Uncommon Luxury: A Comparison between Jim's family in My Antonia with the typical plains family

Thinking back, everyone has migrated to one place or another at a certain point. People have not been stationary throughout history, though some have simply been in an area longer than others. In My Antonia by Willa Cather, Antonia Shimerda and her family had come to the Great Plains of Nebraska from Bohemia, but Jim and his grandparents were some of the few that did not migrate from a foreign country, having settled their homestead …

…Jim's education opportunities and aspirations, make them stand out amidst the population of desolate foreign farmers and their sons, waiting to gain the troubles of farm life when their parents left. They broke the mold of common families. They were practically the polar opposite of most of the families living around them. This all leads back to the fact that they had not recently migrated form a foreign country, which, in itself, was very uncommon.