My Antonia - An American TaleAt the beginning of this century, ships docked in American ports with their steerage filled with European immigrants. My Antonia by Willa Cather contains characters who immigrate to the country of America in search of hope and a new future on the prairies of the Midwest. This novel can be considered an American tale because it conveys the American concept of the "melting pot", the ideal of America as a "land of opportunity", and the character's struggles could only have occurred in America rather than in his own country. » The "crucible" represents the enormous power of the national imagination - the promise that all immigrants can become Americans, a new alloy forged in a container of democracy, freedom and civic responsibility. The melting pot only exists in America, which makes this country unlike any other. The characters in My Antonia embody this American ideal of ethnic diversity. Otto Fuchs is of Austrian descent and arrived in Western America in the presence of cowboys and worked for the Burdens in the "gentler country". Another group of foreigners were "two Russians who lived near the big dog town...their last names were unpronounceable, so they were called Pavel and Peter" (54.) The most famous group of foreigners was the Shimerdas coming to Bohemia. Divergent nationalities played an important role in the lives of foreigners. For example, the Shimerdas had "hated Krajiek, but they clung to him because he was the only human being they could talk to or get information from" (53.) Because the Shimerdas had immigrated in America and were not there. ..... middle of paper ......warm during the cold nights in their little mud house. Antonia’s father wanted to make sure the Burdens knew they were “not beggars in the old country; he earned a good salary and his family was respected there” (84.) However, in America, they struggled just to obtain basic needs and had difficulty meeting them. To conclude, My Antonia is an American tale because it could not take place anywhere else. Only America holds the abstraction of various ethnicities, more commonly known as “the melting pot.” America is usually called the "land of opportunity", and this is the reason why the immigrants in the novel moved to America. Ultimately, the Shimerdas would not have had the story of their demise and struggle if they had stayed in their own country where they were on stable land. r