Psychoanalytic Critique of My AntoniaSummary: This essay uses psychoanalysis as an interpretive strategy for reading My Antonia by Willa Cather. Freud's well-known theory - the Oedipus complex - and Lacan's mirror stage theory are used as modes of approaching the novel. I use psychoanalytic criticism as a way to interpret Willa Cather's My Antonia because I find some similarities between My Antonia and My Antonia. and Peter Pan, between this and The Awakening by reading Critical Theory and Practice: A Coursebook by Keith Green. In light of Freud's Oedipus complex, like Peter Pan who sees Windy as a lover and a mother, and who develops his sexual identity through this complex, Jim Burden also has a mother-like lover, Antonia, and comes finally take one's sexualized and gendered identity in this world. In the eyes of Lacan's Mirror Stage, like Edna Pontellier who wishes to return to her childhood memory, to return to the world of the Imaginary, in which "sometimes this summer I have the impression of walking again in the green meadow; aimless, thoughtless, and guideless” (Chopin 520), Jim Burden remembers his childhood living on the great central plain of North America where he feels that he and nature are one, but, unlike to Edna going back and not coming back, Jim enters the realm of the imagination and returns to the symbolic, experiencing the process of the mirror stage. These are the reasons why I try to apply psychoanalysis in the interpretation of the novel. General ideas will be given after the summary of the novel. Willa Cather's My Antonia begins with Jim Burden's "endless journey across the great prairie of North America" ​​(Cather 5), a journey back... middle of paper. .....sometimes we find ourselves having a bad dream" (Cather 158). After that, he feels that he never wants to see Antonia again; and he hates her as much as he hates Cutter. This accident pushes Jim from. Antonia and go to study at Lincoln. The relationship between psychoanalysis and Willa Cather's My Antonia has not been defined. I hope this essay is the first step in seeing this wonderful novel from a new perspective. Cather, Willa. Boston: Hougton Mifflin, 1988. Chopin, Kate. The Norton Anthology of American Literature Ed. Nina Baym 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 1996. Wright, Elizabeth Psychoanalytic Criticism. : Theory in practice New York: Methuen.,1984.