Quote 2
“I
never know you was so brave, Jim,” she went on comfortingly. “You
is just like big mans; you wait for him lift his head and then you
go for him. Ain’t you feel scared a bit? Now we take that snake
home and show everybody. Nobody ain’t seen in this kawn-tree so
big snake like you kill.”
Ántonia speaks these lines in Book I,
Chapter VII, praising Jim for having killed
the rattlesnake. Jim is angry with Ántonia for failing to warn him
about the snake (in a moment of panic, she screams out in her native
language), and she quickly appeases him by gushing about his bravery
and manliness. The quote captures Ántonia’s way of speaking in the
early part of the novel, as she is learning English; it also represents
a moment of transition in Jim’s relationship with her. Because she
is older than Jim, Ántonia has had a tendency to treat him somewhat
condescendingly, to Jim’s increasing frustration. After he proves
his strength by killing the rattlesnake, she regards him with a
new respect and never talks down to him again. She may never love
Jim romantically, but at this moment, she clearly comes to regard
him as an equal and as someone very special to her.
