The narrator was eight years old and her brother was three when her mother died. They were raised by their father, maternal grandfather, and an old ranch hand named Chubb on land fenced in order to keep other people's cattle out and the wilderness in. On some nights, she recalls, the two children would go running through the moonlight, “through owl-call and cricket-chirp and frog-bellow… There is no other way to explain it: we'd run until Mother was alive. It was like blowing air on a fire, bringing coals to flame. We'd run until we ignited… in her presence. Something was out there - something just beyond” (104).
This brings us back to the image of the mother’s body being “planted”. The narrator also goes on to say that her “Mother returned to the land” (119). Nature is always a balance between life and death. Nature supports the life of an organism and, once that life is extinguished, the vessel of that life is reused to support the life of another organism. Such is the circle of life. After being “planted” in the ground, the mother literally became one with nature again. She helps the grass and trees grow that feed the cattle and house the bird. She supports the life of a flower that feeds an insect that feeds a frog. Everything is connected.
“The Stars, the Sky, the Wilderness” appears to be about the life of a woman who grew up on the plains of Texas, but that is not the main focus of the novella. While the reader thinks that they are reading about the narrator’s life and experiences, they instead are focused on the nature and its connections with the narrator. The land and its inhabitants are important to the narrator’s life, and thus, the only conflict that Bass makes apparent to the reader is one that involves the endang...
... middle of paper ...
... as well. Stories can be used to captivate, communicate, and motivate. Stories are an integral part of our lives and are part of what define us as individuals. They serve to remind us of our past and teach us important lessons. As Hilary Mantel said in Wolf Hall, “Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.” It does not matter what the subject is or what the idea being conveyed is. All that matters is that it makes a good story.
Works Cited
Bass, Rick. The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Print.
Cronon, William. "A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative." The Journal of American History 78.4 (1992): 1347. Print.
Spirn, Anne Whiston. "Restoring Mill Creek: Landscape Literacy, Environmental Justice and City Planning and Design." Landscape Research 30.3 (2005): 395-413. Print.
Leslie Marmon Silko, Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination, A Sense of Place, Forbes Custom Publishing 1999
King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. Print.
In Momaday's work, the reader is on a journey through myth, past and present, as the author draws on oral traditions of Native American storytelling to align-in-parallel a personal journey for understanding of himself, and perhaps the nature of man. Through an inventive technique, Rainy Mountain serves as a way to collect, preserve and disseminate the oral storytelling traditions of Native American storytellers. Momaday has attempted to bridge the oral traditions to written form by weaving three continual strands as a single long braid throughout the text.
Purpose and effect of storytelling/The art and desire of storytelling has been in our blood since the beginning of creatures, humans and animals alike.
Rielly, Edward J. “Out of the Landscape of His Past.” Journal of American Cultuer 16.3 (1993): 47.
In lines 3-4 it says, “I noticed that I missed stars in the west, where its black body cut into the sky.” The mountain not only gave the town it is located in a different perspective of its surround...
Thoreau, Henry D. Walden, or Life in the Woods. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. N. pag. Print.
As people age they will often still recall a good childhood story. A well told, meaningful story can go a long way when attempting to argue a point or convey information. In the essays, ''The Myth of The Latin Women: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria" by Judith Ortiz Cofer, "Gains and Losses" by Richard Rodriquez, and "Piecing It All Together" by bell hooks, the authors connect to the reader and create a better audience through their writing. Through the portrayal of a story the authors help the reader understand their point of view, they transfer information to the reader with better ease, and keep the reader engaged the authors argue a point or convey information more efficiently.
The importance of a story is to have a purpose and meaning, through this, people are able to engage and learn with what is being told to them, it has to have a connection to the past, bringing it to the present and to involve both the body and mind senses. Through storytelling the audience should gain an understanding and have a sense of emotion touched and come alive, they should also be able to explore the possibilities within their culture and feel a deep connection to country.
The narratives is a necessary component. The narratives lead the audience to think about the event that the speaker talked about. Expression of values and goals is the main aim of narratives. (Hampton, 2004) stated that stories provide frames for understanding experiences, explaining and solving problems, and giving emphasis to moral value.
The purpose of storytelling is mainly to teach a lesson. These stories that are told have a character who does something wrong, then something
Stories are important for many reasons. Not only do we as human beings rely on telling each other stories to pass time, get our points across, or share memories we have but also to teach lessons. Many stories that are told are about something that has happened to someone personally, or a story that was passed on to them by another person. Regardless, stories have been used to help us as humans communicate since the beginning of time. Story telling has been an extreme aid to our history as we pass tales on from one generation to the next. Stories have impacted me ever since I was a little girl. I was told stories not only to get me to fall asleep every night but also as lessons for me when I did something wrong. Stories with morals were also told to me so I could learn from them. Many stories told to me even to this day help me learn and grow as a person. I myself even tell stories of my own in my writing along with stories I have learned from other...
Stories are our essence of life. They grow and change with us. They allow us to reconstruct the pas, and put our slant on things. They don’t’ have make sense, and they don’t all have to be fact. That’s what kind of story this is.
the stories create immersion in the game for the players and the players and those who play the game can start sharing some of their funny experiences in the game with people in their own life as well as
I believe that writing stories gives you more of an appreciation and understanding for a good book. All of the ideas that make a book come alive is from one author with an amazing imagination, who can captivate someone’s mind and tuck them into their world for a few hours. Every day in class I was allowed one hour to dedicate my time into a story, it is almost like entering your main character’s mind and acting as if it was you.