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Optima dies…prima fugit.

Think back to the days of childhood, when you were a kid, growing up and learning

about the world. This should bring back a flood of memories. For me, I recall playing made up

games with my siblings, being outside, loud family meals, spending time with cousins, and all

the inside jokes and funny stories from that time. When I go home on breaks while at college, I

am struck by how most things are still the same at home even after the time that passed since my

previous visit. My bedroom, in particular, is frozen in the time before I went to college. By

simply returning home, I can look back at my childhood. These are the feelings Jim has in Willa

Cather’s book, My Antonia. Jim narrates the novel, and the story begins in his childhood, and

ends in his middle age. Jim grows and changes throughout the novel, but each time he returns

back to his hometown of Black Hawk, Nebraska, he steps back into his childhood. Not only is

the town and landscape nearly the same as when he was young, but the people he grew up with

are still the same, despite being a little older. When Jim goes back home, it is almost as if the

town of Black Hawk and the people are frozen in time from when he was young. This is

especially true in Antonia, Jim’s childhood friend. The town of Black Hawk, its landscape, and

Antonia, represent Jim’s childhood; they are unchanging and will always transport him to the

time when he first arrived in the small Nebraska town.

The first element that shows the novel’s theme of childhood is a quote from Virgil before

the book begins. It says, “Optima dies…prima fugit.” There is no translation under the quote, but

later in the book when Jim is learning Latin, he comes across this quote. It means the best days

are the first to leave us. Virgil’s quote is a central theme in the novel; it shows the importance of

childhood and represents Jim’s feelings about his childhood. After learning this quote, Jim is

reunited with another childhood friend, Lena Lingard. After seeing her, memories from his youth
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immediately come back. “Lena had left something warm and friendly in the lamplight…When I

closed my eyes I could hear them all laughing – the Danish laundry girls and the three Bohemian

Marys. Lena had brought them all back to me…My old dream about Lena coming across the

harvest field in her short skirt seemed to me like the memory of an actual experience. It floated

before me on the page like a picture, and underneath it stood the mournful line: Optima

dies…prima fugit” (Cather, 129). Just by seeing Lena, Jim is brought back to his childhood

which he holds so dear in his heart.

The novel is divided into five books. Each book contains various episodes from separate

sections of Jim’s life. The time between each book lengthens as the story moves forward. For

example, only two years pass between the first two sections, but twenty years go by from the

fourth to the fifth book. During the first book, Jim moves to Nebraska. As time passes, he

becomes fonder of his new home, and his friend Antonia helps him to see the beauty of his

home. Jim feels numb and alone the first moments after arriving, “If we never arrived anywhere,

it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my

prayers that night: here, I felt, what would be would be” (Cather, 7). By then end of the first

book, Jim has grown to love his new home, and this is partly due to Antonia. “I used to lie in my

bed by the open window, watching the heat lightning play softly along the horizon, or looking up

at the gaunt frame of the windmill against the blue night sky” (Cather, 68). The rest of book one

creates Jim’s childhood. He makes lots of memories with Antonia, such as the time when Jim

kills a huge rattlesnake. Jim and Antonia become better friends in that moment, and they

reminisce about story later on in the novel.

Book two of My Antonia takes place at the end of Jim's childhood. He grows up during

this section, and becomes more and more distant to his childhood. At the start of this section, Jim
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moves to town with his grandparents, and since he no longer lives on the farm, he is distanced

from Antonia. Eventually Antonia moves to town to work as a hired girl, but things remain

different from the days on the farm because she likes to go dancing with the other hired girls.

During this time in Jim's life he searches for himself. Up to this point, all of Jim's narrations

flowed beautifully and said positive things about Nebraska, but during this identity struggle,

Jim's descriptions become negative and unappealing. “On starlight nights I used to pace up and

down those long, cold streets, scowling at the little, sleeping houses on either side…They were

flimsy shelters, most of them poorly built of light wood, with spindle porch-posts horribly

mutilated by the turning lathe. Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and

unhappiness some of them managed to contain!” (Cather, 106) Jim feels disconnected from

Antonia at this part of the book. Consequently, he also finds himself growing apart from his fond

childhood days even though he still lives in Black Hawk. Fortunately, he sees Antonia

occasionally, and these rare moments are precious to Jim. At the end of book two, Jim and

Antonia lie among the trees, just enjoying the beauty and talking about Antonia’s home, her

father, and life in general. During this time, Jim views Antonia as the same young girl he met

when he first moved to Black Hawk. “Antonia had the most trusting, responsive eyes in the

world; love and credulousness seemed to look out of them with open faces…Antonia seemed to

me that day exactly like the little girl who used to come to our house with Mr. Shimerda”

(Cather, 114-115). Even though Jim is growing up and sees Antonia less frequently, she still

remains the same as when they were children.

Jim leaves for college during book three. He studies hard in school, but his mind distracts

himself by constantly thinking about his home and the good days he had there. “I suddenly found

myself thinking of the places and people of my own infinitesimal past…whenever my

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consciousness was quickened, all those early friends were quickened within it, and in some

strange way they accompanied me through all my new experiences” (Cather, 125). Soon he

meets up with Lena, and they see each other frequently. Jim feels more at home around Lena,

and they often talk about how things are in Black Hawk, and even how Antonia is doing.

Through talking to a childhood friend, Jim feels closer to home than before he started seeing

Lena. Jim becomes settled in this routine, but by the end of the book, Jim’s grandparents decide

it would be best for him to continue his studies in Boston. Jim moves out of Nebraska completely

and starts his life out East.

During the third book, Jim returns home from school for summer break. He is surprised

to see how little has changed in his childhood town of Black Hawk even though he was away for

two years. “Everything seemed just as it used to be. My grandparents looked very little

older…When we gathered in grandmother’s parlor, I could hardly believe that I had been away

at all” (Cather, 141). The entire town of Black Hawk seemed to freeze in time while Jim was

away at school, and he finds that everything remained the same as the day he arrived to Nebraska

in the back of the wagon. The only change is the new town gossip about “poor Antonia,” which

Jim finds odd because people did not pity her. Jim learns that she had a baby out of wedlock,

which was surprising to hear. Even though things have changed for Antonia, she remains the

same person Jim met in his youth. When he sees her again, they pick on their friendship right

where they left off, “We met like the people in the old song, in silence, if not in tears. Her warm

hand clasped mine…She was thinner than I had ever seen her…but there was a new kind of

strength in the gravity of her face, and her color still gave her that look of deep-seated health and

ardor” (Cather, 151). Jim’s visit home in book four shows that the town and the people of Black
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Hawk seemed to stop in time, and when he returns, he experiences a piece of his beloved

childhood.

Many years pass before Jim returns to Black Hawk. Jim goes about his regular life for

twenty years before returning to Black Hawk to see Antonia. In this time, Jim’s life situation

changed a lot, and Antonia’s life moved forward as well, as she got married and had a number of

children. Jim did not visit Antonia for so long because he was afraid of the changes that occurred

during that long period of time. “I did not want to find her aged and broken; I really dreaded it.

In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the

early ones” (Cather, 155). So many things can happen over the course of twenty years, and Jim

feared that Antonia would be a different person than the radiant girl he met many years ago.

When Jim finally returned to Black Hawk, he was happy to find that Antonia, although older,

was still the same, “The eyes that peered anxiously at me were – simply Antonia’s eyes. I had

seen no others like them since I looked into them last, though I had looked at so many thousands

of human faces. As I confronted her, the changes grew less apparent to me, her identity stronger.

She was there, in the full vigor of her personality, battered but not diminished…” (Cather, 157).

Even after twenty years of being apart, the plains of Nebraska that Jim knew so well were just as

he remembered, and his dear childhood friend Antonia still had the same qualities as when they

met. For the entirety of the last section, Jim makes remarks about how Antonia is not only the

same as he remembered, but perhaps even stronger and more filled with life. “I know so many

women who have kept all the things that she had lost, but whose inner glow has faded. Whatever

else was gone, Antonia had not lost the fire of life” (Cather, 159). Antonia’s children also remind

Jim of his youth; they are like a window into the days he spent on the Nebraska prairie. “I felt

like a boy in their company, and all manner of forgotten interests revived in me. It seemed, after
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all, so natural to be walking along a barbed-wire fence beside the sunset, toward a red pond, and

to see my shadow moving along at my right, over the close-cropped grass” (Cather, 163). This

trip to visit Antonia was very healing for Jim, and it gave him closure to know he still had access

to his childhood through Antonia and his home on the prairie. Everything was right, just as it

used to be when he was a boy on the farm. It was almost as if Jim could see himself and Antonia

having one of their many adventures along with all her children.

Each time Jim returns to Black Hawk, the people and the landscape seem frozen in time

from when he was young. Black Hawk, its landscape, and Antonia represent Jim’s childhood;

they are unchanging and will always transport him to the time when he first arrived in the small

Nebraska town. Although Jim grows farther apart from Antonia as the novel goes on, he

becomes closer to her through the memories and thoughts of her. Antonia changes very little

from when Jim first met her to their meeting in book five. While she is aged, her most vibrant

qualities remain the same, and she seems to have more life than in previous years. As a whole,

Cather’s novel evokes memories of home in the reader, and allows them to be a part of the

childhood that Antonia and Jim shared. The theme of childhood is prevalent throughout the

novel, and can transport the reader to his or her treasured childhood memories.
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Works Cited

Cather, Willa. My Antonia. Boston: Dover Thrift Editions, 1994. Print.