Willa Cather, My ntonia-“Optima dies … prima fugit” (“The best days are the first to flee”)

Willa Cather, My ntonia-“Optima dies … prima fugit” (“The best days are the first to flee”)

Answer all questions. Be sure to include examples from the text to support your position. That is crucial. You are making arguments, so use the text to support that argument.

Format all submissions using MLA standards.

1. In “Hired Girls,” how does the novel begin to offer a different conception of work and its relationship to community?

2. What do the stories of Lena Lingard and Tiny Soderball say about Cather’s interest in female characters?

3. Who is Wick Cutter?

4. How would you describe Jim’s “mental awakening”? How does Jim’s education put him in a new relationship with his past, with his life on the prairie?

5. Where does novel reveal Jim’s efforts (through narrative) to compensate for lost time?