In My Antonia, the prairie, with its dog villages, streams, and grassy bluffs, is as important a force as Jim Burden or Antonia Shimerda, as it becomes their home and their playground in childhood and shapes their consciousness in adulthood. The representation of this landscape, and in particular of the roads that Jim and Antonia use to travel through it, reflects the state of mind and maturation of both the two friends and the pioneers as a group. Cather uses descriptions of the characteristics of these paths and how they change to represent the path Jim's life follows and to capture the idyllic nature of childhood, the vigor and independence of the pioneering experience, and how the conventional alternative seems boring in comparison. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayIn general, the characteristics of roads in the countryside correspond to the general state of the territory and the relationship of the pioneers to it. Although the presence of prairie roads suggests settlement and civilization, in the early days the road's layout haphazardly mimics the shape and features of the countryside, causing it to "[run] hither and thither like a wild thing", as if it had a will own (Cather 18). The initially wild prairie and winding roads seem to echo the fact that Jim and especially Antonia have not yet been limited by hardship and responsibility. In the days before, Antonia has to work and Jim has to attend school. their activities are as subject to vagaries as the wanderings of the streets themselves. The awkward and unnecessary curves of the trails seem to suggest that the frontiersmen, though settled on the land, have no firm grip on it—it is their paths, their actions, and their lives more than their attempts to create roads or farms at define the terrain. This situation changes when Jim returns to the prairie in his late teens and observes that in addition to fields full of successful crops, new roads are “. confined to section lines” (Cather 71). Jim is obviously happy that his neighbors' work has come to fruition. Although Jim likens his observation of these changes to “watching the growth of a great man or a great idea,” it becomes apparent in later passages that he also seems to have a certain sentimental respect for the old prairie roads that used to be a park games. of his youth (Cather 184). Although Jim comes to see the prairie as a crucial element of his identity and his childhood friendship with Antonia, both characters are initially strangers to it and to each other. Although he and Antonia travel to Nebraska on the same train, Jim has not yet met the Shimerdas, making it impossible to guess Antonia's thoughts during the trip from Jim's narration. Jim's emotions, curiously, do not foreshadow the joys he will experience on the prairie. Instead, his sense of disorientation when traveling in a carriage to Blackhawk is evident when he notes that “if [there is] a road, [he can't] see it” (Cather 11). The fact that Jim cannot see the path ahead, or even make sure that a path is guiding him, suggests a feeling of loss and reflects the uncertain nature of his future. Taken figuratively, the roads Jim travels appear to parallel his path in life. At this point he is truly between two lives: the previous one with his late parents in Virginia (a time to which he can never return) and the new one with his grandparents in Nebraska (of which he currently knows nothing). Antonia's displacement between Bohemia and America is presumably even more acute, although it is not known whether shewhether you feel it or not right now. The wild land, and the apparent lack of trails to direct travelers through it, prompt Jim to feel that this place is so wild and uninhabited that it is "outside the jurisdiction of man" and is the "stuff of which the countries" (Cather 11) . That he feels "erased" suggests that he is being reborn on this journey since the road he travels takes him further and further away from what is familiar to him (Cate 11). This somewhat disturbing description of the journey to his new home seems to suggest the potential of the land surrounding the road to form countries, define rules and create new lives. Once Jim settles on the prairie, he and Antonia enjoy the freedom it offers, but he also learns the cost of this freedom. The connection Jim draws between the concept of independence and prairie roads is implicit in his physical descriptions of the trails. For example, sunflowers lining prairie paths during the summer call to mind Fuch's story of how Mormons scattered sunflower seeds as they crossed into Nebraska to escape religious persecution. Although he knows this story is fictional, Jim prefers it to a more botanical explanation. He reveals his romantic inclination by declaring that “the streets lined with sunflowers always seem to him to be the roads to freedom” (Catero 23). The period of time that Jim and Antonia travel these trails is indeed relatively free of worries and limitations, as they use the sunflower trails to embark on their adventures of killing snakes, visiting neighbors, and rescuing insects. However, when the streets of sunflowers are “stripped bare” and the flowers wither into “brown, rattling, buried stems” at the end of the season, this portends a difficult winter to come (Cather 32). The cold, desperate months that follow instead remind us that the self-sufficiency of life on the prairie can also lead to the hardships and isolation that ultimately lead to the Shimerdas' near-starvation and Mr. Shimerda's suicide. The prairie roads lead Jim and Antonia to times that are sometimes cheerful, sometimes brutal, but always full of thrills and emotions. In contrast, when Jim gives up exploring the prairie roads to live a quiet life in the town of Blackhawk, he often feels trapped. His need for a sign of freedom is so great that he points to a nearby river as “compensation for the lost freedom of the agricultural country” (Cather 90). Although the river periodically offers some fun hunting and fishing trips, Jim mostly finds himself wandering restlessly through the “long, cold streets” of Blackhawk (Cather 132). These streets are not lined with sunflowers, but rather houses that only serve to evoke in him a sense of disgust at the “jealousy, envy, and unhappiness” and “guarded mode of existence” of the people who inhabit the city (Cather 132) . . These mean people are very different from the serious and open people Jim grew up with. Jim may appreciate the reason and effort in limiting country roads to more direct routes, but he still cherishes the more tortuous ones for the memories they evoke. Likewise, Jim must abandon the romantic places and characters of his childhood to take a more practical path into adulthood. Although Jim's life path takes him to cities and towns where he can attend school and establish himself as a successful lawyer, he never stops cherishing the paths he has traversed with Antonia more than all others. One particular landmark on these remembered roads that serves as a link to the past is the grave of Mr. Shimerda, located at a crossroads according to superstition. While all the other lands have been cultivated, this plot becomes one, 2003.