Narrative Writing Prompt
“Round Em Up and Move ‘em Out!” and “A Life on the Trail” give information about how life was on a cattle drive. Think about what might have happened if you were actually participating on a drive.
Write a narrative for your teacher about being on a cattle drive. Be sure to include narrative elements such as sensory details, dialogue, figurative language, and description as they are appropriate in your writing. Use details and information from the passage in your narrative.
Writer’s Checklist
My narrative has an effective beginning, middle, and end.
My narrative flows smoothly from one idea to another.
My narrative develops plot, character(s), and setting.
My narrative includes specific and relevant details,
The book that i chose to do this speech on is Cowboy Ghost. Cowboy Ghost is about a boy named Titus who goes on a cattle drive through Florida in the early 1900s. The main character in this story is Titus. Titus Timothy MacRobertson is a small and weak 16 year old boy that wants to impress his father that kind of ignores him. His mother died giving birth to him and his father “blames” Titus for her death. His father (Rob Roy MacRobertson) is a strong, massive and hardworking man. His brother Micah is a 29 year old man that is described as being a second Rob Roy MacRobertson because of his strength and size, at the end of the book you find out that he was more like their mother. The cattle drive was going really good until seminoles (indians)
The Grapes of Wrath explicates on the Dust Bowl era as the reader follows the story of the Joads in the narrative chapters, and the migrants in expository chapters. Steinbeck creates an urgent tone by using repetition many times throughout the book. He also tries to focus readers on how the Dust Bowl threatened migrant dreams using powerful imagery. As well as that, he creates symbols to teach the upper class how the Dust Bowl crushed the people’s goals. In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck utilizes imagery, symbolism, and repetition to demonstrate how the Dust Bowl threatened the “American Dream.”
In two differing stories of departure, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Steinbeck’s standard for a writer is met by the raw human emotions exhibited in the main characters’ success and defeat.
Throughout the novel, The Grapes of Wrath there are intercalary chapters. The purpose of these chapters are to give the readers insight and background on the setting, time, place and even history of the novel. They help blend the themes, symbols, motifs of the novel, such as the saving power of family and fellowship, man’s inhumanity to man, and even the multiplying effects of selfishness. These chapters show the social and economic crisis flooding the nation at the time, and the plight of the American farmer becoming difficult. The contrast between these chapters helps readers look at not just the storyline of the Joad family, but farmers during the time and also the condition of America during the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck uses these chapters to show that the story is not only limited to the Joad family,
When looking at the vast lands of Texas after the Civil War, many different people came to the lands in search for new opportunities and new wealth. Many were lured by the large area that Texas occupied for they wanted to become ranchers and cattle herders, of which there was great need for due to the large population of cows and horses. In this essay there are three different people with three different goals in the adventures on the frontier lands of Texas in its earliest days. Here we have a woman's story as she travels from Austin to Fort Davis as we see the first impressions of West Texas. Secondly, there is a very young African American who is trying his hand at being a horse rancher, which he learned from his father. Lastly we have a Mexican cowboy who tries to fight his way at being a ranch hand of a large ranching outfit.
Both "Spotted Horses" and "Mule in the Yard" are very entertaining stories by William Faulkner. Despite their common theme of animal chase, setting, and character, a more powerful story is found within "Spotted Horses". While "Mule in the Yard" is well written and full of comedy, it does not delve as deeply as "Spotted Horses" does. "Spotted Horses" proves broader in scope due to it's in depth narration style which provides particularly effective humor and development of characters.
Life and death, happiness and sadness, loneliness and company, frustration and understanding, guilt and content. All of these are emotions that you will experience as you walk in Toby’s footsteps through The Trail, written by Meika Hashimoto. In the story, the main characters are Toby, Lucas, Denver, Sean, and Moose. The main setting is a portion of the Appalachian Trail, along with many shelters throughout that section of the Appalachian Trail. In the beginning of the story, it introduces Toby, the protagonist, and hints at his reasoning behind why he is hiking the Appalachian Trail in the first place. It also introduces Lucas, Toby’s best friend, and some of the ways that whatever happened between them effects Toby. The overall conflict, or problem in The Trail is Toby battling guilt and the emotional aspect all together, along with the physical obstacles he has to face. The solution to the problem is Toby becoming content with who he is, what has happened between
In the beginning of the novel, Steinbeck describes the devastating Dust bowl that settles “on the corn, on roofs,” and blankets “the weeds and trees” (Steinbeck 3). His use of imagery instantly installs the picture of destruction into the reader’s mind. The Dust Bowl is the beginning of the hardships that are to come for the migrants. There is an anecdote of a turtle who struggles to get to the other side of the road. The turtle struggles up the embankment like the families struggled to get to California. When he was trying to cross the highway he was nearly hit twice, which is similar to the business owners and Californians running over the Oklahoma people. This small chapter symbolizes the entire journey of the Joad family, in turn it symbolizes the journey of all the Oklahoma people. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.
Between 1840 and 1950, over fifty-three thousand people travelled the Oregon Trail. Native American exposure to diseases such as smallpox and diphtheria decimated the tribes, and that along with the encroachment of settlers on tribal lands, was the cause of much strife between Native Americans and the incoming Europeans. The Land Donation Law, a government land giveaway allotting three-hindred twenty acres to white males and six-hundred forty to married white couples, gave impetus to the western expansion and the American idea of "Manifest destiny." This promotion of migration and families also allowed America to strentghen its hold on Oregon, in the interests of displacing British claims.
The Oregon Trail was a very important aspect in the history of our country’s development. When Marcus and Narcissa Whitman made the first trip along the Oregon Trail, many Americans saw a window of opportunity. The Oregon Trail was the only practical way to pass through the Rockies. Pioneers crammed themselves into small wagons to try to make it to the unsettled land; however, 10% of these pioneers died on the way due to disease and accidents.
In The Grapes of Wrath, the chapters go from vignettes to regular chapters. The vignettes describe how the dust bowl and the workers migrating to California affect other people and their surroundings. They also foreshadow the events of the Joads and migrant workers on their journey. In chapter 3, Steinbeck describes a turtle crossing a road and getting hit by a car. “And over the grass at the roadside a land turtle crawled.at last he started to climb the embankment.the driver saw the turtle and swerved to hit it,” (Steinbeck, 20-22).
As the Joad family faces the same trials that the turtle faces, and as the desperate farmers have to deal with car dealerships, the intercalary chapters help to set the tone of, as well as integrate the various themes of The
The story “Ranch Girl,” by Maile Meloy, is darkly symbolic and full of disobliging introspection. The main character struggles to find meaning in an uneven and arbitrary existence. Via willful ignorance or merely the tribulations of a woman less fortunate than she herself believes, her internal conflict is unveiled as illusion. Yet she remains confined. While her ultimate goal is the modest life with her wanted cowboy, she is perpetually unable to reach her dreams, and unable to change them. The starkness of her self-wrought prison lends a certain sad ambiance to her world, reflected through characters that paint the setting. Her dreams flutter and settle unfulfilled, like dry dust, stirred by the story’s cattle.
Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath is a realistic novel that mimics life and offers social commentary too. It offers many windows on real life in midwest America in the 1930s. But it also offers a powerful social commentary, directly in the intercalary chapters and indirectly in the places and people it portrays. Typical of very many, the Joads are driven off the land by far away banks and set out on a journey to California to find a better life. However the journey breaks up the family, their dreams are not realized and their fortunes disappear. What promised to be the land of milk and honey turns to sour grapes. The hopes and dreams of a generation turned to wrath. Steinbeck opens up this catastrophe for public scrutiny.
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel by John Steinbeck that exposes the desperate conditions under which the migratory farm families of America during the 1930's live under. The novel tells of one families migration west to California through the great economic depression of the 1930's. The Joad family had to abandon their home and their livelihoods. They had to uproot and set adrift because tractors were rapidly industrializing their farms. The bank took possession of their land because the owners could not pay off their loan. The novel shows how the Joad family deals with moving to California. How they survive the cruelty of the land owners that take advantage of them, their poverty and willingness to work.