Write your own My Ántonia story

Jim Burden

Orphaned at ten after losing both parents in Virginia, Jim is sent to live with his grandparents on their Nebraska farm, traveling west under the care of hired hand Jake Marpole. He becomes Ántonia's closest friend and confidant throughout childhood, adolescence in Black Hawk, and later life. He eventually attends the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and Harvard Law School, becomes a lawyer for a railroad, and narrates the whole story retrospectively as an adult reflecting on his prairie childhood.

Ántonia Shimerda

A Bohemian immigrant girl about fourteen when she arrives in Nebraska with her family, living in a sod dugout cut into a drawbank. She is bright, warm-hearted, and physically strong, later doing the work of a man plowing fields after her father's death. She works as a 'hired girl' for the Harling family in Black Hawk, is later seduced and abandoned by railroad conductor Larry Donovan (bearing his illegitimate child), and eventually marries Anton Cuzak, raising a large, boisterous family on a Nebraska farm.

Jake Marpole

A mountain boy from under the Blue Ridge in Virginia, formerly a 'hand' on Jim's father's farm, who escorts ten-year-old Jim west by train to Nebraska. Illiterate but trusting, he later leaves the Burden farm with Otto Fuchs to seek his fortune prospecting for silver in Colorado.

Otto Fuchs

An Austrian immigrant hired man on the Burden farm who meets Jim and Jake at the train station with a lantern. A former stagecoach driver and cowboy who lost part of an ear in a Wyoming blizzard and bears a scar from a knife fight, he owns ornate cowboy boots, chaps, and silver spurs, and keeps paper Nativity figures sent by his mother in Austria that decorate the Burdens' first Christmas tree. He knows how to build coffins from his mining-camp days and eventually leaves for the 'wild West' with Jake.

Mr. Shimerda

Ántonia's father, a refined, musically gifted Bohemian immigrant who struggles bitterly with poverty and homesickness on the Nebraska prairie. Sensitive and dignified compared to his harsher wife and son, he grows despairing over the family's hardship and eventually takes his own life during their first winter; he is buried at a crossroads in a snowstorm with a prayer given by Jim's grandfather.

Mrs. Shimerda

Ántonia's mother, a sharp-featured, shrewd, and often grasping woman who came from 'across the water' with her family. Poverty hardens her into a bitter, complaining figure who quarrels over debts (such as a cow bought from the Burdens) and pushes her children to hard labor.

Ambrosch Shimerda

Ántonia's older brother, sullen, devoutly religious, and often stingy or dishonest (he breaks a borrowed saw and lies about it). He becomes head of the Shimerda household after his father's death, works Ántonia hard in the fields, and later manages the family farm where Ántonia eventually settles as a widow with a child before her marriage to Cuzak.

Yulka Shimerda

Ántonia's younger sister, a timid little girl who wears a rabbit-skin hat made by her father and is fond of a kitten. She grows up on the Shimerda farm alongside her siblings.

Marek Shimerda

Ántonia's mentally disabled older brother, referred to as 'the crazy boy,' who sleeps on a straw-stuffed sack by the dugout's only window. He is eventually sent away to an institution after becoming violent.

Peter and Pavel

Two Russian immigrant bachelor farmers and neighbors of the Shimerdas. Pavel, dying of tuberculosis, is haunted by a horrific past event involving a wedding party thrown to pursuing wolves in Russia; his deathbed confession is witnessed by Jim and Ántonia.

Jim's Grandfather (Josiah Burden)

A tall, bearded, devout Nebraska farmer who takes Jim in after his parents' deaths. Dignified and fair-minded, he treats the immigrant Shimerda family with tolerance and delivers a solemn prayer at Mr. Shimerda's graveside. He later moves the family into town at Black Hawk when he and his wife grow too old for heavy farm work.

Jim's Grandmother (Emmaline Burden)

Jim's practical, kind-hearted grandmother who manages the farm household, extends charity to the struggling Shimerdas despite Mrs. Shimerda's ingratitude, and later helps Ántonia find work as a hired girl for the Harlings in Black Hawk.

Lena Lingard

A Norwegian immigrant farm girl, granddaughter of a respected Norwegian clergyman, who becomes famously pretty and draws scandal when a married neighbor, Ole Benson, publicly favors her, provoking his wife 'Crazy Mary' to threaten her with a corn-knife. She later moves to Lincoln and then Chicago to run her own successful dressmaking business, remaining a close, flirtatious friend to Jim.

Tiny Soderball

One of the Black Hawk 'hired girls,' trim and quick-footed, who later leaves for Seattle and then the Klondike gold rush, eventually becoming a wealthy hotel-keeper in San Francisco.

Mary Dusak

One of three Bohemian girls nicknamed 'the three Marys' in Black Hawk, broad and handsome with chestnut hair, known for a bold, unscrupulous reputation among the town's hired girls.

Mrs. Harling

A cultured, strong-willed Black Hawk matron married to grain-dealer Christian Harling, who employs Ántonia as a hired girl and cook. She plays operas on the piano for the household on Saturday nights but breaks with Ántonia in anger when the girl insists on taking a job with the disreputable Wick Cutter.

Frances Harling

Mrs. Harling's eldest daughter, who manages her father's business interests, teaches the group of young people to dance, and remains a lifelong friend and informant to Jim about Ántonia's later hardships.

Charley and Sally Harling

Younger Harling children; Charley later attends the Naval Academy at Annapolis, while Sally is a tomboy who dresses as a boy for the family's costume parties.

Blind d'Arnault

A blind Black mulatto pianist who performs at the Black Hawk hotel, swaying rhythmically at the keyboard even when not playing. He owns a gold watch that strikes the hours and a topaz ring given to him by a Russian nobleman after he played Negro melodies in New Orleans.

Wick Cutter

A disreputable, wife-abusing moneylender in Black Hawk who employs Ántonia as a housekeeper against Mrs. Harling's warnings. He later breaks into what he believes is Ántonia's bedroom at night and violently attacks Jim, who is sleeping there in her place, before Jim escapes through a window.

Anton Jelinek

A Bohemian immigrant who acts as translator and helper during Mr. Shimerda's death and burial, and later becomes proprietor of a respectable Black Hawk saloon catering to Bohemian and German farmers with rye bread, smoked fish, and imported cheese.

Widow Steavens

A tall, strong tenant who rents the Burden homestead after the family moves to town. She becomes a close neighbor and confidante to Ántonia, later recounting to Jim the full story of Ántonia's abandonment by Larry Donovan and her return home pregnant.

Larry Donovan

A railroad conductor who courts and promises to marry Ántonia, taking her away to a town where he is working, but ultimately abandons her without marrying her, leaving her pregnant and disgraced.

Gaston Cleric

Jim's brilliant but restless university instructor of classics at Lincoln, a nearly-great poet whose vivid late-night talks about Latin poetry, Italy, and the ruins at Paestum profoundly influence young Jim. He is parsimonious about small expenses despite his otherwise expansive character.

Anton Cuzak

A cheerful, easygoing Bohemian immigrant from Prague who eventually marries Ántonia after her disgrace, fathering many children with her on a Nebraska farm. He keeps up with Bohemian illustrated newspapers and takes personal interest in the career of Bohemian opera singer Maria Vasak, whose father back home mended her shoes.

Ántonia's Children

Ántonia and Cuzak's large brood, including sons Ambrosch, Leo (Ántonia's favorite, described as mischievous), and a daughter Nina (named after Nina Harling). The children speak Bohemian at home and only learn English at school, and treat Jim's old stories (like the rattlesnake tale) as beloved family legend.

Black Hawk, Nebraska

The small prairie town where the Burdens move when Jim is thirteen, and where Ántonia and other immigrant girls work as 'hired girls' in respectable households. It features a hotel, two saloons (one respectable, run by Anton Jelinek), a Masonic Hall used for Owl Club dances, and rigid class distinctions between town families and immigrant 'hired girls.'

The Burden Farm

Jim's grandparents' homestead on the Nebraska plain, featuring a horsepond, cornfields, a garden with asparagus, and corrals where bulls named Gladstone and Brigham Young once fought. Later rented out to the Widow Steavens and her brother when the family moves to Black Hawk.

The Shimerda Homestead

A rough dugout home carved into a drawbank on land bisected by Squaw Creek, marked by a shattered windmill frame with no wheel. The family lives in near-poverty here through their first brutal winter, storing rotting potatoes and scant flour in barrels, before eventually building a proper farmhouse as their fortunes improve.

The Prairie Dog Town

A large colony of prairie dogs north of the Burden farm, shared with burrowing owls and lurking rattlesnakes that prey on the dogs' eggs and pups. Jim and Ántonia visit often, debating whether the dogs get water from underground springs or morning dew.

The Harling House

A warm, cultured home in Black Hawk where Ántonia works as cook and hired girl, and where Saturday nights feature Mrs. Harling playing opera on the piano and the children performing charades and costume balls.

Lincoln, Nebraska

The university town where Jim attends the University of Nebraska, rooming with a comfortable chair and Benedictine liqueur for entertaining his instructor Gaston Cleric, and where he reconnects with Lena Lingard, now an independent dressmaker.

The Cuzak Farm

Ántonia's final home, a thriving farm with a fruit cave, orchard, ponds, and a haymow where the younger boys sleep in warm weather. Jim visits it at the novel's end and finds Ántonia surrounded by her many children, still resembling 'my Ántonia' despite her worn hands and lost teeth.

Squaw Creek

A creek cutting through the Shimerda land, lined with cottonwood and ash trees that turn gold in autumn, rendering the western half of the farm nearly worthless for cultivation.

Black Tiger Mine, Colorado

A mine above Silverton where Otto Fuchs once worked, accessed by a bucket trolley across a three-hundred-foot canyon; he once built a coffin there for an Italian worker who fell into the water below.

The Hired Girls

A cohort of Bohemian, Norwegian, and Danish immigrant daughters (including Ántonia, Lena Lingard, Tiny Soderball, and the three Bohemian Marys) who leave family farms to work as servants and cooks in Black Hawk households, sending wages home to pay off family debts. Despite town prejudice treating them as interchangeable and lesser, many later achieve independent prosperity as businesswomen or farm wives.

The Vannis' Dance Tent / Owl Club

A traveling dance pavilion run by the Vannis that brings dancing fever to Black Hawk one summer; after it leaves town, local admirers form the Owl Club, holding weekly dances at the Masonic Hall.

'The Life of Jesse James'

A dime novel bought for young Jim by Jake Marpole during their train journey west, which Jim treasures as one of the most satisfying books he has ever read and which colors his romantic first impression of the scarred, pistol-toting Otto Fuchs.

Otto's Cowboy Trunk

Otto Fuchs's trunk, ostensibly full of old boots, spurs, and pistols, which is revealed at Christmas to also contain brilliantly colored paper Nativity figures—the three kings, angels, camels, and a bleeding heart—sent yearly by his mother in Austria, used to decorate the Burdens' first Christmas tree.

The Twenty-Four-Rattle Snake

A five-and-a-half-foot rattlesnake killed by Jim near the prairie dog town, its rattle broken but implying great age; Jim and Ántonia drag it home as a trophy, and the story becomes a legendary tale retold to Ántonia's own children years later.

Immigrant Prairie Settlement

Waves of Bohemian, Norwegian, Danish, and Austrian immigrants settle the Nebraska prairie in sod dugouts and shacks, enduring brutal winters, debt, and isolation before transforming the 'red grass' plains into fenced wheat and cornfields with orchards and red barns within a generation. Foreign farm families are noted as being the first in the county to achieve prosperity, largely through the unpaid or low-paid labor of daughters sent to town as hired girls.

The Wolves and the Wedding Party

A grim story told by the dying Russian immigrant Pavel, in which he and his friend Peter, back in Russia, were said to have thrown a bride and groom from a sledge to a pursuing wolf pack in order to save the other wedding guests, an act of betrayal that has haunted Pavel for the rest of his life and driven the two men from their homeland.