In many ways, Cather's novel is the story of these immigrants' acclimation to the American Midwest, as seen through Jim's eyes. They face extreme poverty, the barriers of not speaking the English language, and the challenge of cultural and religious differences. But while both Jim and Ántonia encounter loneliness and homesickness for the lands they left behind, in My Ántonia the foreign-born immigrants experience the greater struggle. My ntonia, first published 1918, is one of Willa Cather's greatest works.It is the last novel in the Prairie trilogy, preceded by O Pioneers and The Song of the Lark.My ntonia tells the stories of several immigrant families who move out to rural Nebraska to start new lives in America, with a particular focus on a Bohemian family, the Shimerdas, whose eldest daughter is named ntonia. Both groups were in search of a better life, and, as depicted in My Ántonia, both can be considered immigrants in that they suffer the trials of a new and unfamiliar life. Some Eastern Americans, like Jim's grandparents, simply moved west, while others, like the Shimerdas, came all the way from Europe to try their luck at farming the Nebraska prairie. In 1862, the United States government urged colonization of Nebraska and other territories by creating The Homestead Act, which stated that any person who was an American citizen, or had declared his intention to become one, could claim 160 acres of government land.
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