Intelligent, observant, and imaginative, Jim Burden has a “romantic disposition” (x). He has an artistic sensitivity to beauty that enables him to appreciate the wild Nebraskan prairie when he arrives from Virginia as an orphaned 10-year-old boy to live with his grandparents on their farmstead. He writes the recollections that form the book’s main narrative, conveying the deep feelings he develops for the neighboring farmer's daughter, Ántonia Shimerda, during their youth. Jim’s sympathy for the plight of European immigrants on the Nebraskan frontier and his lyrical appreciation of the nuances of nature elevate these subjects. Unlike most of the American-born young men, Jim respects the girls from the rural farms and prefers their company to his more privileged peers in town.

Jim excels at his studies when he attends college at the new university in Lincoln, Nebraska. There, he is introduced to “the world of ideas” (258) but remains sentimentally tied to the figures and places of his childhood. After finishing law school, Jim becomes a lawyer in New York for a Western railway. He frequently travels on business across the “great country” that “he loves with a personal passion” (x) and helps to develop. However, his marriage to a “handsome, energetic” woman is a disappointment, since she is unable to appreciate her husband’s quiet, artistic personality.