Lena Lingard

In part three, Lena Lingard, of My Antonia, by Willa Cather, there is a tone of sadness and longing but also happiness. This is created by Jim's actions and own thoughts in the part. As Jim is away at college, he meets Gaston Cleric who becomes his teacher and supervisor. He learns a great deal from Cleric and is enveloped in his studies. He doesn't go home for the summer vacation, but instead stays on the campus studying Greek. Cleric stays with him and they read, play tennis, and tell stories with each other. "Gaston Cleric introduced me to the world of ideas; when one first enters that world everything else fades for a time, and all that went before is as if it had not been. Yet I found curious survivals; some of the figures of my old life seemed to be waiting for me in the new."

As time went on, Jim still found himself thinking about and longing for his old life in Black Hawk. "Although I admired scholarship so much in Cleric, I was not deceived about myself; I knew that I should never be a scholar. I could never lose myself for long among impersonal things. Mental excitement was apt to send me with a rush back to my own naked land and the figures scattered upon it." I think that Jim is homesick, which is something he has hardly ever felt. In part one, The Shimerdas, Jim moved from Virginia to Nebraska, but he said he was not homesick. He found a new life in Black Hawk that he liked very much. After the death of his parents, Jim finally felt at home in Nebraska with his grandparents. Now that he is not experiencing that life, he feels homesick for it, even though he is at college and living an excellent college experience. When Lena Lingard visits him, it is as though Black Hawk came to him. As they spent time together for a couple of weeks, Jim felt happy as did Lena, giving those chapters a happier tone. But as Jim was set to move for Boston, he was suddenly sad again and longing for his home in Black Hawk, Nebraska.