Challenges for the Immigrants Coming To America in the 19th Century

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Challenges for the Immigrants Coming To America in the 19th Century
Introduction
Published in the year 1918, My Antonia is one of the masterpieces that Willa Cather brought to the readers with a twist of personal life story in a rather interesting creation. It is a novel that underlines the plight of the immigrants and their struggles, as they try to get assimilated in the new society. This is a novel that gave Cather her ticket to join the rest of the greatest female writers of her time. Mainly, the recognition came from the fact that most of the immigrants identified with the struggles, while the rest of the population wanted to know more about the historical struggles of the immigrants, with a narrative twist of the accounts. There are quite a number of elements that are dominant in the novel and among the mains ones are the language barriers and the deplorable conditions that the immigrants had to endure. This paper addresses some of the main aspects of language barriers and living conditions experienced by immigrants.
My Antonia
The novel takes the form of a memoir, in which Jim Burden, the narrator in the story, writes about a girl he met once, when he moved to Nebraska at the age of ten. Jim was requested by his friend to write about the bohemian girl they had both known when they were kids (Cather, vii). The request was in light of the fact that his friend did not know the girl as well as Jim. He had been orphaned and was moving to Nebraska to go and live with his grandparents. On the ride to his grandparents’ home in Nebraska, he meets with a bohemian family that is moving in to the country from bohemia. They later on also happen to be neighbors to the grandparents. In the novel the family of the immigrants is called the Shimerdas and their struggles depict experiences by most of the immigrants.
The first incidence where the language barrier elements come up is when the conductor is talking to a group in which Jim is seated, telling them about a family from bohemia. According to the conductor, the family came from across the water and they had a problem communicating in English.
Once when he sat down to chat, he told us that in the immigrant car ahead there was a family from across the water" whose destination was the same as ours."They can't any of them speak English, except one little girl, and all she can say is "We go Black Hawk, Nebraska.' She's not much olderthan you, twelve or thirteen, maybe, and she's as bright as a new dollar. Don't you want to go ahead and see her, Jimmy? She's got the pretty brown eyes, too!" (Cather, 6)
The bohemian family had first bought land on which they were to settle.They had bought land from Peter Krajiek one of the countrymen, for which they had been charged more than the land was worth (Cather, 17). The land deal had been organized by one of their cousins, while the interpreter at the time was Peter Krajiek. Since they did not have much knowledge of the language, Krajiek took advantage of the situation and sold them land at higher price. They would not have understood that they have been duped. At the same time, they did not have the language skills to negotiate for a better deal. As such, their language barrier cost them a fortune, while the countryman made away with their hard earned money.According to Jim’s grandmother, Krajiek took advantage of the fact that the bohemians did not understand English and even sold then a cook stove that was worth less than ten dollars at around twenty dollars (Cather, 18). Otto, one of the characters also points out that the bohemian family was also sold some two bony horses and oxen at an exorbitant price.
“The Bohemian family, grandmother told me as we drove along, had bought the homestead of a fellow-countryman, Peter Krajiek, and had paid him more than it was worth. Their agreement with him was made before they left the old country, through a cousin of his, who was also a relative of Mrs. Shimerda. The Shimerdas were the first Bohemian family to come to this part of the county. Krajiek was their only interpreter, and could tell them anything he chose. They could not speak enough English to ask for advice, or even to make their most pressing wants known.”(Cather, 18)
According to Jim half of the land was cut up by a creek that lowered the land value, especially considering the bohemians had bought the land with the intension of farming (Cather, 18). This much, Mr. Krajiek, knew, but wanted to take advantage of the. Other than the fact that the bohemians had a problem with their land, they also had a poorly constructed house. This meant that they had little shelter for the winter, which in this part of the countryside can be unfortunate.
When Jim went visiting the Shimerdas, there was evidence of the deplorable conditions. From the fact that their land was almost barren to the homestead that did not inspire much confidence in the visitors; the bohemians were living in poor conditions like most immigrants. When Jim shows up for the first time at the Shimerdas, their house looked like a shed. Furthermore, Jim and his grandmother are greeted with great expectation when they arrive. Antonia’s mother points to the house and acknowledges that the house is not great, using the little broken English that she could manage. Notably, Antonia’s mother was still wearing clothes that she had on, when they first met at the station (Cather, 19). This is quite telling of the situation that the immigrants went through to make it in their foreign home. What is more appalling is the fact that they did not have the communication skills to negotiate a better life. The house in most of the cases is compared to a cave or a hole. This is to signify that the foreigners lived in conditions that were easily comparable to those of the wild animals. At one time Jim’s grandmother compares the house that the bohemians were living in to a badger’s hole that is not properly dugout. She was feeling concerned that the family would spend the winter in hole, which was not healthy for human habitation.
One other incidence that the language aspect is highlighted is when, Mr. Shimerda, requests Jim to teach Antonia the English language (Cather, 21). Having moved from Bohemia, the family was not eloquent in English and thus they had a problem communicating with the locals. This was the case for most of the immigrants, as they had to first understand the language of their foreign land so that they could be in a position to interact with the rest of the people and lead normal lives.
However, Amir Javed, the author of the article titled; ‘The Dilemma of Becoming an American: Will the United States become the world's first Universal Nation’, brings out another angle of the struggles of the immigrants steaming in from a cross the seas to come to America (Amir). In his accounts, the struggles of immigrants went beyond the language barriers, especially as immigrants fought their way to become assimilated. One of the key struggles that Javed brings out is that of having to deal with the element of ‘otherness’. This is an aspect where, immigrants would be torn between having to identify with the new culture and observe ones roots. The struggle which has dominated the assimilation process of many immigrants to this day is an identity dilemma, as Javed indicates. In the story, My Antonia, Mr. Shimerdas eventually commits suicide as he could not take it anymore. He was desperate with home sickness, where he longed for his homeland but wanted to identify with the foreign one. In his dilemma...