In ¨Mountains Beyond Mountains”, The biography of Paul Farmer by Tracy Kidder the author uses powerful language by effectively creating common connections such as profanity and religion to Illustrate the type of person Farmer is. Going back to Christmas Day, Tracy Kindler, the reporter following Paul Farmer, goes to the Brinham Social Work department in Boston to visit Farmer´s patients with him, and listens to Farmer talk to them and hand out presents on this special occasion. During this trip Tracy Kindler along with the reader gets a vivid description of whom Paul Farmer is as a doctor and more specifically as a person. The most staggering moment of this experience was when they met with Joe, a patient of Paul´s who has been diagnosed with
The poem I have chosen for the assignment is Maple Valley Library, 1967 by Rita Dove. After reading the poem I concluded that the speaker is Dove when she was fifteen years old sharing Dove’s perspective of being in the library and checking out books. Now looking at the poem, it has five or six wide stanzas and one or two skinny stanza each having a range of long to short lines except for the last two stanzas being short. The poem is long reaching the two pages mark with a rugged look. Then looking at the rhyming there appears to be none in the poem that I can
On Hitler’s Mountain is a memoir of a child named Irmgard Hunt and her experiences growing up in Nazi Germany. She herself has had many experiences of living during that dark time, she actually met Hitler, had a grandfather who hated Hitler's rule, and had no thoughts or feelings about the Nazi rule until the end of WWII. Her memoir is a reminder of what can happen when an ordinary society chooses a cult of personality over rational thought. What has happened to the German people since then, what are they doing about it today and how do they feel about their past? Several decades later, with most Nazis now dead or in hiding, and despite how much Germany has done to prevent another Nazi rule, everyone is still ashamed of their ancestors’ pasts.
Gary Paulsen’s experiences from living alone in the Minnesota woods to racing dogs in the Iditarod race have been exposed and reflected in the majority of his writings. Gary Paulsen was born May 17, 1939 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Pendergast) was the third child of Oscar Paulsen who was an army officer and Eunice Paulsen (Pendergast). Paulsen would live nine years before he met his father for the first time as his father was in the army and spent a lot of time away from home during World War II (Pendergast). His father was an alcoholic and he got into many heated arguments with his father during his childhood but no child abuse has been reflected in his literature (Trelease).
In Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love,” Mel McGinnis’ occupation as a cardiologist, a physician that mends broken hearts, stands in stark contradiction to his claim to understanding the workings of the heart as it pertains to loving and being loved. The discord between healing his patient’s hearts and his inability to recognize his own malady of heart is exaggerated by how he deals with the relationship of Ed and Terri, as well as that of the elderly accident victims and his ex-wife Marjorie.
There has been much written about Isabella Lucy Bird being a unique individual, bold traveler, talented descriptive writer, and great example to women. These are all great ways to describe the well known traveler, however, there have been few efforts to proclaim her as the luminary of Christian faith that she is. In A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains Bird paints an awe inspiring picture of the harsh life and beautiful landscape of the Rocky Mountains in the early 19th century. Throughout her book, Bird gives grand descriptions of the breathtaking natural scenes she experiences along her travels in Lake Tahoe, Estes Park, Colorado City, Denver, Boulder and other areas within the great mountain range. Bird also recounts the hard way of life
In his article, Philippon begins by discussing the importance that the landscape plays in "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains." First, he quotes William Carlos Williams as saying that Poe was "intimately shaped by his locality and time," although he tends to focus on the "soul" of his surroundings, rather than the physical aspects. Philippon then goes on to say that he believes that Poe does, in fact, use the physical landscape in this particular story in order to highlight the differences between the make-believe environment of the Indian landscape of the story and that of the Ragged Mountains. The author says that this is "crucial to a complete understanding of the story."
Doctor William Chester Minor, a protagonist in The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester, was an unquestionable psychopath. His insanity has been confirmed by his deranged delusions and actions such as him murdering an innocent man and mutilating himself. Yet he still succeeded at being a highly praised surgeon and an intelligent scholar. These three facets of Minor’s life are strongly motivated by his personality. Minor’s story begins on the island of Ceylon, where he received an exceptional primary education, learned several indigenous languages, and became infatuated with the enticing local girls. For this reason, he was steered away from temptation and sent to America, by his parents. In the United States, Minor studied medicine at the prestigious Yale University and eventually joined the Union Army as a surgeon. Dr. Minor witnessed, while fighting in the Civil War, terrible events; the most traumatic occurrence being when he was forced to brand an Irish deserter. This experience sent Minor on a downward spiral. He began to illegally carry a gun, visit brothels, and show signs of paranoia; therefore, the doctor was discharged from the army and discreetly sent to an asylum. After his release, Minor traveled to London where he shot a man dead due to his paranoid delusions. Minor was sentenced an insane asylum and he spent the majority of the next thirty-eight years reading and secretly volunteering for the Oxford English Dictionary. James Murray, editor of the dictionary, eventually discovered Minor’s identity and they soon became close friends. Although Minor religiously read and acquired new knowledge, his mental condi...
In James Baldwin’s 1952 novel “Go Tell It On The Mountain” the characters in the novel each embark on a spiritual journey. Baldwin has dedicated a chapter to each member of the Grimes family, detailing their trails and tribulations, hopes and aspirations, as each one’s quest to get closer to God becomes a battle. I have chosen the character John because I admire the fierce struggle he endured to find his spirituality. I will examine how he’s embarked on his quest and prove that he has done it with integrity and dignity.
Survival and Love in Charles Frazier’s "Cold Mountain" I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.
At my high school I have always been subjected to interdisciplinary learning.This learning experience always allowed me to fully understand topics and view them from various perspectives, challenging me to understand a lesson without bias from a historian, theologian, or an English teacher’s point of view. It’s in these interdisciplinary conditions that I learn best due to the reinforcement of topics and the ability to understand a lesson from a broader perspective.
“The only real nation is humanity” (Farmer 123). This quote represents a huge message that is received in, Tracy Kidder’s, Mountains Beyond Mountains. This book argues that universal healthcare is a right and not a privilege. Kidder’s book also shows the audience that every individual, no matter what the circumstances, is entitled to receive quality health care. In the book Kidder represents, Paul Farmer, a man who spends his entire life determined to improve the health care of impoverished areas around the world, namely Haiti, one of the poorest nations in the world. By doing this the audience learns of the horrible circumstances, and the lack of quality health care that nations like Haiti live with everyday, why every person has the right to healthcare no matter what, and how cost effectiveness should not determine whether or not these people get to live or die. Two texts that also argue this idea are Monte Leach’s “Ensuring Health Care as a Global Human Right,” and Darshak Sanghavi’s “Is it Cost Effective to Treat the World’s Poor.” Leach’s article is an interview with Benjamin Crème that illustrates why food, shelter, education, and healthcare are human rights that have to be available to everyone. He shares many of the same views on health care as Farmer, and the two also share similar solutions to this ongoing problem. Leach also talks about the rapidly growing aids epidemic, and how it must be stopped. Like farmer, he also argues that it is easier to prevent these diseases then to cure them. Furthermore, Sanghavi’s article represents many of the questions that people would ask about cost effectiveness. Yet similar to Farmer’s views, Sanghavi argues that letting the poor d...
It was the summer of 94 when I took a Wilderness Leadership Semester from the Colorado Outward Bound School . Needless to say that it was the most emotional, challenging, and rewarding experience that I have had in all of my 19 ears of existence. One week spent running the Upper Green River in westernColorado and northern Utah. Through The Gates of the Ladour Canyon and Dinosaur National Monument, we floated to end where the Green meets the Colorado River just beyond Echo Canyon. The high desert canyons echoed with rapids ovarious classes; Hells Half Mile and Disaster Falls were the most memorable.
Due to this, Dr. Farmer was largely portrayed as a hero, and the book didn’t focus on his lack of commitment to his daughter, Catherine; and wife, Didi. I would have enjoyed the book more, and felt a stronger personal connection to Farmer if the story had been told from the perspective of Farmer’s loved ones, and those who had been deeply affected by his life choices. All in all, the style, content, and perspective of Mountains Beyond Mountains highlighted the qualities of nonfiction writing that I
Frank, Thomas, H. "The Interpretation of Limits: Doctors and Novelists in the Fiction of Philip Roth". The Journal of Popular Culture,vol 28. 1995.
Ellison, Katherine. “What’s Up Doc? A Bloody Outrage That’s What.” Argument! Ed. Erica Messenger. New York: McGraw Hill, 2011. 295-297. Print.