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영어

This study shows the process that Ántonia in My Ántonia has overcome the discrimination and traumas as a non-mainstream immigrant with her own life consciousness since she immigrated in the sterile Nebraska. Cather suggests that trying to live a life without killing oneself in the face of overwhelming odds be Ántonia’s own life vision. Ántonia respects all the lives around her and acts up to her strong belief while most regressive men including Jim are obsessive about a sense of loss and feeling of deficiency and make light of lives at large. Besides Ántonia, unlike them, surmounts lots of difficulties in the bleak land and becomes an Earth Mother achieving harmony with nature and acquiring sincere vitality on the land. The vitality that she supports is tolerant and communal so she ultimately makes Jim who still moves here and there on business in his country experience catharsis by threatening his equilibrium with a large family of children playing in the new world. Eventually as Ántonia has an inner vital power despite the vast challenges including giving birth to an illegitimate child, she changes Jim’s class consciousness through her own life consciousness and is contributing to the progress of life consciousness as a source of life supply.