Rebirth and Remaking of the Self

The theme of being physically continuous yet spiritually other, born more than once into new worlds.

increasingBearing stren­gth in each eventdecreasing

Made Over Completely

Made Over Completely The Confession of a Life Mary Antin begins by saying she was born, lived, and has been made over. She is absolutely other than the person whose story she has to tell. The Second Birth The spiritual offspring of the marriage of the Past and the Present lives in one body. Her father and mother helped make her second self. The Justification The life is worth telling because it is typical of many. She is one of the strands of the cable that binds the Old World to the New.

The Spirit Born by the Polota

The Spirit Born by the Polota The Peasant's Song Sitting above the Polota, Mary heard a plowman singing. The melody reached her and the meaning sprang up in her heart. The Great Pulse For one wild heartbeat she had her little hand on the Great Pulse. Then she was a simple child again. The Successive Births We are not born all at once but by bits, and our souls are scarred by the struggles of successive births. The first self-birth happened that day.

The Ocean as Womb

The Ocean as Womb The Sixteen Days For sixteen days the ship was the family's world, and the ocean was a living presence around them. Mary felt the greatness, power, and solemnity of the sea. The Conversion She imagined herself all alone with sea and sky, and found a friend in the deep. The ocean seemed part of herself. The Passage Between Lives Suffering, fearing, brooding, rejoicing, they crept toward the coveted shore. The May morning landing was a birth into the New World.

The New Name and the New Dress

The New Name and the New Dress The American Names The committee of friends renamed Fetchke, Joseph, Deborah, and Mary. Mary was disappointed not to receive a strange new name. The Shedding of Clothes The family exchanged homemade European costumes for real American machine-made garments. They shed their impossible Hebrew names with their immigrant clothing. The Embodied Remaking The outside and the inside were changing together. She was becoming Mary Antin, an American schoolgirl.

The Emergence of the Human Creature

The Emergence of the Human Creature The Vision of the Ages Standing on the library steps, Mary saw herself emerging from the dim places of history, creeping into the light of civilization, and leaping to the intellectual summit. The Cradle and the Palace The past was only her cradle, and it could not hold her now. She moved at will in the wide spaces of the public palace. The Multiple Births Completed Each stage of life had been a separate incarnation. She had died to each earlier self and been born again.

the opening of the narrative

a spring day in childhood

the Atlantic crossing

the first weeks in Boston

after the Nahant field excursion