Describe Antonia at the end of the book. how has she change, and in what way does she stay the same?Antonia is obviously the hero of this story. ...

When the reader first meets Antonia, she is a young girl.
She is full of hope and plans for the future. She wants to learn English, she wants to
go to school. After her father dies, however, she has to help her family. Her dreams
must be put away. Her mother is overwhelmed and weak, and she is not a good role model
for Antonia. Antonia learns more about how to be a mother and run a household from Mrs.
Harling, during the years she works there. She also wants to have fun, though, and for a
period in her life, she starts to party  - go out dancing, etc. She falls in love with a
worthless man who gets her pregnant and then deserts her. So, with all of this, Antonia
experiences life in a much harder way than Jim does because she comes from a different
world than he does. For most of the novel, he does not understand
this.

By the end of the novel, Antonia is a survivor. Her
life had not worked out the way she thought it would when she was a young girl, but she
is happy nonetheless. She has a large loving family, a good husband who loves her. She
has land and a thriving farm. She represents the pioneer spirit, the type of people that
helped settle the west. Jim left the west and went back east. At the end of the novel,
he is divorced and unhappy and comes home seeking the happiness he once knew. He finds
that Antonia is not successful perhaps in the same way he is (with a career) but she is
much happier than he is. She is fulfilled and he is not.