Jim: lover of all things poetic

I really like what we learn about Jim in these chapters. He is certainly a flawed individual: he has an immature rebellious streak, he is pretty snobby about the other town people, and there is something dishonorable in his reaction to the whole Cutter situation–I didn’t think he should hate Antonia, even temporarily, and I thought he should have been relieved that he spared her.

We have now seen Jim in three places: the Country, the Town, and the City. Jim does okay in the Country and the City but is unhappy in the Town. Why? Because Jim is a lover of poetry and there is nothing poetic in the Town. The Town is not much to look at and in Jim’s perception is full of dispassionate people, except for the still Country-like hired girls of course. In the Country on the other hand, you’ve got poetry everywhere: in the scenery and surroundings, in life and death struggles, and in the passion of the farmers for their land and their livelihood. In the City, Jim can experience intellectual passion and he gets to study the poetry of not only poets, but also live performers, such as what he sees in the theater. His relationship with Cleric is also related to poetry–Cleric’s ability to explain poetry to him and Cleric’s own likeness to a poet ("I believe that Gaston Cleric narrowly missed being a great poet," p. 157). Thus, though it is a different kind of poetry than he found in the Country, in the City he is also surrounded by poetry.

And now, we can start to understand why he so admires Antonia and the other hired girls–because "[i]f there were no girls like them in the world, there would be no poetry." (p. 162). Antonia seems to ooze out life and feeling; to Jim, she is walking poetry. She is tragic, beautiful, independent, a product of struggle, one with nature, and the goddess of dancing. How could Jim not love her?