Analysis: Kiss Of The Fur Queen

589 Words2 Pages

1000190 Kiss of the Fur Queen In the excerpt from Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen, a hunter, Abraham Okimasis, pushes through an intense race with his dogs in the snow. Literary devices, such as imagery and details, reveal the internal and external struggles of Okimasis’ life during the race. His fight to the finish gradually creates suspense as he continues to scramble with the idea losing, while he also battles with nature, self, and beast. As Okimasis rides through the snow, dragged by his pack of dogs, he confronts various environmental obstacles. The imagery included throughout the passage illustrates the cutthroat and quick perceptions of the nature surrounding the situation. The sled glides over the “creaking snow” of the “one hundred and fifty miles of low-treed tundra.” The representation of the area allows for clear pictures to develop mentally. At this point in the passage, both Okimasis and the huskies are exhausted. They’ve been drained of …show more content…

Through the diction and description of the scene, a clear vision of Okimasis’ internal thoughts are drawn out. The most important task to him is winning because he made a promise to his wife. For the ending moments, “these thoughts rac[ed] through his fevered mind.” Okimasis’ wife threatened him with divorce in order to motivate him, so “on the pain and separation of divorce” Okimasis pushed passed a couple of other competitors. As his thoughts are explained throughout the excerpt, the desperate tone in his internal and external conflicts are heard. Okimasis wants nothing more than to keep his promise to his wife and he is constantly reminding himself of how far the finish line is. Push after push, “half a mile to the finish line”, it was “so close, so far.” The description of his thoughts gives the race a purpose. He is not doing this just for fun, but it is now because his marriage is on the

Show More
Related

  • Epigraphs In Into The Wild

    946 Words  | 2 Pages

    The epigraphs presented by Krakauer before each chapter of the memoir Into the Wild dive deep into the life of Chris McCandless before and after his journey into the Alaskan wilderness. They compare him to famous “coming of age characters” and specific ideas written by some of his favorite philosophers. These give the reader a stronger sense of who Chris was and why he made the decision to ultimately walk alone into the wild.

    Read More

  • Kiss Of The Fur Queen Tomson Highway Analysis

    823 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the opening passage of Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen, Abraham Okimasis, a caribou hunter participating in an intense race, strives to reach the finish line with his exhausted self and huskies. Although the chance of success is slim, he perpetuates. Through the use of literary devices, Highway captures Okimasis’ breathless experience during the race; notably, he emphasizes the significance of past promises in empowering one to overcome obstacles to reach his or her ultimate goal.

    Read More

  • Kiss of the Fur Queen

    1142 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Kiss of the Fur Queen, the story begins with forty-three year old Cree hunter Abraham Okimasis winning the "1951 Millington Cup World Championship Dog Derby." (6) The victory is seen to have a significant effect on the Cree hunter's Native identity, as he becomes the first-ever Indian to succeed in the Derby. As time goes by, Abraham becomes the father of two sons, Jeremiah and Gabriel. When the Cree brothers leave their small northern Manitoba village and enter the hostile environment of a residential school, their lives take a turn for the worse. Estranged from their Native culture, Jeremiah and Gabriel are forced to assimilate into the predominately white Canadian society. During their stay at the residential school, the brothers fall victim to sexual abuse at the hands of the all-powering Catholic priest. The abuse brought upon the brothers continue throughout their adolescent and adult years. Emotionally traumatized, the Okimasis brothers come to a point where they are unable to withstand the pain. And as a result of the abuse and social pressure for them to change, the brothers lose their identity as Native Canadians.

    Read More

  • Analysis of The Abstract Wild by Jack Turner

    3431 Words  | 7 Pages

    ultimately defends the wild in all of its forms. He opens the novel with a narrative story about a

    Read More

  • The Rattler essay

    677 Words  | 2 Pages

    The author uses diction in the passages to signify the effect of the author¡¯s meaning in story and often sway readers to interpret ideas in one way or another. The man in the story arrives to a ¡°[dry] desert¡± where he accosts an animal with ¡°long-range attack¡± and ¡°powerful fangs.¡± The author creates a perilous scene between the human and animal in order to show that satisfaction does not come from taking lives. With instincts of silence and distrust, both of them freeze in stillness like ¡°live wire.¡± In addition, the man is brought to the point where animal¡¯s ¡°tail twitched,¡± and ¡°the little tocsin sounded¡± and also he hears the ¡°little song of death.¡± With violence ready to occur, the man tries to protect himself and others with a hoe, for his and their safety from the Rattler. The author criticizes how humans should be ¡°obliged not to kill¡±, at least himself, as a human. The author portrays the story with diction and other important techniques, such as imagery, in order to influence the readers with his significant lesson.

    Read More

  • The Kiss of the Fur Queen

    1383 Words  | 3 Pages

    Thomson Highway’s The Kiss of the Fur Queen has a core theme of art. In this novel, art is integrated into the lives of the characters. The modernist movement would indicate that art has the ability to plainly exist “art of arts sake”. Peter Lamarque notes “To value a work for its own sake is to value it for what it is in itself, not for the realization of some ulterior ends.” (par. 19) This commonly accepted view, that art is valued because it is great art, not for the role or function that it has in society, restricts arts impact. This perspective limits and does not allow for the surfacing of profound effects that art creates. In the Kiss of the Fur Queen, art has power it does not simply exist but has function. The observable function of art in this text is in education, providing identity and finally uniting Gabriel and Jeremiah with their cultural roots.

    Read More

  • West with the Night, by Beryl Markham

    1630 Words  | 4 Pages

    Once while hunting for boar with Arab Maina, Arab Kosky, and her dog, Buller, Markham comes face to face with a dangerous, lone lion. In this section, Beryl is extremely descriptive and recalls the memory in a fashion that allows the reader to see the events unfolding through her eyes at a lifelike pace. “Buller and I crouched behind them, my own spear as ready as I could make it in hands that were less hot from the sun than from excitement and the pounding of my heart.” (Markham 87), depicts Beryl’s thrill at the possibility that she may go toe-to-toe with the lion. This excitement outweighs her fear of injury for herself; however, she restrains Buller, as to prevent him from trying to sacrifice himself in the conflict.... ...

    Read More

  • Analysis of Passage in Shelley's Frankenstein

    581 Words  | 2 Pages

    It was very strange to see another human/carriage on the ice. It was a shock to the crew to see a single man on a sled dragged by dogs through the Northern Sea. Comparing to a well equipped ship, the sled looked like a deadly ride. As mentioned earlier, you could only see the endless ice surrounding them and they couldn?t believe that a single man would travel far from the Big Land. However, the man on the sled was a gigantic stature and most likely he was a strong and brave man.

    Read More

  • The Princess And The Goblin Literary Analysis

    1127 Words  | 3 Pages

    In The Princess and the Goblin, the author uses many literary devices to bring his writing to life and to illustrate specific moments in the story.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of Into The Wild

    1532 Words  | 4 Pages

    Good authors always find a way to simply relate their story to their audience. And the writer of Into the Wild Jon Krakauer indubitably does this with the usage of rhetorical devices throughout his factual story of Chris McCandless, a youthful Emory college graduate whose body is strangely discovered in an old transit bus deep in the Alaskan wilderness in September of 1992, 24 years old at the time. The author recaps meaningful events of McCandless and his journey leading to the point of his death and successfully controlled the rhetorical devices of characterization, comparison, logos, ethos, pathos and numerous others in order to encourage to the audience that Chris was not some weird psychotic kid that the general population

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Children's Blizzard

    1262 Words  | 3 Pages

    (6) The suddenness of the winter storm caught people by surprise. A roar “like an approaching train” was all the warning the storm gave. (130) The roaring wind and snow brought darkness and dropping temperatures. The people who were inside when the blizzard struck faced a dilemma. Staying inside and doing nothing seemed “heartless,” but going into the storm “on a rescue mission was likely to be fatal to the rescuer and useless to the lost.” (143) The people who were unfortunate enough to be away from home, whether they were at school or working with their livestock, had to make a difficult decision. They could either risk trying to make it home or chance it out and stay where they were. Schoolteachers had to decide whether to send the children home or keep them at the school. If anyone ventured outside, he or she risked frostbite, hypothermia, and likely

    Read More

  • Battle Royal, by Ralph Ellison

    1887 Words  | 4 Pages

    Literary critic, Norman German, creates an interesting spin on “Battle Royal.” Published in the CLA (College Language Association) journal in 1988, German emphasizes Ellison’s use of animal imagery which graphically stresses his theme (German). The narrator (the main character) struggles with his grandfather’s dying words, “Live with your head in the lion’s mouth.” (The animal symbolism in the quote through his dying grandfather lived his life in the hands of “whites.”) The narrator, although he strongly disagrees, has his grandfather’s words embedded in his mind. The constants in the “battle royal” are portrayed as foreign creatures as they are herded “like cattle” into the servant’s elevator. German believes, that because the rich white men treat the black men as animals and the naked white woman as a sexual object, it ironically reduces the white men to animals:

    Read More

  • The Woman Thing By Audre Lorde Analysis

    371 Words  | 1 Pages

    The poet in her writing used the language tools of symbolism, images, metaphor and nature to illustrate her poetic ideas. The writer, used the word ‘’Hunters’’ in the first line which indicates an imagery of man in existence, example

    Read More

  • An Analysis of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

    1088 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Chronicles of Narnia are veritably the most popular writings of C.S. Lewis. They are known as children’s fantasy literature, and have found favor in older students and adults alike, even many Christian theologians enjoy these stories from Lewis; for there are many spiritual truths that one can gleam from them, if familiar with the Bible. However, having said this, it is noteworthy to say that Lewis did not scribe these Chronicles for allegorical didactics of the Christian faith, but wrote them in such a well-knit fashion that young readers might understand Christian doctrine through captivating fantasy and thus gain an appreciation for it. With this in mind, and in the interest of this assignment, the purpose of this paper is an attempt to analyze one of the many doctrines of the Christian faith from The Lion, The Witch, And, The Wardrobe (LWW), namely, temptation and how Lewis illustrates it through an individual character, Edmund.

    Read More

  • Essay on the Downfall of Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart

    816 Words  | 2 Pages

    The greatest opponent in life is the one that is created inside the mind. As Okonkwo grows up, he decides to be the absolute antipodes of his father Unoka. Okonkwo perceives his father as a culmination of the weaknesses in man. In this erroneous view, Okonkwo buries his feelings deep within himself. When these emotions emerge, he views them as a sign of weakness. When Okonkwo participates in Ikemefuna's killing, he is deeply affected as he has ended the life of one who he grew to love as a son. Okonkwo is excessively depressed after the slaying, "not tasting any food for two days." (61) As he notices his confusion, he calls himself weak like a shivering old woman. In his emotionless show of strength after Ikemefuna's death, Okonkwo actually proves his frailty by hiding what he feels. Okonkwo is dominated by his private fear of appeari...

    Read More

More about Analysis: Kiss Of The Fur Queen

Open Document