Jim and Antonia come to the Nebraska plain from different places in the social hierarchy and from different parts of the world. Orphaned at the age of ten, Jim leaves his parents' Virginia home to live with his grandparents on their comfortable Nebraska farm. Arriving in America from Bohemia with her family, fourteen-year-old Antonia faces linguistic and cultural barriers as well as ethnic tensions common to first-generation pioneer immigrants. Early in her friendship with Tim Antonia highlights their differences. "Things will be easy for you," she tells Jim, "but they will be hard for us" (140) That Jim will attend school is a given. When he invites Antonia to join him at the country school she refuses because of her responsibilities on the farm. "I ain't got time to learn," she tells him. "School is all right for lit tle boys. I help make this land one good farm' (123). Although Antonia says that she admires her father's learning, she takes pride in her work on the farm.