A Bohemian immigrant and Jim's closest friend, Ántonia comes to the prairie when she is 13. She is lively and intelligent, but struggles to remain optimistic while enduring the many hardships of poverty. Still, Jim describes her as having a youthful "vigour" and identifies her with light. Like Jim, Ántonia feels a deep attachment to the prairie, and she works in the fields with the men when her father dies. But when she moves to town to work as a housekeeper, she becomes interested in clothing and dancing, and gains a reputation for being "easy." Although Jim loves her, Ántonia can never view him as more than a younger brother. She becomes a single mother in her early twenties, but later moves back to the farm, marries Anton Cuzak, and raises 11 children.
Ántonia Shimerda Quotes in My Antonia
The My Antonia quotes below are all either spoken by Ántonia Shimerda or refer to Ántonia Shimerda. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Introduction
Quotes
During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk kept returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had both known long ago. More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood.
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Book 1, Chapter 7
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This was enough for Ántonia. She liked me better from that time on, and she never took a supercilious air with me again. I had killed a big snake – I was now a big fellow.
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Book 1, Chapter 10
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I never forgot the strange taste; though it was many years before I knew that those little brown shavings, which the Shimerdas had brought so far and treasured so jealously, were dried mushrooms. They had been gathered, probably, in some deep Bohemian forest...
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Book 1, Chapter 19
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"Why aren't you always nice like this, Tony?" "How nice?"
"Why, just like this; like yourself. Why do you all the time try to be like Ambrosch?"
She put her arms under her head and lay back, looking up at the sky. "If I live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us."
"Why, just like this; like yourself. Why do you all the time try to be like Ambrosch?"
She put her arms under her head and lay back, looking up at the sky. "If I live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us."
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Book 2, Chapter 14
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Even while we whispered about it, our vision disappeared; the ball dropped and dropped until the red tip went beneath the earth. The fields below us were dark, the sky was growing pale, and that forgotten plough had sunk back to its own littleness somewhere on the prairie.
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Book 4, Chapter 1
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I was bitterly disappointed in her [Ántonia]. I could not forgive her for becoming an object of pity, while Lena Lingard, for whom people had always foretold trouble, was now the leading dressmaker of Lincoln, much respected in Black Hawk.
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Book 4, Chapter 3
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"After the winter begun she [Ántonia] wore a man's long overcoat and boots, and a man's felt hat with a wide brim."
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Book 5, Chapter 1
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She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions.
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In my memory there was a succession of such pictures, fixed there like the old woodcuts of one's first primer: Ántonia kicking her bare legs against the sides of my pony when we came home in triumph with our snake; Ántonia in her black shawl and fur cap, as she stood by her father's grave in the snowstorm; Ántonia coming in with her work-team along the evening sky.
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Book 5, Chapter 3
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For Ántonia and for me, this had been the road of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which predetermined for us all that we can ever be. Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.
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Ántonia Shimerda Quotes in My Antonia
The My Antonia quotes below are all either spoken by Ántonia Shimerda or refer to Ántonia Shimerda. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Introduction
Quotes
During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk kept returning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had both known long ago. More than any other person we remembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 1, Chapter 7
Quotes
This was enough for Ántonia. She liked me better from that time on, and she never took a supercilious air with me again. I had killed a big snake – I was now a big fellow.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 1, Chapter 10
Quotes
I never forgot the strange taste; though it was many years before I knew that those little brown shavings, which the Shimerdas had brought so far and treasured so jealously, were dried mushrooms. They had been gathered, probably, in some deep Bohemian forest...
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 1, Chapter 19
Quotes
"Why aren't you always nice like this, Tony?" "How nice?"
"Why, just like this; like yourself. Why do you all the time try to be like Ambrosch?"
She put her arms under her head and lay back, looking up at the sky. "If I live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us."
"Why, just like this; like yourself. Why do you all the time try to be like Ambrosch?"
She put her arms under her head and lay back, looking up at the sky. "If I live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us."
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 14
Quotes
Even while we whispered about it, our vision disappeared; the ball dropped and dropped until the red tip went beneath the earth. The fields below us were dark, the sky was growing pale, and that forgotten plough had sunk back to its own littleness somewhere on the prairie.
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Book 4, Chapter 1
Quotes
I was bitterly disappointed in her [Ántonia]. I could not forgive her for becoming an object of pity, while Lena Lingard, for whom people had always foretold trouble, was now the leading dressmaker of Lincoln, much respected in Black Hawk.
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Book 4, Chapter 3
Quotes
"After the winter begun she [Ántonia] wore a man's long overcoat and boots, and a man's felt hat with a wide brim."
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Book 5, Chapter 1
Quotes
She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
In my memory there was a succession of such pictures, fixed there like the old woodcuts of one's first primer: Ántonia kicking her bare legs against the sides of my pony when we came home in triumph with our snake; Ántonia in her black shawl and fur cap, as she stood by her father's grave in the snowstorm; Ántonia coming in with her work-team along the evening sky.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Book 5, Chapter 3
Quotes
For Ántonia and for me, this had been the road of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which predetermined for us all that we can ever be. Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.
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