“The Boat”, narrated by a Mid-western university professor, Alistar MacLeod, is a short story concerning a family and their different perspectives on freedom vs. tradition. The mother pushes the son to embrace more of a traditional lifestyle by taking over the fathers fishing business, while on the other hand the father pushes the son to live more autonomously in an unconstrained manner. “The Boat” focuses on the father and how his personality influences the son’s choice on how to live and how to make decisions that will ultimately affect his life. In Alistair MacLeod’s, “The Boat”, MacLeod suggest that although dreams and desires give people purpose, the nobility of accepting a life of discontentment out weighs the selfishness of following ones own true desires. In the story, the father is obligated to provide for his family as well as to continue the fishing tradition that was inherited from his own father. The mother emphasizes the boat and it’s significance when she consistently asked the father “ How did things go in the boat today” since tradition was paramount to the mother. H...
A human being develops and grows throughout their life through many challenges and sometimes it takes an event in one’s life to change a person. In the novel “The Caine Mutiny” by Herman Wouk, is a novel about Willie Keith, a chubby and well educated son from an upper class family who joins the Navy. Willie goes into the Columbia University School of Journalism, which has been converted for the war effort. He is almost rejected because of his physical reasons of not being fit, but his Princeton background saves him from being rejected. As soon as he stepped in this navy life and went through a long journey with the navy crew , Willie became more independent, responsible and courageous.
The story Duncan’s Way is about a boy named Duncan who lived in Newfoundland for really long he likes to fish he asked his dad to go fishing and his dad always says maybe later or just ignores him, but I read more Duncan’s ALL THE COD IN THE SEA HAS JUST DISSAPERED BUT THERE ARE SOME REASONS THE First REASON IS MAYBE ALL THE foreign factory ships might have sucked up ALL THE FISH FROM THE OCEAN OR PEOPLE like Duncan’s dad father overfished all the cod but all Duncan’s father mostly does is Sit on the couch and watch tv or is just Talking to his buddies and just doing nothing he is really isolating him self from
Not many know about Dragging Canoe and the battle he fought during the American Revolutionary War. The Native American’s role in the Revolutionary War was very important, but not well known. As a result, the Revolutionary War can come across as one-sided. Dragging Canoe fought for the Native American’s existence in the colonies. First, he was strongly opposed to Henderson’s Purchase or also called the Transylvania Purchase. Secondly, Dragging Canoe’s raid at “Battle of the Bluffs” became an issue for the colonists. And lastly, there was negotiating done between the British and Colonists would somehow effect Dragging Canoe, his warriors, and the future for the Native Americans.
James Duncan’s book entitled, The River Why, focuses around the main character, Gus, and how he changes throughout the book. In this book Gus is discovering what life really is and that the whole world does not revolve around fishing. After moving out of his erratic house he spends all of his time fishing at his remote cabin, but this leaves him unhappy and a little insane. He embarks on a search for him self and for his own beliefs. Duncan changes Gus throughout the book, making Gus realize that there are more important things to life than fishing, and these things can lead to a happy fulfilled life, which in turn will help Gus enjoy life and fishing more. Duncan introduces a character, Eddy, who significantly changes Gus’s views on what he needs in his life and she gives Gus a sense of motivation or inspiration. Eddy changes Gus by their first encounter with each other, when Eddy instills in Gus a need to fulfill his life and when they meet up again, completing his need. Fishing is Gus’s first passion but he loses it after he puts all of himself into it, and when Eddy comes into his picture Gus feels a need to have more in his life, like love. Through finding love he re-finds his passion for fishing and learns more about himself. When Eddy and Gus finally get together, he sees this “equilibrium” between his old passion, fishing, and his new one, Eddy. Duncan’s use of Eddy gives Gus a new found sense of purpose and to have a more fulfilled life is a critical step in Gus’s development as a character. This is why Eddy is the most important character to this book, because she gives Gus inspiration to find himself.
In Craig Lesley’s novel The Sky Fisherman, he illustrates the full desire of direction and the constant flow of life. A boy experiences a chain of life changing series of events that cause him to mature faster than a boy should. Death is an obstacle that can break down any man, a crucial role in the circle of life. It’s something that builds up your past and no direction for your future. No matter how hard life got, Culver fought through the pain and came out as a different person. Physical pain gives experience, emotional pain makes men.
When the narrator sees the image of the man and the woman at the beach, looking “through the triangle formed by the woman’s tanned knee, calf, and thigh,” she “saw the calm, sleeping waters of the ocean. My mother was out there somewhere. My father had said so” (le 6). Here, the power of the water is highlighted as this occurrence shows the significance of the ocean as both a connection between the Vietnamese refugees and their homeland, as well as a subjective construction of families and family experiences. It is in the water that families are created by experiences, not by blood. _____ Brogan argues “families do not simply tell stories; stories create families” (18). The four uncles became family due to sharing the “boat people” experience. The water in this instance represents family and starting a new life in America. The image is also seen as indicative of the pejorative aspects of water – the ocean separates these refugees from the narrator’s mother and their homeland. The ocean separates the refugees from the narrator’s mother and their homeland, but also creates a sense of unity among the
In the Maclean family, fly-fishing was portrayed as the link that brought the father closer to his two sons. Not only did the family strongly believe in their Presbyterian values, but they believed that fly-fishing was an important way to release their frustrations and just relax together every Sunday after church. In Norman Maclean’s novella, A River Runs Through It, a sport that started out as a hobby transformed into a tradition that brought discipline and structure into a family that seemed as though they would never be able to get along. In everyone’s life there is one activity that brings him or her these same feelings and emotions, it is just up to them to find it.
We all experience a rite of passage in our lives, whether it be the time we learned to swim or perhaps the day we received our driver’s license. A rite of passage marks an important stage in someone’s life, and one often times comes with a lesson learned. Three selections that provide fine examples of rites of passage that individuals confront include “The Bass, The River, and Sheila Mant” by W.D. Wetherell, “On Turning Ten” by Billy Collins” and “First Lesson” by Philip Booth.
This Passage is significant in many ways. O’Brien has a vague yet vivid memory of throwing a grenade and killing a young Vietnamese soldier in the midst of war and what really struck him was the corpse of the young man. He is dejected because of what he has done, and was even speaking in the third person and constructing fantasies as to what the man must have been like before he was killed. Weaving the story of the young man’s life into something similar as his own. The way O’Brien achieves this is through certain literary techniques. One is being Imagery. On the top of page 127 he says “The nose was undamaged. The skin on the right cheek was smooth and fine-grained and hairless. Frail-looking, delicately boned” (O’Brien 127). On the top of page 128 he also says “Along the trail there were small blue flowers shaped like bells. The young man 's head was wrenched sideways, not quite facing the flowers, and even in the shade a single blade of sunlight sparkled against the buckle of his ammunition belt. The left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips. The wounds at his neck had not yet clotted, which made him seem animate even in death, the blood still spreading out across his shirt.” (O’Brien 128). O’Brien uses words like
Lindholdt, Paul J. "Introduction." The Canoe and the Saddle: A Critical Edition. Ed. Paul J.
Two days ago, a ship sailed into Rio de Janeiro's harbour, carrying bizarre cargo; human remains. After running multiple tests, forensic pathologists collectively determined that the corpse belongs to a man who goes by the name General Zaroff, a Cossack man. The captain of the ship carrying Zaroff's carcass, Captain Nielsen stated, “A few weeks ago, were just sailing past Ship-Trap Island when one of our passengers, a man named Sanger Rainsford, fell overboard. Unfortunately, we didn't notice until the next day, and by then we assumed that he was dead. So we when we saw a body floating on a piece of debris, of course we thought it was Rainsfords corpse. You’d imagine our surprise when we realized it wasn’t him. We hauled the carcass onto the deck and made our way back to shore immediately!”
No Bricks and No Temples: Coping with Crisis in “The Open Boat” Stephen Crane’s story “The Open Boat” concerns four people who are trying to reach land after surviving a shipwreck off the Florida coast. During the course of the story, they face dangers that are real physical threats, but they also have to deal with trying to make sense of their situation. The characters in this story cope with their struggles in two ways: individually, they each imagine that Nature, or Fate, or God, is behind their experiences, which allows them to blame some outside force for their struggle, and together, they form a bond of friendship that helps them keep their spirits up. . In “Becoming Interpreters: The Importance of Tone in ‘The Open Boat,’” Gregory Schirmer states that “‘The Open Boat has at its center two quite different views of man: as a helpless and insignificant being adrift in a universe that is wholly indifferent to him and his ambitions, and on the other hand, as part of a brotherhood that binds man to man in the face of that indifferent universe” (222).
When the boat was initially found by the girls the boys didn’t see it at first, after they find it they become closer friends and this newfound friendship takes the teenagers on an adventure. They not only find a boat and fix it but they also use this boat to guide them into a new territory with the opposite sex. This boat gives them the freedom to do that.
...ing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1998-2000. Comp. Clifton. Rochester: BOA Editions, 2000. 20. Print.
“Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” At some point in life one is faced with a decision which will define the future, but only time will tell whether or not the choice was right or wrong. The Boat by Alistair MacLeod demonstrates that an individual should make their own decisions in life, be open to new experiences and changes, and that there is no way to obtain something, without sacrificing something else.