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Book 3, Chapter 4
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in My Antonia, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Immigrant Experience
Friendship
The Prairie
The Past
Innocence and Maturity
Gender
Summary
Analysis
The summer after finishing college and before entering Harvard Law School, Jim visits his grandparents in Black Hawk. While there, Jim visits with old friends and learns that Ántonia's fiancé Larry, a train conductor, got her pregnant and then abandoned her. The news deeply upsets and angers Jim.
Jim mentions Tiny Soderball, who moved to Seattle to open a boarding-house, then followed the gold rush to Alaska, where she was deeded a claim by a dying Swedish gold-seeker, which made her fortune. She eventually moved to San Francisco with Lena. Years later, Jim ran into Tiny—she was very rich, but also cold and unfeeling.
Jim holds up Tiny as a contrast to Ántonia. Tiny has ambition, without love of a place or past, which leaves her successful but cold. Like Jim, Ántonia loves a place, which saps her ambition but gives her a past and a connection to the land.
Themes
