American Lit quotes for the exam
My Antonia
1- “Jake nodded at me approvingly and said you were likely to get diseases from
foreigners” pg. 8
2- “I’d always be miserable in a city, I’d die of loneliness”” 257
3- “Yellow leaves and shining white bark made them look like the gold and silver trees
in fairy tales”- pg. 21, shows his youth
4- “it used to be dugouts” pg. 12 Conditions on the farm used to be worse STILL “the
only wooden house west of Black Hawk” pg. 15
5- “the sort of men who never get on, somehow, or do anything but work hard for a
dollar or two a day”- pg. 58
6- “Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us” pg. 114
7- “The older girls, who helped to break up the wild sod, (..) been early awakened and
made observant by coming at a tender age from an old country to a new” 159.
8- “A plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it”-
importance of farming, but also end of Jim’s childhood. Pg. 196. Recurring sunset
theme.
9- “My papa, he cry for leave his old friends… but my mama she want Ambrosch for to
be rich, with many cattle” Greed, American dream pg. 74
10- Antonia: “big and warm and full of light, like the sun shining on brown pools in the
wood” pg. 22-23
11- “you’ve been going with girls who have a reputation for being free and easy, and
now you’ve got the same reputation” 166
12- “’You do not wish to compromise her?’ ‘that’s a word we don’t use much here, Mr
Ordinsky.’” 230.
13- “People said that there must be something queer about a boy who showed no
interest in girls his own age” “If there were no girls like them there would be no
poetry”
14- “Antonia is a natural-born mother” 255
15- “I’m going to see that my little girl has a better chance than I ever had. I’m going to
take care of that girl, Jim.” 257
16- LENA: “I’ve seen a good deal of married life, and I don’t care for it” 132 “she was
already making clothes for the women of the ‘young married set’.”
17- TINY: “Tiny returned, with a considerable fortune” “she was satisfied with her
success, but not elated”
18- If I told my classmates that Lena Lingard’s grandfather was a clergyman, and much
respected in Norway (…) What did it matter? All foreigners were ignorant people
who couldn’t speak English.”
19- “They hated Krajiek, but they clung to him because he was the only human being
with whom they could talk or get information” pg. 29
20- “I began to feel the loneliness of the farm-boy at evening, when the chores seem
everlastingly the same, and the world so far away” 278.
21- “I had the sense of coming home to myself, and of having found out what a little
circle man’s experience is.” 297
22- “The same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we
possessed together in the precious, the incommunicable past” 298
My Antonia
1- “Jake nodded at me approvingly and said you were likely to get diseases from
foreigners” pg. 8
2- “I’d always be miserable in a city, I’d die of loneliness”” 257
3- “Yellow leaves and shining white bark made them look like the gold and silver trees
in fairy tales”- pg. 21, shows his youth
4- “it used to be dugouts” pg. 12 Conditions on the farm used to be worse STILL “the
only wooden house west of Black Hawk” pg. 15
5- “the sort of men who never get on, somehow, or do anything but work hard for a
dollar or two a day”- pg. 58
6- “Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us” pg. 114
7- “The older girls, who helped to break up the wild sod, (..) been early awakened and
made observant by coming at a tender age from an old country to a new” 159.
8- “A plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it”-
importance of farming, but also end of Jim’s childhood. Pg. 196. Recurring sunset
theme.
9- “My papa, he cry for leave his old friends… but my mama she want Ambrosch for to
be rich, with many cattle” Greed, American dream pg. 74
10- Antonia: “big and warm and full of light, like the sun shining on brown pools in the
wood” pg. 22-23
11- “you’ve been going with girls who have a reputation for being free and easy, and
now you’ve got the same reputation” 166
12- “’You do not wish to compromise her?’ ‘that’s a word we don’t use much here, Mr
Ordinsky.’” 230.
13- “People said that there must be something queer about a boy who showed no
interest in girls his own age” “If there were no girls like them there would be no
poetry”
14- “Antonia is a natural-born mother” 255
15- “I’m going to see that my little girl has a better chance than I ever had. I’m going to
take care of that girl, Jim.” 257
16- LENA: “I’ve seen a good deal of married life, and I don’t care for it” 132 “she was
already making clothes for the women of the ‘young married set’.”
17- TINY: “Tiny returned, with a considerable fortune” “she was satisfied with her
success, but not elated”
18- If I told my classmates that Lena Lingard’s grandfather was a clergyman, and much
respected in Norway (…) What did it matter? All foreigners were ignorant people
who couldn’t speak English.”
19- “They hated Krajiek, but they clung to him because he was the only human being
with whom they could talk or get information” pg. 29
20- “I began to feel the loneliness of the farm-boy at evening, when the chores seem
everlastingly the same, and the world so far away” 278.
21- “I had the sense of coming home to myself, and of having found out what a little
circle man’s experience is.” 297
22- “The same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we
possessed together in the precious, the incommunicable past” 298
