One of Cather’s main purposes in this section is to bring Jim and Ántonia together again and examine how time has changed each of them.
Jim finds Ántonia “battered but not diminished,” and he realizes that she was—and still is—a symbol of life. Her happiness bursts out from the dark areas of her life just as the children rush upward—like an explosion of life—from the dark cave. The cave reminds us of the dugout where the Shimerdas lived when they first arrived in Nebraska; it symbolizes all the darkness and all the hardships of Ántonia’s life, which she has made fruitful.
In the scene when Ántonia is displaying and showing the photographs, Cather contrasts her with Lena, who is essentially unchanged in appearance and who has lived a shallow, static life. Ántonia, on the other hand, bears scars from her hard life, but her life has been more fulfilling than Lena’s. When thinking about Ántonia’s lost teeth, Jim realizes that he knows “so many women who have kept all the things that she had lost, but whose inner glow has faded.” Whatever else is gone, Ántonia has not lost the fire of life. She is a “rich mine of life like the founders of early races.” Here again, Cather links her characters with the classical and mythological past. Ántonia is triumphant, larger than life, magnificent against the prairie—like the plow against the sun in Book II.
Cuzak and Jim are similar in that both left their roots to settle in unfamiliar lands. But Cuzak has put down new roots, mostly due to Ántonia’s help; Jim often feels rootless. Even Jim’s job—which requires extensive traveling—emphasizes that he is adrift. At the end of the novel, he finally admits to himself that he has come home, and he plans to spend many more years returning to Nebraska, spending time with Ántonia and her family. He realizes that he may have lost something by being away for twenty years, that both he and Ántonia may have lost something—although, as she has always done, Ántonia has adapted to the ever-flowing current of years. In the future, Jim plans to revisit Ántonia and her family and learn from their Old Country wisdom how to more fully appreciate people and life itself.
