Gillian 1 Gillian Baker Instructor Duckworth English 1A 26 February 2018 The life of the impoverished in India William Langewiesche’s The Outlaw Sea, chapter six, is a detailed reporting of the dire conditions that poverty-stricken Indian shipbreaking workers face on a day-to-day basis, in Alang. Although, the environment in which the workers are in are sad, unfair, and inhumane -- someone has to do the hard labor -- it is how many modern societies operate. The managers of Alang supervise thousands of impoverished Indian
As opposed to the milling factory workers, who are slowly starving because they cannot afford to purchase food on their wages. Alang and Bhavnagar are prominent reminders, and symbols of the economic divide between the first and third world countries. Langewiesche did an impeccable job at gathering information from both sides, and for the most part kept an unbiased view.. One cannot deny that seeing other human beings in dire situations does not yield sympathy. Langewiesche did state that the way in which the workers were being treated is both sad and inhumane. He went on to say that the way in which their working and living conditions were being handled is dangerous and it is an act that is polluting the environment. These industries “... will be the final expression of a global business freed. ...” (p. 203) Langewiesche wants us to understand that it is “.… Not without reason, that this is a necessary function of modern times.” (p. 203). In developing and developed countries there is a a economic tier system comprised of those who are wealthy, those who are middle-class, and those who are poor. It is how a society functions at its best. Someone has to do the hard
The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker is an excellent source for a broad view of maritime Atlantic history. Linebaugh and Rediker cover a large area in their attempt to tie the rise of capitalism over a span of two hundred years in approximately 355 pages. The Many-Headed Hydra is broken down into nine chapters along with an introduction and conclusion. The overarching theme of this book truly is the development of the Atlantic proletariat attitudes, and the reason for it. This book contextualized numerous issues the maritime world had during these two hundred years. The beginning of the book describes a shipwreck of the Sea-Venture on the
The struggles that many face while experiencing poverty are not like any other. When a person is experiencing poverty, they deal with unbearable hardships as well as numerous tragic events. Diane Gilliam Fisher’s collection of poems teaches readers about labor battles within West Virginian territories, at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some of these battles include the Battle of Matewan and Battle of Blair Mountain. The collection of poems is presented in many different manners, ranging from diary entries to letters to journal entries. These various structures of writing introduce the reader to contrasting images and concepts in an artistic fashion. The reader is able to witness firsthand the hardships and the light and dark times of impoverished people’s lives. He or she also learns about the effects of birth and death on poverty stricken communities. In the collection of poems in Kettle Bottom, Fisher uses imagery and concepts to convey contrast between the positive and negative aspects of the lives of people living in poverty.
Gray, Jennifer B. "The Escape Of The "Sea": Ideology And "The Awakening.." Southern Literary Journal 37.1 (2004): 53-73. Academic Search Premier. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
...ering the thoughts and opinions of their employee. On the other side, despite the hash and dangerous working environment, the workers could not quit. The jobs at the factories were their main source of income and without it they would suffer form hunger and poverty. Hence, the workers at that time were tangled in the system that only supports a small proportion of the population, the upper class.
...reatment of these workers by the railroad corporations such as working in highly dangerous conditions while receiving very minimal pay. In this sense culture and ethnicity played a different role from the two previous chapters in how the area confronted social change.
“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...
George Saunders, a writer with a particular inclination in modern America, carefully depicts the newly-emerged working class of America and its poor living condition in his literary works. By blending fact with fiction, Saunders intentionally chooses to expose the working class’s hardship, which greatly caused by poverty and illiteracy, through a satirical approach to criticize realistic contemporary situations. In his short story “Sea Oak,” the narrator Thomas who works at a strip club and his elder aunt Bernie who works at Drugtown for minimum are the only two contributors to their impoverished family. Thus, this family of six, including two babies, is only capable to afford a ragged house at Sea Oak,
It is the worker’s condition that he truly focuses on. Many of the problems that people faced during this time include: tenement housing, poor working conditions, child labor, monopolies of business, social and political inequality, and most importantly people putting profits over lives. It is around the same time that a terrible fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The unsafe working conditions made the employees escape nearly impossible.
Alistair Macleod’s “The Boat” is a tale of sacrifice, and of silent struggle. A parent’s sacrifice not only of their hopes and dreams, but of their life. The struggle of a marriage which sees two polar opposites raising a family during an era of reimagining. A husband embodying change and hope, while making great sacrifice; a wife gripped in fear of the unknown and battling with the idea of losing everything she has ever had. The passage cited above strongly presents these themes through its content
Stephen Crane’s short story “The Open Boat” is a story of conflict with nature and the human will and fight to survive. Four men find themselves clinging to life on a small boat amidst a raging sea after being shipwrecked. The four men, the oiler (Billie), the injured captain, the cook, and the correspondent are each in their own way battling the sea as each wave crest threatens to topple the dinghy. “The Open Boat” reflects human nature’s incredible ability to persevere under life-and-death situations, but it also shares a story of tragedy with the death of the oiler. It is human nature to form a brotherhood with fellow sufferers in times of life threatening situations to aid in survival. Weak from hunger and fatigue, the stranded men work together as a community against nature to survive their plight and the merciless waves threatening to overtake the boat. The brotherhood bond shared between the men in “The Open Boat” is evident through the narrator’s perspective, “It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No one mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him” (Crane 993). Crane understood first-hand the struggle and the reliance on others having survived the real life shipwreck of the S.S. Commodore off the coast of Florida in 1897. “The Open Boat” is an intriguing read due to Crane’s personal experience and though it is a fictional piece it shares insight into the human mind. Crain did not simply retell a story, but by sharing the struggles with each character he sought to portray the theme of an inner struggle with nature by using the literary devices of personification of nature, symbolism of the boat, and iron...
"Imagine yourself suddenly set down surrounded by all your gear, alone on a tropical beach close to a native village, while the launch or dinghy which has brought you sails away out of sight… Imagine further that you are a beginner, without previous experience, with nothing to guide you and no one to help you. For the white man is temporarily absent, or else unable or unwilling to waste any of his time on you. This exactly describes my first initiation into field work on the south coast of New Guinea."
The struggle for survival by mankind can be found in many different settings. It can be seen on a battlefield, a hospital room or at sea as related in “The Open Boat”, written in 1897 by Stephen Crane. The story is based on his actual experiences when he survived the sinking of the SS Commodore off the coast of Florida in early 1897. “The Open Boat” is Stephen Crane’s account of life and death at sea told through the use of themes and devices to emphasize the indifference of nature to man’s struggles and the development of mankind’s compassion.
In her short novel Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys critiques the patriarchal structure of 19th century Jamaica through the story of the novel’s main antagonist, “madwoman” Antoinette. Living in a world where her European and indigenous heritage are clashing due to political events, Antoinette faces a crisis in choosing which culture to pursue and please. The Emancipation Act of 1833 destroyed the livelihood of many slave owners such as Antoinette’s father who drank himself to death shortly after the Act was passed. In her early childhood, Antoinette is ostracized by both her European heritage as her family’s fortune has crumbled, and her indigenous heritage as their servants maintain their distance from the failing family. Raised by a mother who makes no attempt to properly nurture her children, Antoinette lacks a strong female role model to guide her through adolescence. Taking after her mother, Antoinette is often faced with intense feelings of intimacy and embraces her sensuality. These feelings are often suppressed by European culture, especially for women. Yet, although convention discouraged her sensuality Rochester, her eventual husband, lusts after the Caribbean women, which only deepens Antoinette’s moral crisis. As the novel draws closer and closer to its final pages, Rochester fights to keep Antoinette’s sensuality suppressed and attempts to become the dominant
An ocean’s worth of water is stronger than any iron bars. In Herman Melville’s White-Jacket: or The World in a Man-of-War, the themes of isolation, captivity, and imprisonment are heavily featured throughout the novel. Upon the novel’s release the majority of the readership’s attention was focused on the intense scenes of flogging, ultimately leading to the abolition of the act aboard United States Naval vessels. However, Melville’s depiction of flogging was only one aspect of military life that was being critiqued. Throughout the novel White-Jacket Herman Melville continuously and unfavorably compares life aboard a man-of-war to life in prison, highlighting the intense power disparity between the officers and the crew, the attempts at conditioning
Born on the island a former British colony in the West Indies, established poet and playwright Derek Walcott developed a burning passion for writing as a young man. His family descended from a line of slaves in the West Indies, and the legacy of slavery is a common theme threaded throughout his work. Both mother and father were schoolteachers and strongly supported Walcott’s love of reading. In the poem “Midsummer” he wrote: “Forty years gone, in my island childhood, I felt that the gift of poetry had made me one of the chosen, that all experience was kindling to the fire of the Muse (Poetry Foundation, 1).” This early vocational recognition enthused Walcott and at the age of fourteen he published his first poem in the local newspaper. By 19, Walcott had self-published his two first collections, 25 Poems (1948) and Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos (1949), which he distributed himself on street corners. Continuing as a prolific poet, Walcott penetrated the literary world with his publication of the collection In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960 (1962), “a book which celebrates the Caribbean and its history as well as investigates the scars of colonialism and post-colonialism” (Poetry Foundation, 1). This book closely parallels with the theme of “The Sea is History” and is perhaps one of the first publications that inspired a long and distinguished career seeking to r...