This document discusses the difference between the words "racked" and "wracked". It explains that "racked" refers to being stretched on a torture device called a rack, as in feeling racked with nerves. It also explains that "racked" can refer to racking one's brain during difficult tasks like writing. Meanwhile, "wracked" refers to ruinous accidents, and an example is given of the stock market being wracked by recession. The document provides clarity on the different meanings and proper usages of these similar-sounding words.

1. Racked or
Wracked?

2. SPELLING ERROR #5:
CONFUSING “RACKED” WITH “WRACKED.”
 If you are racked with nerves, you are feeling as if
you are being stretched on the torture device, the rack.
You rack your brain when you try to write difficult
stories.
Wrack, on the other hand, has to do with ruinous
accidents. With luck, this won’t apply to your writing, but
it might just apply to the stock market, which has been
wracked by recession.

3. AGENDA
Lecture: My Antonia
Historical Context
Discussion
Questions
QHQs Chapters 1-19

5. HISTORICAL CONTEXT: IMMIGRATION
Up until 1825, fewer than 10,000 new immigrants came to the United
States each year. By the late 1840s, revolutions in Europe and the
devastating potato famine in Ireland sent people to this country by the
hundreds of thousands. By 1860, one-eighth of America's 32
million people were foreign born.
While many of these immigrants settled in the east, the promotional activities of
the railroads brought many immigrants straight past them to the
prairies. The railroad companies even sent scouts abroad to encourage
people to come and settle the plains and prairies.
Another flood of immigrants came in the 1860s and 1870s, just after the
Homestead Act of 1862. This legislation granted, for a small fee, 160
acres of Western public land to citizens or prospective
citizens who would stay and settle it for five years. These
settlers were predominantly from western and northern Europe.

6. By the time Cather was writing My Ántonia, immigration to the Great
Plains had slowed. Urban immigration, however, continued to cause
miserable situations in the cities.
As a journalist in Pittsburgh and New York City and as a
newspaperwoman and editor for a radical magazine, Cather was
exposed to the conditions in which many urban immigrants lived.
She also saw the mounting fear that the arrival of cheap foreign
labor was not only undesirable competition but a contribution to
the widening and hardening gap between rich and poor.
During World War I, German-Americans were definitely
suspect and stories of their victimization can be found in almost any
Midwestern state histories. Even the Czechs, who were eager to help
free their homeland from the domination of Austria-Hungary, suffered
during the war years. The country's anxiety over the role immigrants
were to play in our society did not ease, even though the "tide" of
immigration was stemmed briefly by World War I.

7. HISTORICAL CONTEXT:
THEORIES OF AMERICANIZATION
Reaction to the massive European immigration of the nineteenth century had
fostered opposing theories of Americanization: These models have come to be
called the "melting pot" theory and the "salad bowl" theory and
still define the debate on difference even today, almost a century later.
In the 1890s, Frederick Jackson Turner popularized the image of
the American West as a crucible (a vat or vessel) where European
immigrants would be "Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixed race."
My Ántonia can be read as a tribute to this view and Ántonia
herself can be appreciated as "the rich mine of life, like the founders of early
races" that produces the American people from the raw material that has been
gathered on its shores.
Carl Degler coined the expression "salad bowl."

8. Spend 5-6 minutes in
your groups, discussing
your answers to
prompts or your QHQs

9. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
 Discuss why Willa Cather chose a male narrator
and why women dominate the novel.
 Explore the story or relationship of Pavel and
Peter.
 Compare and contrast the lives of Jim Burden
and Antonia. Explain what drew them together
and enabled them to become close friends.
 Compare and contrast the relationship between
Antonia and Jim in Section 1 (Chapters 1-10)
and Section 2 (Chapters 11-19)

10. QHQ: CHAPTERS 1-19
WHAT DO YOU SAY?
1. Why did Mr. Shimerda stop playing the violin, even
though he brought it with him?
2. Do other immigrants express homesickness? Have all
the other immigrants been reborn in America, or do
they have dual Old World/New World identities (such
as Pavel and Peter)?
3. Is Ántonia really such a challenge to the of-the-day
concept femininity (like some comments above
seemed to suggest)?
4. What effect did this novel have on other novels written
by women, and the influence it had on their own style
of writing?
5. What effect did this novel have on women during this

11. HOMEWORK
 Read My Antonia (1918) Book II Chapters 1-8
 Post #6: Answer one of the following prompts
1. Discuss the contrasts that are being developed
between the characters in this section.
2. Discuss the importance of independent women in this
section, and why Willa Cather has chosen to develop
these characters here.
3. Discuss My Antonia in terms of one or more of the
Manifestos
4. Write your own QHQ.