Chapter 1-4

1. What do you think the significance of the narrator's parents having died?

2. What kind emotion does jimmy show? How does it change when he meets Antonia?

3. What do you think of Krajiek and what he is doing to Antonia's family?

4. Anything else?

I think that Jim's parents being dead puts him on the same level with Antonia. They both are dealing with change (surprisingly well, I might add) because they have had to leave their 'old country'. The death of Jim's parents is a believable motive for his relocation to Nebraska. In addition, his lack of siblings truly frees him from all ties to his old life and set him up to deliver a narrative that is not often sentimental to Virgina.

Jim's parents having died hasn't quite come into play yet, but as we discussed I have a feeling there will be some serious significance coming up. He is rather free-spirit especially after meeting Antonia. I think he was rather reserved and then soon after meeting Antonia he was very loving and fun, ready to go on adventures each day. I feel as though Krajiek needs to just stop being such a loner! He is mooching off of this family and is being very unfair with them. This book is great!

Although Jimmy is in a completely new place surrounded by new people, his feelings of loss and sadnesss are relatively shortlived. On the train he feels very loss, almost as if he didn't exist. When he arrives in Nebraska he emotions focus primarily on an awe of the landscape and a connection to Black Hawke's wilderness. His character, erhaos because he is only ten years old, has not been substantially developed or made more complex as of yet.

At the beginning, Jimmy shows some emotion toward the death of his parents, but moreso is his curiosity about the place he is going to and the people travelling in front of him - Antonia's family. His curiosity here, as well as what we are told in the introduction, immediately sets up the foreshadowing of a close relationship with Antonia. As this book is centralled on his feelings and memories of her, when he meets her, although his emotions change, the tone of the book stays mostly the same, as that was the point he was heading for all along. (Or at least that's what I found.)