Crossroads and Contradictions:
Joseph Urgo’s “The Brave are Homeless: My Antonia”

ENG 2220
Spring 2002

Abandoning one’s home, people, culture, and values is a frightening experience for any immigrant. Even more daunting is the process of adjusting to the people, culture, and values of a new continent, country, region, or city. It takes a great deal of bravery to manage this successfully. Willa Cather’s My Antonia is a story that depicts those exact struggles and hardships immigrants face. It is the story of one man’s life growing up on a small Nebraska farm and his long-lasting friendship with a unique young immigrant girl. Joseph Urgo’s critical analysis of My Antonia, “The Brave are Homeless: My Antonia,” acknowledges the enormous amount of courage required for an immigrant to abandon his or her past and risk his or her future in a new land. In addition, Urgo’s article examines the implications of immigration on the self and on society, and realizes the similarities between the American-born immigrant, such as Jim Burden, and the foreign-born immigrant, such as the Shimerda family.

Urgo’s first and perhaps most emphatic point in “The Brave are Homeless: My Antonia” is the deep-rooted existence of the American migratory consciousness. Closely related to this theory is the perpetual act of “crossing,” the action that, according to Urgo, “defines for Americans … what it means to be an American” (55) . Crossing is the ingrained drive felt by a person, a family, and a people to constantly move. There is a desire within everyone to leave his or her home and go in search of a new one. This applies to the movement of both types of immigrants, foreign-born and American-born, but is uniquely American in that it defines the entire American cultural consciousness. Cather’s character Jim Burden is an American-born immigrant; however, as Urgo states, “Jim Burden is homeless” (55). Neither Virginia nor Nebraska can be claimed as Jim’s home. Virginia is simply the place where he was born; he holds no attachment to the state. Nebraska was Jim’s home for a while, but he doesn’t realize this fact until he has left it – and everyone living there – behind. Jim remembers his old life with fondness and regret, but he is psychologically unable to return there. As a result, he spends the rest of his adult life moving from one temporary home to another, searching for stability yet rejecting it when he finds it, as he does with Antonia, Black Hawk, and elsewhere.

The constant journey that Jim Burden undergoes in My Antonia, searching for something he does not want, is symbolic of American society as a whole. According to Urgo, it is not the destination that matters; it is the journey (58). The journey is the chance for a new life. The old is left behind, and future possibilities are infinite. The journey, the crossing, is the time for spiritual cleansing, where one can forget all past hurts and mistakes. Therefore, the importance of the destination is greatly diminished. In fact, the end of the journey is feared. It brings with it a disconcerting sense of settlement, the very force that opposes and negates Urgo’s American migratory consciousness. All Americans to some degree feel the internal presence of this national consciousness – the love of the expedition and the fear of a permanent home – whether they realize it or not. It is this commonality that makes America a united nation despite the fact that it is so ethnically and racially diverse.

Associated with crossing is Urgo’s notion of personal crossroads. The crossroad is the point where one’s thoughts and ideas meld into action. Extensive deliberation leads to a specific response with appropriate consequences. It is a defining moment, and when one makes such a deliberate choice, he or she usually cannot retract the decision. The crossroad is something to which every immigrant – indeed, every person – comes.  Many of Cather’s characters are faced with their own personal crossroad, the crucial point that decides their futures: Jim, Mr. Shimerda, Antonia, Peter and Pavel. The approach that Joseph Urgo takes in his analysis of My Antonia is to compare Jim Burden, the American immigrant, and his attitude towards migration with that of the average foreign-born immigrant – specifically, Antonia’s father.

One very important distinction between Jim and Mr. Shimerda is the difference in viewpoints each maintains on the issue of the crossing. As an adult, Jim travels the country as an associate of a railroad company. The simple act of moving is what appeals so vividly to him. He cannot bear to stay in one place too long. This shiftlessness was evident when Jim was a boy. He traveled to Nebraska with a thrill in his heart, releasing all holds on his past. This is the ultimate example of the American migratory consciousness; Jim views the journey above all else. He travels with no clear destination in mind and no clear goals, whereas Mr. Shimerda has a clear destination and has specific goals. Shimerda left his native country after disgracing his family by marrying a lower-class woman. They came to America, the land of milk and honey, to start a new life. In this, their journey is a common example of crossing. America was the place where they could give their oldest son, Ambrosch, the chance to succeed. However, things are harder in America than the Shimerdas had planned. First, they have no knowledge of how to farm the dry Midwestern prairie land. Second, and more important, they are disconnected from everything: their old home, their family, and their culture. Only small remnants of their old life can be preserved in the Shimerdas’ new world. As a result of this, Mr. Shimerda does what many immigrants do, according to Oscar handling; he continues to look into the past at what he and his family have lost, and neglects to look towards the future (57). Here Mr. Shimerda reaches his own personal crossroad…and commits suicide.

While Jim’s disposition towards the past was already very different from Mr. Shimerda’s before the Bohemian’s death, the suicide further resolved Jim’s determination not to be dragged down by his past. “’It was homelessness that had killed Mr. Shimerda’” (qtd. in 59). Jim realizes this, and by letting go of his past, as a young boy coming to Nebraska and as an adult leaving Black Hawk, Jim has made it clear that he intends to survive. Although Jim occasionally lets his mind drift through memories, he doesn’t let them impede with his life. “Origins will never overpower destinations for Jim Burden” (61). Jim is too much a traveler, constantly searching for something new, using his past experiences to guide him, not hinder him. As such, when Jim comes to his own crossroad “between staying and moving on,” he inevitably moves on with a sense of freedom (65). He escapes permanence, the thing from which he has shied all his life. He will continue to wander, to travel, to follow his nature, exactly as all other Americans do.

To gain a full appreciation of any piece of literature, one must read critically and thoughtfully. The same rule applies to works that analyze literature, such as Urgo’s “The Brave are Homeless: My Antonia.” There are many interesting aspects of this article; however, the presentation of the material leaves much to be desired. Urgo’s article is needlessly long, contains entire sections in which he does not relate his material to My Antonia, and the vocabulary he employs is frustratingly pompous. Consider, for example, the fact that he uses such words as “dialectic” and “antithetical” several times when referring to an instance of contradiction, instead of simply using the word “contradiction.” Furthermore, it is hard to take seriously a published article that contains a grammatical error; “grandparent’s homestead” should be “grandparents’ homestead” Even one such error is too many if the author wishes to maintain his credibility.

Next, it is interesting and enlightening to discover the sheer number of contradictions embedded within Urgo’s article. The entire work seems comprised of them, one after another. Some of these are admittedly within My Antonia itself. Some, however, are based within Urgo’s material. Perhaps the largest and most erroneous contradiction is the one that states “Jim Burden would not initially think of himself as an immigrant, much less as a migrant – those people are the Shimerdas and the Lingards” (55).  Jim, a classic example of the American immigrant, does not view himself as such. However, the whole thesis behind Urgo’s article is that the American migratory consciousness is something that people are consciously aware of. He states that the desire to travel is an ingrained one, but he later proposes that people are cognizant of their actions and of their drive to move, something on which he offers no proof or explanation.

Another visible contradiction within his article has Urgo reaching a conclusion that simply does not fit with the philosophy of high modernism. My Antonia may not be as highly modernist as most literature of that definition, but it is undeniably a modernist novel. Modernism deals with a sense of personal and/or societal loss as well as a sense of uncertainty in a drastically changing world. An example of this in Cather’s novel is the Shimerda family. As immigrants, they have left everything they have ever known, and there is most likely no hope of going back. Their future is a cloudy one, the outcome relying heavily on their ability to adapt. Also, the theory behind modernism negates the assumption that such things as a higher being, salvation, or rebirth exist. There is no evidence of such myths, and so modernists dislike them. As such, these elements – or similar ones – are absent from. My Antonia. Urgo, on the other hand, relates the act of crossing as a type of rebirth, most noticeably in the case of Jim Burden (56).

Granted, Urgo’s theory of an American migratory consciousness contains certain intriguing possibilities. Is this really the unifying factor in an otherwise diverse and unstable nation? It warrants further research, at least. However, Urgo’s theory as it applies to My Antonia fails to examine two vital factors: the time in which the novel is set and the time in which it was written.
 
When considering these two eras, Urgo’s national consciousness almost makes sense. In the time in which My Antonia is set, immigration was at its highest peak. Floods of foreigners came to America searching for a better life. Possibly, they brought with them their desperate, unconscious need to travel – born from the external economic, political, or geographical forces that caused them to emigrate.  In America, however, these waves of immigrants discover that things are still not very easy. Climate and geography are strong factors in intra-America migration, especially when farming is the only viable choice many immigrants have for self-sustenance. The Shimerdas struggled against a land about which they knew nothing. It wouldn’t have been unusual for them to pack their few belongings and move to a more agreeable region. Even during the time in which My Antonia was written, 1918, the American migratory consciousness could still possibly hold true. The flood of immigration had slowed drastically from the previous forty years, but there was still internal migration. Increasing urbanization drew flocks of rural farmers to the cities. Consequent dissatisfaction with city life returned many to the farming vocation. America was still changing too much for any real permanence.

At the time in which Urgo penned his article, however, the theory no longer seems applicable as it once did. People no longer fear a permanent home as Urgo claims they once did. Is not the American dream to own a piece of land and a nice home? This clearly would not be the case if everybody planned to pack up and leave such expensive acquisitions behind. Perhaps this is where the automobile fits in. Part of the American dream is for an individual to own an automobile. This desire corresponds well with Urgo’s migratory theory. Owning an automobile grants an individual the freedom to submit to his or her need to move, to travel, without completely abandoning stability and permanence.

The one portion of Urgo’s article that agrees most with what My Antonia presents is the idea of personal crossroads. The evidence that Jim, Mr. Shimerda – even Peter and Pavel, Antonia, etc. – came to such a crossroads is undeniable. Shimerda decided at his crossroads to end his life.  Jim decided at his to survive. His uniquely American need to travel might have been the driving force behind Jim’s decision, but another factor deserves consideration: Jim witnessed what homesickness could do to a person when Mr. Shimerda committed suicide, and he realized that in order to survive he must abandon any possibility of a home to which he could become too attached.

In conclusion, Willa Cather’s My Antonia is a novel that realistically – in regards to the Shimerdas – portrays the hardships that immigrants face. Joseph Urgo’s “The Brave are Homeless: My Antonia” studies Cather’s novel with the intention of explaining the motivations behind the characters: Jim Burden, the Shimerdas, etc. They are all immigrants, bound by the powerful need to voyage from one place to another. Urgo’s article hypothesizes that the journey is more than a physical one; it has a psychological counterpart as well. The main difference between the physical journey and the mental journey, however, is the destination. The physical destination at the end of a crossing – a country, a city – is not important. The destination at the end of a mental journey – the crossroad – is all-important. Consider Jim Burden and Mr. Shimerda – the American immigrant and the foreign immigrant. Their crossroads decided one’s death and one’s life. These two men are only fictional characters, but one can only believe that such a theory must exist in real life as well.