olves killed both the bride and the groom. These examples are "divergences which weaken the overall structure of the novel." (Wells 1) Even though both critics say that the novel has a loose structure, they also state that the only thing that resembles any type of structure is the constant use of cyclical themes. For instance as Miller puts it, " the cycle of the seasons of the year, the cycle of the stages of human life, and the cycle of the cultural phases of civilization." (Bloom 59) In Miller's essay he states that in "The first book of My Antonia, The Shimerdas, introduces from the start the drama of time in the vivid accounts of the shifting seasons…portraying the terrible struggle for mere existence in the bleakness of the plains' winter, dramatizing the return of life with the arrival of spring, and concluding with the promise of a rich harvest in the intense heat of the prairie's summer. This is Jim Burden's remembered year, and it is his obsession with the cycle of time that has caused him to recall Antonia in a setting of the changing seasons." (Miller 55) Book one, "The Shimerda's", introduce the beginning of two cyclical themes. One of which is the cycle of the seasons of the year, which begins in the narrators'/Jims' mind in the autumn when the Shimerdas move to Nebraska, the winter when Mr. Shimerda commits suicide, then spring followed the death of Mr. Shimerda, and finally summer in the cyclical theme of the seasons of the year which created another cyclical pattern within itself. This imbedded cyclical theme is on the stages of life is based on the fact that Antonia moves into adulthood while Jim stays as a child as stated by Kim Wells. (Wells 1) This happens because in the section the hired girls Antonia moves into the city from the farm where she used to live. The movement from a rural to an urban area made Antonia mature quicker so she would be able to survive in the city. While on the other hand Ji...
