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river symbolism
what does the river symbolize
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There would be many days with me and this old river, I would go fishing hundreds of times alone and hundreds of times it felt just like home when down by the river. In a single day I walked the river from the old Robin Hood Flour Mill to the Ambassador Bridge. Other days I watched the river, the sky, the rain, the clouds, sun rise, sun sets, the currents, the directions of the currents, the waves, the different types of waves, the fish, one day I saw a big fish the water darken were he was as he rose closer to the surface, gliding smoothly to his right side he looked right at me with a man’s eye. He stayed on his side, he looked around, he looked at my line, then back at me, other things, he recognized all that he saw even me, then slowly re-submerged heading out in the direction of deep waters. It was as though I was face to face with another person not a fish. This was a fish but it had the brain of a person. Through his eye’s he was letting me know. Letting me know that he knew things, that he knew me? This is just another one of those strange experiences that stuck in my mind. A fish that appears human. The fish then proceeded to conveyed the thought to me that he was about to “head far out into deep waters”, far out from the snuggled safeness of the rivers shore. I was left with the impression that he wanted me to prepare my life for a far away journey, prepare my mind for a far different life than the life I am now accustomed. Prepare to descend to the next level.
Looking back I could later conclude that as I watched the sky, the sky was watching me. One morning as I stepped out onto the bank, I would be the first if not the only fisherman there. This spot was just east of “the foot of third” west of the old train ...
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...n. Things that seemed to me served not my immediate purpose. Only time will prove I was wrong. The obscure mystery behind River’s Sky was more than I recognized. The meaning of the events would not manifest themselves until years later. As time passed, Time would tell. River’s Sky would prove itself to be more than just an unconcerned rude chastising enigma. It would prove to be much much more. The river’s sky didn’t treat me as some charity case. It reacted to me as though I was someone else, or as though I was an older mature and wise person who should know better?
All clouds are not as they seem. Clouds also are a symbol. I learned this symbol and can interpret its various forms. amnuitManreia( it is a host of many that move as one).
There is another who sit as I sit and stand as I stand, you have many hosts but, cast one shadow—Tanalatonan Groit
Jackson’s concept of the ‘known’, the ‘unknown’ and the ‘longing for an absolute meaning’ was expressed in the story by the Creature’s character. The Creature is like a human being because he talks like a human and acts like a human even though his looks is different from a real human being. For this reason, the Creature seems to be real, so I was able to suspend my disbelief and think that the Creature is real while reading the story. The Creature looks like half man and half fish, so maybe that is the reason why some people call him “Fish Man”. However, according to him, “he’s not a fish, but an amphibian” (Bailey). It is unknown if he really is an amphibian, and “he’d never known another of his kind” (Bailey). The unknowns in the story caused me to immerse myself more. As I read, I was looking forward to find out more information about the Creature. I wanted to know where did he come from, and I was hoping to find a happy ending for him. Thus, I think I was able to feel what the author wants the readers to feel. Through the whole story, the Creature was searching for happiness, and I too, as the reader, was looking for something or someone that will help improve the Creature’s life after all the wrongs he had suffered. One of the Creature’s co-actors, Karloff, gave him an advice and said, “Underwater, my friend. Water is your natural milieu” (Bailey). I think this message is the absolute meaning that the Creature was looking for, and as a result, he finally knew where he can find happiness. “The Creature strikes off for home, knowing now how fleeting are the heart’s desires, knowing that Julie too would ebb into memory” (Bailey). From the beginning until the end of the story, I was able to understand the Creature’s feelings, and it caused me to willingly suspend my
The ocean is mysterious to mankind. The unfathomable vastness of the ocean intrigues humanity into exploring it. In life, the immense possibilities that lie in the future compel us to reach for the stars. In the poem “The Story” by Karen Connelly, an individual willingly swims into deep waters even though they are fearful of what may exist in the waters. The swimmer later finds out that their fears were foolish, which illustrates the human tendency to venture into the unknown. The theme conveyed in this poem is that life is like a rough, uncertain, uncontrollable ocean that we must find get through with experience.
Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” has long been acclaimed as a fascinating exemplar of Naturalism, generating many studies that range from the indifference of Nature to the “psychological growth of the men through the experience” (466). The psychological growth happens to every man on the boat, yet is mostly depicted through the voice of the Correspondent and in the form of his questioning and contemplating their desperate situation. Being a correspondent, who is innately able as well as inclined to interpret and communicate ideas, the Correspondent is singled out to articulate the mind of his three fellowmen and of Stephen Crane himself, should the story be seen partly as a journalistic account of his own adventure. Therefore throughout the story, the Correspondent takes the mediating role between the men and the outside world, combines a spokesperson with an interlocutor, and reflects the men’s growing awareness to the indifference of Nature.
The title of the poem itself dictates the simplicity Bishop wishes to convey regarding the narrator's view of his catch. A fish is a creature that has preceded the creation of man on this planet. Therefore, Bishop supplies the reader with a subject that is essentially constant and eternal, like life itself. In further examination of this idea the narrator is, in relation to the fish, very young, which helps introduce the theme of deceptive appearances in conjunction with age by building off the notion that youth is ignorant and quick to judge.
Homer Hickam was a teenage boy from a mining town in West Virginia called Coalwood. He inspired to build rockets when he seen the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, streak across the stars. With his friends and the local nerd, Homer sets out to do just that but with many errors and trials. Along with the town, Homer's father thought they were wasting their time with their rockets. He wanted Homer to be a coal miner just like everyone else but Homer knew he didn't belong there. As time went on, some people from town became interested in seeing the homemade missiles launch into the sky. The boys became popular and were known as the "Rocketboys" around town.
In “The Open Boat,” the author, Stephen Crane, uses symbols and events to emphasize the fact that we are all alone in life, even if there are people around us. Nobody knows what is going through our minds. Each experience is different, even if they all are looking at the same thing. Just like with the blind men and the elephant, the cook, the correspondent, the captain, and the oiler all are in the boat together, but each one has their own experiences.
Today we hit a long and rushing river, that I overheard was called Laromy river. The first few steps were simple, then the current started to push. I had made it to the other side of the river, when I heard a scream, and I saw one of the guiders being swept down the stream. In an instant they were gone. The dripping survivors and I were welcomed with a group of soldiers with towels. The soldiers lead us to buildings where we could sleep the night. That night I was feed the soft bedding hay, and they gave me clean good tasting
This book helped me put some of the situations and feelings that I have experienced in my life into perspective and with more meaning. I could relate to many of the subjects that this book covered and could understand where the author’s ideas originated. Not only can I see his ideas appearing in my own actions, but I also see them in males in their mid-forties to fifties. This observation supports the idea of us going from innocence to doubt and back to innocence. The first idea that stuck with me is the interpretation of the salmon and how it represented Christ.
Hiding from those who would find him and carry out the wrath of vengeance upon him, the protagonist plans his escape. About to dive in the rancid water and swim for it, a body in the shallows abruptly stops him. The bloated and decomposing corpse pulls the narrator back from his adrenaline-induced frenzy. After a few moments, he settles and reflects, “I thought about him, fog on the lake, insects chirring eerily, and felt the tug of fear, felt the darkness opening up inside me like a set of jaws. Who was he, I wondered, this victim of time and circumstance bobbing sorrowfully in the lake at my back” (193). The narrator can almost envision himself as the man whose corpse is before him. Both deceased from mysterious causes, involved in shady activities, and left to rot in the stagnant lake water, and never to be discovered by the outside world. This marks the point where the main character is the closest he has ever been to death. Although he makes it out alive, the protagonist and his outlook on life are forever changed.
“I had been born into a raging ocean where I swam relentlessly, flailing my arms in hope of rescue, of reaching a shoreline I never sighted. Never solid ground beneath me, never a resting place. I had lived with only the desperate hope to stay afloat; that and nothing more. But when at last I wrote my first words in the page, I felt an island rising beneath my feet like the back of a whale”.
Imagine a scene in which a small, wooden boat is peacefully floating on the ocean. Now, imagine that the scene is panning out to reveal the boat is merely a tiny speck, the ocean reaching out endlessly around it. Suddenly, the peaceful quality of the boat has been replaced by a feeling of consuming meaninglessness. Stephen Crane, a naturalist writer and reporter in nineteenth century America, often used nature to prompt readers into questioning their purpose and place in the universe. In “The Open Boat,” complex symbolism allows Crane’s characters to reflect humanity's shared experience regarding existence and self-worth.
The narrator speaks about the fish in terms of commercial, where every part of the fish can be sale for different purposes, but as the speaker look in the fish eyes, starts to compare the human life through the existence of the fish. What the speaker found beautiful about the fish is that as the speaker looks into the fish eyes and start looking in a different way to the creature, she starts to identify a living creature instead of a creature that will die imminently. The speaker starts seeing the beauty of the fish when she start to compare the fish to a soldier, when she sees through the eyes of the fish the victories over death that this creature has won, and I believe that the speaker compares her own battles and victories to the one of this creature in order to survive. I believe that the “ personality” of the fish is humble, brave and that this fish have been battling for a long time for his life, that he has been involved in some sort of violence many times in order to exist. I also feel that this fish is tired of fighting and that he is venerable to the speaker
This morning I wake early from the light that creeps underneath my blinds and my bed next to the window. I wake floating on the streams of light, heated, like white wax spilled across the floor, dripping, soft. In bare feet I walk down the stairs, cold on the wood, and find my father in the kitchen, also awake early. Together, we leave the house, the house that my parents built with windows like walls, windows that show the water on either side of the island. We close the door quietly so as not to wake the sleepers. We walk down the pine-needle path, through the arch of trees, the steep wooden steps to the dock nestled in the sea-weed covered rocks. We sit silently on the bench, watch as the fog evaporates from the clear water. The trees and water are a painting in muted colors, silver and grays and greenish blue, hazy white above the trees.
...held him in the sea that swirled him out and safely over the boat to water in which he could touch. The surviving men were thankful to have survived, but learned that they really had no control over their lives. One of the most important lessons the correspondent took from the experience was, “… that “in the ignorance of the grave-edge” every man is in the same boat, which is not much more substantial than the ten-foot open dinghy on a rough sea” (Buitenhuis, web). Having survived the experience the cook, the correspondent, and the captain each believed that they could be interpreters for the sea. Crane gave each man a voice in “The Open Boat” that is uniquely theirs, but at the same time shared a common bond and struggle with nature for survival. It is up to each man (mankind) to find our own place in the universe and be open to the lessons that life can teach us.
Sitting in the back seat between two towering piles of clothes and snacks we drive up the abandoned streets of Adell. I see vast open fields of corn and dense wooded forest filled with life, along with the occasional, towering grain house. We pull into a dry, dusty, driveway of rock and thriving, overgrown weeds. We come up to an aged log cabin with a massive crab apple tree with its sharp thorns like claws. The ancient weeping willow provides, with is huge sagging arms, shade from the intense rays of the sun. Near the back of the house there is a rotten, wobbly dock slowly rotting in the dark blue, cool water. Near that we store our old rusted canoes, to which the desperate frogs hop for shelter. When I venture out to the water I feel the thick gooey mud squish through my toes and the fish mindlessly try to escape but instead swim into my legs. On the lively river banks I see great blue herring and there attempt to catch a fish for their dinner. They gracefully fly with their beautiful wings arching in the sun to silvery points.