Young Men and Fire is a profound story following the smokejumpers of the Mann Gulch fire, their tragedy and Norman Maclean’s mission to piece together the historic fire’s details. In 1949, before the breakout of the Mann Gulch fire, smokejumpers were seen as captivating, hearty, and borderline insane. They were the Forest Service’s most efficient and charismatic weapons against fire; ballsy and sure of themselves. This was until they dropped into the Mann Gulch fire, where instead of gaining control of the fire, it demonstrated an upper hand in experience, killing all but three of the men. Maclean’s narration on the event is insightful and robust in detail despite the fact that he was never actually involved in fighting the fire. He was haunted …show more content…
This being said, his writing also has a strong grip on the statistics of the event. He includes graphs, maps, mathematical reasoning, and analytical thinking to tie the reality of the fire into his style of writing. It is quite clear that Maclean is a man who values patience and placing knowledge behind his words. His writing is saturated with hindsight, bringing forth his feeling of remorse for those who had been killed. “In 1949 the Smokejumpers were still so young that they referred affectionately to all fires they jumped on as '10 o'clock fires' as if they already had them under control before they jumped. They were still so young they hadn't yet learned to count the odds and to sense they might owe the universe a tragedy.” The text is split into 3 parts: the first explaining the fire as if it were in the present, the second detailing the fire’s aftermath and Maclean’s long process of piecing together the truth about the fire, and the third offering a deeper reflection for what it all …show more content…
Though I felt that this section of the book was harder for me to follow due to its rather dry content, I still found it to be interesting. While reading I asked myself why Maclean went to such great measures to find the truth and why the previous records from the fire were so muddied in conflicting statements. Maclean makes many trips to Mann Gulch with his colleague Laird so that the facts are clear and undeniable. Among the most substantial mysteries they pieced together were the origin location of where Dodge actually lit the escape fire and how fast each of the men were moving up the hillside. Maclean and Laird went through many hoops to find these details. They cross-referenced documents, followed Dodge's statements, looked at pictures, took Sallee and Rumsey (the youngest surviving men) back to Mann Gulch for a firsthand account, discovered unusual wind patterns, and even attempted to get information from an old interviewer. Maclean was on a path to exonerate Dodge’s name from controversy and he was deeply committed to it. He was a frail old man hiking sheer slopes in brutal heat to look for
In Richard Wunderli’s Book Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen, Wunderli presents idea of “Enchanted Time.” The idea of “Enchanted Time” centers on Holy Days such as Advent, Carnival, Lent, Easter, and Walpurgisnacht where men and women could worship and celebrate their religion, as well as, feel closer to God, the angels, and the saints who resided in the “powerful realm.” Hand Behem and all other Europeans believed in this separation of realms, and in Peasant Fires Behem and the other peasants used these enchanted times to “make an appeal to supernatural forces to find justice for their discontent and meaning for their misery.” (Wunderli) Through the dissection and summation of Lent and Walpurgisnacht the concept of “Enchanted Time”
No two people are truly the same, therefore creating a mass difference in outlooks when experiencing things. This is seen in the writings of authors Linda Thomas and Joan Didion in their separate essays, Brush Fire and The Santa Ana. Theses essays revolve around the same experience both authors share of the Santa Ana wildfire in southern California, but in different perspective. In Brush Fire, Linda Thomas gives the reader a more beautiful insight on wildfires while Joan Didion has a more serious and disheartening perspective on them, which each author paints in their own way.
Fire is a simple human necessity that is capable of sustaining life, but if misused can easily destroy it. Guy Montag a firemen destine to burn books, meets a young girl named Clarisse who changes his view on everything. His character slowly starts to change as he realizes books are in fact pieces of art, doomed to the flames. Montag digs deeper and deeper, until eventually it may tear the society wide apart. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the main character Montag’s view point of fire progresses from a weapon capable of destroying anything, eventually the fire disinfects Montags head, and in the end causes him to changes completely.
Montag, Beatty and the rest of the firemen expected it to be just another burning. They did not expect an unidentified woman to commit suicide along with burning her books. As the firemen attempted to save the woman, she told them to “go on.” Within a moment, “The woman on the porch reached out with contempt to them all and struck the kitchen match against the railing.” On the way back to the firehouse, the men didn’t speak or look at each other. While Beatty began showing the knowledge he has gained from books, which along with the death, firemen begin to show that they are thinking and showing emotions. While listening to Beatty, Blackstone passes the turn to the firehouse, while Montag is amazed at his intelligence.
The film Smoke Signals, screen written by Sherman Alexie, examines the small, ordinary Native American life of a boy that lives on the Coeur d’Alene Indian reservation with family problems. The story is set in 1998 but also has flashbacks throughout the lives of Thomas Builds-the-Fire and Victor Joseph. Both Victor and Thomas must go on a trip to take care of Victor’s father’s business since he has passed away. Victor and Thomas both must be saved from situations throughout the film. In the film, the theme of salvation preserves both Victor and Thomas from death and conserve Victor from living a life of hatred toward his father and others around him, which allows him to understand why his life is filled with pain due to his father’s actions.
Bradbury uses poetic devices throughout the novel to paint vivid images. Two of these poetic IMAGES are the use of fire and water WHICH portray different meanings. Bradbury refers to fire and its purpose on a number of occasions. To the firemen, fire symbolizes purification through the burning of books. This is ironic since such an act usually denotes destruction. Captain Beatty, chief of the fire department, believes that "fire is bright and fire is clean."(60) This belief develops when he explains to Montag the reasoning behind burning books. The reader is at this time given an image of Beatty, his character, and his way of thinking. In one instance, the flames were used to cleanse the fire department of its evils by its elimination of the chief. In this case, "Montag shot one continuous pulse of liquid fire on [Beatty]" until "he was a shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling gibbering mannikin, no longer human or known, all writhing flame on the lawn."(119) A picture is created in the mind of the reader showing how Montag finally stands up for what he believes is right. Furthermore, when Montag set his own house ablaze, he undergoes an uncommon emotional experience in which he views the fire as a new starting point. The fire signifies Montag sterilizing his life by burning his house and "he felt himself gush out in the fire, snatch, rend, rip in half with flame, and put away the senseless problem."(116) This captures Montag in a stage of anger and frustration after his wife has left him and his chief is ready to arrest him.
Traditionally, conversations about the Civil Right Movement refer to the career of Martin Luther King as a non-violent integrationist or Malcom X as a dominate separationist. James Baldwin who also played a major part in the Civil Rights Movement, although he did not dedicate to either side of the extremes. It was often seen that his view stuck the chord of both Malcom X and Dr. Martin Luther King. In his book The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin analyses the position of blacks in America a century after the Emancipation Proclamation which supposedly gave blacks their freedom. Within this book he expresses his views on both social and political integration. He uses the essay “My Dungeon Shook” as a plea to his nephew the importance of acceptance
On May 16, 1944, a brush fire burned close to the farm, Ed and Henry went out to try and put it out. Gein reported that he and Henry were separated, and as night fell, when the fire was put out. When a search party was organized, Gein le...
People around the city went to bed, everything seemed relatively normal. Smoke dwindling into the dark night sky, the faint smell of burning wood. All normal for Chicago. Fires were a daily part of life for this wooden city. Near the time of 2 a.m. the fire didn’t seem so normal and average anymore. A mean flame was being born, it was blazing to life.
In response to the romantic period (1798-1870), authors began to focus their writing on ordinary people and their everyday lives rather than the supernatural, nationalism, heroism, and strange and faraway places, themes characteristic of romantic literature. In the story “To Build a Fire” shows what a realism story looks like. Everything about it is based on real events that can happen, is realistic. Whatever happens to the man, you can relate to because you know how cold it can get and maybe you also can relate how hard it is to build a fire. A lot of people, like the man in the story, sometimes arent as bright in the head and can be the cause of their own problem. In the story there is a part where the man fails to kill the dog because his hands are frozen, shows how a lot of times you cant accomplish something, you fail. Instead of a happy ending and expecting for the man to find his way back to camp, he does not, he dies, adds that very realistic event that would of happened to many other people and the story has a bad ending
I read the book Braving the Fire. It takes place in the year 1863. The book is about a 15 year old boy from Maryland named Jem Bridwell. He lives on a farm with his father, grandfather, and their slaves. Because Maryland was a “border state” during the civil war, it was not considered part of the Confederacy, although most of the people living in Maryland at the time were for the Confederates. Jem’s father, Tom Bridwell, on the other hand had joined the Union Army because he believed in freeing the slaves and keeping the Union. James Bridwell, Jem’s grandfather, was completely against Tom’s being in the Union Army and the Union itself.
“Smoke Signals” is a movie that describes living conditions for Native Americans. Victor and Thomas are the main characters in the movie. Victor is a tough Indian guy who is hard to handle, even though he has a special attitude towards his mother. Thomas is a nerd, who is smart, and he enjoys telling stories to anyone. Victor’s father, Arnold Joseph, causes a fire accidently on Independence Day in 1976 on the reservation in Idaho in which Thomas’s parents died, but he miraculously saved Tomas from the fire. Even though Victor hates his father because of father’s addiction to alcohol, he manages to forgive him at the end of the movie.
At first glance, the story “Barn burning” seems just to be about a tyrannical father and a son who is in the grips of that tyranny. I think Faulkner explores at least one important philosophical question in this story were he asks at what point should a person make a choice between what his parent(s) and / or family believes and his own values?
James Baldwin was an influential activist in the Civil Rights Movement and also became know as one of the most prominent African American intellectuals of twenty centuries. Between Martin Luther King Jr non-violent views on integration and Malcom X radical views, there in middle lies James Baldwin ideals a mix of the two. In his book The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin analyses the position of blacks in America a century after the Emancipation Proclamation which supposedly gave blacks their freedom. He uses the essay “My Dungeon Shook” as a plea to his nephew the importance of acceptance and integration. Through the essay “Down At The Cross” to provides readers with personal experiences about the relationship between religion and race that allowed
I agree with Karen Rhodes observation that to build afirecan be interpreted as the story of a man in the journey of human existence. However, I think her view of to build a fire as an American experience comes from the fact that she is an American. I agree with her theory that the Man's death in the end was due to the nature of the man and his environment. The protagonist in to build a fire did nor have any grasp of the danger he was in. he tried to reason himself through it all. He thought, " Maybe, if he ran on, his feet will thaw out; and anyway if he ran far enough, he would reach camp and the boys. (Jack London, 157).