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BLOOD IN THE WHEAT: WILLA CATHER'S MY ANTONIA.(Critical Essay)

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From: Studies in American Fiction
Date: 19990922
Author:Tellefsen, Blythe

It is good for everyone to know how to forget. --Ernest Renan

The preface to Willa Cather's My Antonia is so replete with American mythology as to render it almost a parody of the national dream. We are quickly introduced by a nameless narrator to Jim Burden who has the typical American hero's "naturally romantic and ardent disposition ... [which] has been one of the strongest elements in his success."(1) Burden, who "loves with a personal passion the great country through which his railway runs" and is "still able to lose himself in those big Western dreams" (5), not only ...

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