The Ascent by Ron Rash

596 Words2 Pages

Many people have life changing revelations in their lives, but very few people are as young as Jared when he realizes what he does about his life. Ron Rash wrote the short story, "The Ascent," about a young boy's journey that brought him to have a significant revelation about his life. In the story, Rash uses a naive narrator, foreshadowing, and imagery to show the setting of the story that led to Jared's revelation about his life. Rash uses Jared's character to show why he cannot give a trustworthy, objective truth. In the story, Jared's actions show that he does not understand death when entering the plane after discovering the dead bodies of a pilot and passenger. Rash writes, “Jared placed the knife in his pocket and climbed into the back seat and closed the passenger door” (281). He does not fully understand the seriousness of death and it does not frighten him. Jared has a big imagination and tries to help by bringing tools and repairing the plane. After he meddles around with the tools, Jared says, “I fixed it so it’ll fly now” (287). He sees what he wants to because he ca...

Show More
Related

  • The Castle by Rob Sitch

    825 Words  | 2 Pages

    Darryl’s life is worth fighting for. “You can’t buy what I’ve got.” ‘The Castle’ directed by Rob Sitch, about one man, his family and neighbours on the verge of being homeless. Darryl Kerrigan, the “backbone of the family” won’t stand for that. Of course no one can buy what he has. He’s spent almost his entire lifetime building what he has, why should he give it up? Darryl’s way of life is simple yet filled with family values. 3 Highview Crescent is the home to Darryl, his wife Sal and their 3 children: Wayne, Steve, Tracy and Dale. (Wayne currently being in jail.) The house is made up of love, and simple family values. Darryl’s also added bits and pieces to it. He’s added on so much to the house, his own personal touch. His neighbours, also in the same bout are almost family to the Kerrigans. Jack and Farouk are another reason why Darryl’s ready to take matters into his own hands.

    Read More

  • Acceleration by Graham McNamee

    1319 Words  | 3 Pages

    * Duncan, Vinny, and Wayne are all friends working - or wasting time - the summer before senior year in high school. Duncan is the soul, Vinny the brains, and Wayne the muscle. At the end of the previous summer, Duncan tried to save a drowning girl and failed. Not being a hero has really affected his life, particularly his relationship with his girlfriend Kim. Also, he is now terrified of swimming, especially when the nightmares come back. Duncan's summer job is with the public transit lost and found. While trying to make the hours go faster, Duncan looks through the items, especially the books and golf clubs. One day he discovers an unmarked journal with no name, which depicts sadistic animal torture experiments, boasts of arson fires, and the planning for the serial killings of three women. Duncan decides to make amends for his failure last summer by tracking down the owner of the journal by using clues left hidden in the diary. After talking with his friend Vinny, Duncan decides to turn the journal over to the police, but they do not take him seriously, so he decides to get help from Vinny, do some research at the local library, and find out where the killer works and lives so they can prove to the police the diary is for real. But in the process when Duncan finds the house of the serial killer, he decides to take a look in it but unfortunately at that very time the serial killer appears and chases Duncan to the subway station. They get into fight there and they both fell on the subway tracks in the station where they get hit by the train. Duncan luckily survives but the serial killer dies.

    Read More

  • Pat Conroy's The Lords Of Discipline

    598 Words  | 2 Pages

    Conroy displays his life through his novel, The Lords of Discipline, to give readers a visual demonstration of how life connections can transform the entity of a novel. Conroy's attendance to the Citadel, his family, and the South helped influence his innovative writing style.

    Read More

  • The Space Between by Don Aker

    1544 Words  | 4 Pages

    Life is a complicated process. It’s filled with many things that keep it interesting but at the same time, very dull. Life’s what you make it and for many, it’s something we all strive for. In the story, The Space Between, the author takes full advantage of the premise as there’s rarely a dull moment- as in life. The book is filled with many literary devices that work nicely with the plot and dialogue. These include; metaphors, similes, irony, personification, and many more. We follow a young man who is finding his way in the world. He has only a week to change his life for the better. But he will face many obstacles on the way that brings the readers into a startling and fun journey.

    Read More

  • The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom

    1152 Words  | 3 Pages

    It may start with one simple spark in the darkest of times. When the walls of the world seem as though they are squeezing the life out of you, and you're trapped under the demands and desires of an overwhelming society; when you feel so broken inside, your identity is almost unrecognizable. When this pain feels as if it is too much to bear, it may be that one spark that suddenly lights your world anew and in some cases changes your life forever. I read it over the long hours of one night, unable to put it down, until suddenly the light of the sunrise penetrated my blinds. As I closed the book with a satisfied smile, tears streamed down my face until the title of the book became one big blur.

    Read More

  • Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer

    1148 Words  | 3 Pages

    This book Into The Wild is about how a young man wants to get away from the world. He does escape from society, but ends up dying in the process. The author, Jon Krakauer, does a great job of describing Chris McCandless and his faults. Chris is an intelligent college graduate. He went on a two-year road trip and ended up in Alaska. He didn't have any contact with his parents in all of that time. Krakauer does a great job of interviewing everyone who had anything to do with McCandless from his parents, when he grew up, to the people who found his body in Alaska.

    Read More

  • Whirligigs by Paul Fleischman

    968 Words  | 2 Pages

    The rising action of the story was when he would find friends and they would help him to realize certain things about himself. The biker that he met helped him get started on stars. One of the maids that he met on his trip had shown him kindness and through this, she taught him that u can always have a fresh start or second chance at life as long as you try hard enough. And the artist that he met at the ocean helped him learn that u shouldn’t always judge a book by its cover, there might be more to someone than you think.

    Read More

  • The, By Joshua Nealy

    2070 Words  | 5 Pages

    Joshua Nealy, a prominent medical school graduate, died last night from complications of losing his dream of becoming a practicing physician. He was 39 years-old. Soft-spoken and borderline obsessive, Joshua never looked the part of a “professional”, but, in the final days of his life, he revealed an unknown side of his psyche. This hidden quasi-Jungian persona surfaced during the last three years of pursuit of his long reputed dream profession, a position, which he spent nearly 10 years attaining. Sadly, the protracted search ended this past March 18th in complete and utter failure. Although in certain defeat, the courageous Nealy secretly clung to the belief that life is merely a series of meaningless accidents or coincidences. It’s not a tapestry of events that culminate in an exquisite, sublime plan. Asked about the loss of her dear friend, Emily, the girlfriend turned fiancé and dPT expert of Berkshire County, described Joshua as a changed man in the last years of his life. "Things were worse for him; not following his dream left him mostly lifeless, uninspired," Sammons noted. Ultimately, Joshua concluded that if we are to live life in harmony with the universe, we must all possess the powerful ability to change ourselves and the world around us; the choice to make ours from nothingness.

    Read More

  • Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

    1632 Words  | 4 Pages

    In today’s world, everyone has a sense of security that is born from the technological developments that science has given to society. While they may feel safe, there are much larger threats of disaster that people are not prepared for. These include natural disaster and human error. Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales aims to educate the people on how to better protect themselves and prevent death. The novel accomplishes this through sharing personal stories and stories of others who have survived near death experiences. This is an important subject in our culture and its importance is verified by professional reviews. To further express this importance, there are a plethora of popular television shows in pop culture that seek to entertain as well as educate its audience. Although modern technology makes it feel relatively easy to avoid and escape life threatening situations, basic survival skills, like those taught in Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales, are a useful tool to have in any situation. These thoughts are reflected in qualified book reviews that further show the significance of the subject in today’s society.

    Read More

  • Without Conscience by Robert D. Hare

    1924 Words  | 4 Pages

    “Without Conscience" by Robert D. Hare is one aimed towards making the general public aware of the many psychopaths that inhabit the world we live in. Throughout the book Hare exposes the reader to a number of short stories; all with an emphasis on a characteristic of psychopaths. Hare makes the claim that close monitoring of psychopathy are vital if we ever hope to gain a hold over Psychopathy- A disorder that affects not only the individual but also society itself. He also indicates one of the reasons for this book is order to correctly treat these individuals we have to be able to correctly identify who meets the criteria. His ultimate goal with the text is to alleviate some of the confusion in the increase in criminal activity by determining how my of this is a result of Psychopathy.

    Read More

  • Son of the Revolution by Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro

    1281 Words  | 3 Pages

    "You're a human being, not an animal. You have the right to be loved" (262). "Son of the Revolution" by Liang Heng and Judith Shapiro was a book that showed how inhumane many of the aspects of Chinese life were during the Cultural Revolution. The book followed Liang Heng through many of his childhood memories to his departure from China in his twenties. The book applied a real face to the important movements during the Cultural Revolution, the effects that "the cult of Mao" had on society and Heng, and the way the period affected Heng's personal family life.

    Read More

  • The Chosen by Chaim Potok

    1368 Words  | 3 Pages

    "When a trout rising to a fly gets hooked on a line and finds himself unable to swim about freely, he begins with a fight which results in struggles and splashes and sometimes an escape. Often, of course, the situation is too tough for him."

    Read More

  • Isolation In The Ascent Theme

    865 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the beginning of The Ascent, Jared is seen as an imaginative and innocent child, albeit a little lonely. However, the tone dramatically shifts when Jared discovers the plane wreck and “sit[s] in the back seat [for] two hours, though [to him] it seem[s] only a few minutes” (Rash 281). By finding comfort with dead people, it is clear that Jared is emotionally disturbed. He isolates himself from others by depending on his imagination to make up for his lack of company. This is further exemplified when Jared watches his parents “pas[s] the pipe back and forth… want[ing] to go back to the plane” (Rash 284). Rather than stay with his drug-abusive and neglectful parents during Christmas time, Jared desires to escape to the place where he can be alone with just his imagination. According to Robert Stanley Martin’s review of the short story, “[t]he plane becomes to [Jared] what the drugs are to his parents: a place to escape that he never wants to leave, and which he always longs to return.” The plane and drugs in the short story are extreme examples of common forms of escapism used by humans every day. People love to take a mental and emotional break from reality in the form of vacations and hobbies. However, when these examples of escapism are vastly more important to individuals that actuality, they can become “numb inside the vehicles of their escape” (Martin). This is very detrimental to one’s emotional stability as an individual will lose his perception of the real world. At the end of The Ascent, when visiting the plane for the final time, Jared has escaped so far from reality that he imagines the plane “ha[s] taken off” (Rash 287). He stays in the plane for so long that “after a while he began to shiver but after a longer while he was no longer cold”, demonstrating his eventual death from hypothermia (Rash 287).

    Read More

  • Summary Of Walking Out By David Quammen

    1078 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout life, people face obstacles. The time and type of such events can determine a person’s character, outlook and their goals in life. “Walking Out” was about a young boy who takes a vacation with his father which turns tragic because of a gun accident. The author of “Walking Out”, David Quammen moved to Montana in the early 1970’s; there has been no indication that the author and the boy depicted in the story are the same person. Some parallels might be assumed with both the character and author having the same name; both men grew up near big cities and venture into the back country to get away from life. Both also do not enjoy the lifestyle at first, but come to enjoy it. In David Quammen’s Walking Out, David and his father venture

    Read More

  • Powder by Tobias Wolff

    814 Words  | 2 Pages

    Powder, a short story written by Tobias Wolff, is about a boy and his father on a Christmas Eve outing. As the story unfolds, it appears to run deeper than only a story about a boy and his father on a simple adventure in the snow. It is an account of a boy and his father’s relationship, or maybe the lack of one. Powder is narrated by a grown-up version of the boy. In this tale, the roles of the boy and his father emerge completely opposite than what they are supposed to be but may prove to be entirely different from the reader’s first observation.

    Read More

More about The Ascent by Ron Rash

Open Document