Three Beneficial Facts About The Frontier From My Antonia

The American West
Three Beneficial Facts About the Frontier From My Antonia Westward Expansion was still a new concept for many Americans during the time of Willa Cather’s novel, My Antonia, but there had been a lot of progress as well. According to Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier, although the Westward Expansion began in 1803, it didn’t make its way into Nebraska until around 1867. (Billington) My Antonia was set in the 1880s, around ten to fifteen years after the first settlers entered Nebraska. Westward Expansion was still a large interest for immigrants, mainly Northern Europeans. Both Americans and immigrants were coming into this new land to learn just how difficult it was to start a life in the uncharted areas.
It was close to impossible to grow crops along the eastern seaboard, and settlers hoped for a better chance in the west. This was not quite the case, though. According to The Interrelationship of Literature, History, and Geography in Western Writing, getting off your feet and beginning a new crop was the hardest part of starting a life in the west. (Sellars) In My Antonia, the land is described as beautiful, but it is also described as a force powerful enough to break even the strongest man. Especially for the immigrants, like the Shimerda family. Once you finally got past the initial struggle of starting up the land, it became easier to have your fields succeed. The struggle was often more difficult for immigrants, as they had been there for a lesser amount of time, and the American settlers already had the advantage of their crops being turned over more than once. All in all, the American Frontier did not turn out to be as easy of a place to start a homestead for the Burden’s or the Shimerda’s, as it was expected to
According to Two Centuries of Economic Growth: Europe Chasing the American Frontier, proving yourself was an important role in a man of the Frontier’s life. Even though this was a task for American settlers as well, immigrant fathers and male figures especially felt the heat. (Gordon) They had brought their families halfway across the world, and they had to make sure that it was a good choice for their well being. Immigrants never really knew what to expect when making their way across the ocean to this new land, and often it was a great surprise and disappointment when they arrived in the “infertile” American Frontier. In My Antonia, Mr. Shimerda does not even want to move his family to the west in the first place; it is his wife and eldest son’s idea. The Shimerda family came from a wealthy family in Bohemia, and Antonia’s dad wasn’t interested in leaving that lifestyle behind. It was the goal of Ambrosch and Mrs. Shimerda to turn Ambrosch into a rich man. When the family is treated as a second-class group of citizens, and Mr. Shimerda is not doing as well as he hoped, the pressure becomes too much, and he shoots himself. This was proof of just how hard the men worked to come out on top in the new west, and how sometimes it just didn’t work out. The immigrants suffered the most pressure when it came to being