Prarie
My Antonia
Cheyenne Hiebner
As I was out on the prairie, I could almost feel myself being pulled back in time. The prairie, though it didn't spread for miles, gave me an excellent example of what Willa Carter portrayed in the book My Antonia. The prairie was a large part in My Antonia, and was a symbol that reoccured on many occasions, showing us the tough life it gave Jim, Antonia and their family and friends.
Childhood Reflection
Feeling the uneven ground beneath my feet, and the tall grasses wiping my face, it reminded me when I was young and would help my dad irrigate; walking on the corn rows and getting wiped in the face with corn leaves. Though it doesn't sound very pleasant, that was the good life. Feeling the warm breeze on a summer evening and breathing in fresh air. The corn field, to me, is like the prairie to Antonia- all that we know and what we have grown up with, not willing to give up that part of out past.
While I was in the prairie I was enveloped in fresh air, and the sounds of dry grass rustling in the slight breeze."I can remember exactly how the country looked to me as I walked beside my grandmother along the faint wagon-tracks on that early September morning. Perhaps the glide of long railway travel was still with me, for more than anything else I felt motion in the landscape; in the fresh, easy-blowing morning wind, and the earth itself, as if the shaggy grass were a sort of loose hide, and underneath it herds of wild buffalo were galloping, galloping..." ~My Antonia, Willa Carter
Like Jim, when I first look at a prairie all I see is nothingness. "I do not remember crossing the Missouri River, or anything about the long day's journey through Nebraska. Probably by that time I had crossed so many rivers that I was dull to them. The only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska." ~My Antonia, Willa Carter. But, after you sit down, or take a stroll through the prairie, you get a feeling of simple life.
"We knew things were hard for the Bohemian neighbors, but the two girls were lighthearted and never complained. They were always ready to forget their troubles at home, and to run away with me over the prairie, scaring rabbits or starting up flocks of quail." ~My Antonia, Willa Carter. Now-a-days, we have so much technology that we get caught up in it and don't take the time to forget our troubles and run freely in the prairie. Instead, we continually see how "well" people's lives are on social media, and are continually reminded of what we don't have, and what we would like to have. I wish we could go back to that free kind of life, when the only responsibility as a child was to wash the dishes, milk the cow and run freely through the prairie.
Resources
My Antonia, Willa Carter