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Life during the great depression essay
Life during the great depression
Life during the great depression essay apex
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Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s “The Portable Phonograph,”
In Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s “The Portable Phonograph,” the author makes setting play a major role in understanding the action of the characters within the story. Clark, a writer and an English Professor, lived from 1909 to 1971. During that time, he lived through both World Wars at a relatively young age, which may have influenced this story. Clark has excellent use of setting to make the atmosphere needed and set the proper mood, so this story is credible. To accomplish this, Clark orients the reader to a unique place and time by use of the physical setting and human possessions, and uses symbolism to create a mood that gives the reader insight to how the characters must feel in their surroundings.
In order to understand the behavior and actions of the four characters in this story, the author must describe the place physical place and time where the four characters must survive. The perception of this environment is crucial for the actions of the characters to be appropriate. Clark describes some sights in this decimated prairie, “The frozen mud still bore the toothed impress of great tanks, and a wanderer on the neighboring undulations might have stumbled, in this light, into large, partially filled-in and weed-grown cavities, their banks channeled and beginning to spread into badlands. These pits were such as might have been made by falling meteors, but they were not. They were scars ...
There are many ways in which we can view the history of the American West. One view is the popular story of Cowboys and Indians. It is a grand story filled with adventure, excitement and gold. Another perspective is one of the Native Plains Indians and the rich histories that spanned thousands of years before white discovery and settlement. Elliot West’s book, Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers and the Rush to Colorado, offers a view into both of these worlds. West shows how the histories of both nations intertwine, relate and clash all while dealing with complex geological and environmental challenges. West argues that an understanding of the settling of the Great Plains must come from a deeper understanding, a more thorough knowledge of what came before the white settlers; “I came to believe that the dramatic, amusing, appalling, wondrous, despicable and heroic years of the mid-nineteenth century have to be seen to some degree in the context of the 120 centuries before them” .
Just standing here looking at the ranch brings back lots of memories, both good and bad. The barn where the terrible accident happened no longer exists. It looks like a fire was started on the site and all that remains now are the burnt ashes. The grass has disintegrated and all that is left is the dry almost could be described, as malnourished soil, no water to quench its thirst I’m told that burning the barn was the first thing that Curley did after taking over the ranch from his father. All the other buildings remain intact as they were when I was here.
“Quantie’s weak body shuddered from a blast of cold wind. Still, the proud wife of the Cherokee chief John Ross wrapped a woolen blanket around her shoulders and grabbed the reins.” Leading the final group of Cherokee Indians from their home lands, Chief John Ross thought of an old story that was told by the chiefs before him, of a place where the earth and sky met in the west, this was the place where death awaits. He could not help but fear that this place of death was where his beloved people were being taken after years of persecution and injustice at the hands of white Americans, the proud Indian people were being forced to vacate their lands, leaving behind their homes, businesses and almost everything they owned while traveling to an unknown place and an uncertain future. The Cherokee Indians suffered terrible indignities, sickness and death while being removed to the Indian territories west of the Mississippi, even though they maintained their culture and traditions, rebuilt their numbers and improved their living conditions by developing their own government, economy and social structure, they were never able to return to their previous greatness or escape the injustices of the American people.
As a result, their lives changed, for better or for worse. They were inexperienced, and therefore made many mistakes, which made their life in Chicago very worrisome. However, their ideology and strong belief in determination and hard work kept them alive. In a land swarming with predators, this family of delicate prey found their place and made the best of it, despite the fact that America, a somewhat disarranged and hazardous jungle, was not the wholesome promise-land they had predicted it to be.
Many times in stories, authors will use the setting to set the stage for the story. The setting is like the foundation of the story, and without one the story seems merely lost. Quite often the setting will build up the story and affect the characters, and the characters behaviors. Against the backdrop of a Holocaust concentration camp, Ozick produces two static characters whose lack of development throughout the story emphasizes the theme of overwhelming hopelessness.
At other times, nature can be a source of solace for those who have suffered. Following the death of Gladys and Kate, Grainier looks to the horizon to seek comfort from his crushing loss. “All his life Robert Grainier would remember vividly the burned valley at sundown, the most dream-like business he’d ever witnessed waking – the brilliant pastels of the last light overhead, some clouds...
In her book, West of Everything, Jane Tompkins discusses the essential elements that define the genre. From her discussion, one can extract a working definition: the setting, th...
Joan Didion in her essay, “On Keeping a Notebook”, stresses that keeping a notebook is not like keeping a journal. Didion supports her claim by describing entries that are in her notebook. The author’s purpose is to enlighten the reader as to what a notebook is. The author writes in a nostalgic tone for those who are reading the essay, so that they can relate to her. She uses rhetorical appeals; such as flashback, pathos, and imagery to name a few. By using these devices she helps capture the reader’s attention.
No earth, no air, no light-” (page 61) Stories told about how beautiful life was before the war, beautiful towns people once called home now remain as empty plains of rubble after the bombs have destroyed them. ‘“ If the old bell had been hanging in the steeple it would have rung to announce midnight, twelve solemn iron kongs which would have woken the villagers from their sleep and startled any small creature new to the village and unaccustomed to the noise. But the bell had fallen from its height weeks ago, and now lay buried in silence beneath rubble;”’ (page 7) The damage to a once beautiful place was caused quite simply by greed, greed for something that was not theirs. The wolf’s wise words were correct “ When a wolf clan battles another, it’s usually over territory, Probably this is the reason for your warring,” (page 59), this war was over territory, people wanting to take what was not theirs and having the power to destroy anything that got in their way, leaving everyone and everything caught up in an unpleasant mess.
Indian Boarding Schools were a huge and un-noticed issues in the United States during the 19th and 20th century. And the author uses allusion in the poem to bring back what the Native American children experienced during this time in history. The “Turtle Mountains” is a key reference to allusion for this story. It tells the reader exactly where this poem is taking place, at the Chippewa Indian Reservation in North Dakota, the home land of the tribe members. Allusion is also used in the second line when the speaker says, “Boxcars stumbling north in dreams” (2). Boxcars are a North American railroad car that placed a huge significance in the Native Americans Lives. As the speaker says in the poem, “The rails, old lacerations that we love, shoot parallel across the face” (4-5). The rails that the Boxcars traveled on cut parallel through the Native Americans homeland. They say that the rail road track shoots right across the “face” which allude to the face being mother nature. Because in their culture it is very important to respect mother nature. And the rails cut right across her face making a “laceration”, or in other words a scar. The “face” of mother nature is also the authors use of
One has not experienced the life of living in dirt until he has been in the dust bowl. It was a decade-long dust storm that impacted hundreds of farmers and their farmlands. Hardship was among one of the influences of the storm, which affected both farm workers and city folks. The storm also brought the elements of destruction and darkness, which reigned chaos across the Plains. Together, these issues gave the storm its popular name, “black blizzard” (Documentary, 2014). Such a name was given due to the storm’s visibility as a large black cloud, which made it look evil and scary. Although the black blizzard is what some people call the dust storm, most will refer it as the dust bowl.
The valley is described as a “desolate” place where “ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills into grotesque gardens”. (21) Ashes that dominate the area take the shape of natural greenery. The term “grotesque gardens” uses alliteration, with juxtaposition; to highlight the odd pairing of ashes and greenery. Ashes are associated with death while ridges and “gardens” represent the potential to flourish and grow in the promise and ideal of equality as in “the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams.” (143) The trees that once stood here were able to speak to man’s dreams, which allude to America, the land able to speak to man’s dreams and capacity for wonder. All this is replaced by grey ash that suffocates the inhabitants, restricting them to their social class. This presents a bleak image of hopelessness that surrounds the valley.
Second, what is the mood of this story trying to portray with the setting. The setting c...
About half-way between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes---a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens, where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars cr...
The opening chapter paints a vivid picture of the situation facing the drought-stricken farmers of Oklahoma. Dust is described a covering everything, smothering the life out of anything that wants to grow. The dust is symbolic of the erosion of the lives of the people. The dust is synonymous with "deadness". The land is ruined ^way of life (farming) gone, people ^uprooted and forced to leave. Secondly, the dust stands for ^profiteering banks in the background that squeeze the life out the land by forcing the people off the land. The soil, the people (farmers) have been drained of life and are exploited: