, Ántonia appears at the Burdens and begs Jim to stay in her bed for the night and let her remain at the Burdens. Wick Cutter is supposed to be out of town, but Ántonia suspects that, with Mrs. Cutter also gone, he might return and try to harm her. Her fears prove correct, for Wick returns and goes to Ántonia’s bedroom, and finds Jim.

Ántonia returns to work for the Harlings. Jim studies hard during the summer, passes his entrance examinations, and in the fall leaves for the state university. Although he finds a whole new world of literature and art, he cannot forget his early years under the blazing prairie sun and his friendship with Ántonia. He hears little from Ántonia during those years. One of her friends, Lena Lingard, who had also worked as a...