초록 열기/닫기 버튼
Willa Cather is a prominent female novelist in the early of the 20th century, when the modernist novel was taking its form and expanding its influence. Though it is mostly for her realistic and stylistic writing that Willa Cather takes an important place in American literature, her work My Á ntonia bears the stamp of modernism both in the writing techniques and the modernist theme. In this paper, My Á ntonia 's modernity was analyzed from the use of modernist technique- polyphony and the modernist theme of people's existential dilemma and the motif of death. To begin with, the characters in this novel have their own independent consciousness and can voice their own understanding of the world equally and freely, and therefore, My Á ntonia is definitely what Bakhtin called the “polyphonic novel”. Besides, Jimmy's life trajectory manifested the modern people's existential dilemma in the capitalist society. Last but not the least, the motif of death keeps recurring in this novel, which is quite impressive and symbolic. The death story symbolizes the despair of the migrants in America superficially, the despair of the human beings in the large and deep.
