Explore the Stylistic Conventions of Both - Notes from a Small Island -
and - In Patagonia - and account for their different audiences.
Bill Bryson and Bruce Chatwin both participate in the ability to
Travel write. Travel writing is were one would travel and then list
in chronological order what they have experienced. Bill Bryson is
able to do this in an entirely different fashion, to Bruce Chatwin.
Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. Bryson settled in
England in 1977, and lived for numerous years with his British wife
and children in Yorkshire. Bryson then went back to America, but has
now returned to England. As well as writing ‘Notes from a small
Island’ Bryson has also written ‘down Under’ ‘Notes from a big
Country’ ‘A walk in the Woods’ ‘Made in America’ ‘Neither here nor
there’ and ‘The lost Continent’.[1]
Bruce Chatwin was born in Sheffield in 1940. After attending
Marborough School he began work as a Porter at Sotheby’s, which is an
auctioneer. Chatwin became one of the youngest directors at Sotheby’s
and then Chatwin abandoned his job to explore the world, as his
dedication was travel writing. During 1972 and 1975 Chatwin worked
for the Sunday Times and quickly announced his departure for in a
telegram; ‘Gone to Patagonia for six months’. This journey motivated
to write the first of his books which was simply named, In Patagonia.
In Patagonia won The Hawthornden Prize and the E.M. Forster award and
launched his writing profession. Two of Chatwins films have been made
into feature films, The Viceroy Oiudah (retitled Cobra Verde)
directed by Werner Herzog and the British film. Bruce Chatwin has
also written ‘On the Black Hill’, ‘The Song Lines’ ‘The Viceroy of
Ouidah’.[2]
Before Bryson’s begins his story, he writes a prologue of his first
encounter with Britain and how inviting it was for him. Bryson
elaborates on why he returned to England in 1995. Bill Bryson gives
an interpretation of his first time in England which was more
exclusively Dover in 1973. In the front of Bill Bryson’s book is an
image of Britain surrounded by small sketches. Once I had read I
became conscious that this map mirrored the style of writing used in
the book, light-hearted.
Chatwin developed an interest for Patagonia at a young age. Chatwin
tells us about his earliest memories of his grandmother, and being at
her house;
‘In my grandmother’s dining room was a glass-fronted cabinet…’[3]
Chatwin is talking about his personal experience directly, although he
doesn’t begin with his journey in Patagonia. Chatwin is unfolding
this tale to his audience in great detail; this story helps the reader
When it comes to analyzing the “banana massacre” scene in chapter 15, I found three narrative techniques the author used to describe this scene. Therefore, one can notice that this part of the book is the climax. As a result, one infers what the author is trying to say about Latin American history and politics.
The novel “Nanberry” written by Jackie French, tells the story of early European settlement in Australia. Nanberry, Surgeon White and Rachel Turner are all main characters in the novel but three minor characters who could have been examined in more detail were Maria, Colbee and Mr. Trench. Each of these characters either performs something or states something that is vital to the story line and plot. This essay will also suggest ways that these three characters could have been developed to make “Nanberry” a little bit more thought – provoking.
Without the use of stereotypical behaviours or even language is known universally, the naming of certain places in, but not really known to, Australia in ‘Drifters’ and ‘Reverie of a Swimmer’ convoluted with the overall message of the poems. The story of ‘Drifters’ looks at a family that moves around so much, that they feel as though they don’t belong. By utilising metaphors of planting in a ‘“vegetable-patch”, Dawe is referring to the family making roots, or settling down somewhere, which the audience assumes doesn’t occur, as the “green tomatoes are picked by off the vine”. The idea of feeling secure and settling down can be applied to any country and isn’t a stereotypical Australian behaviour - unless it is, in fact, referring to the continental
Jamaica Kincaid wrote “A Small Place” after she visited Antigua after twenty years. When she visited her hometown, she was disappointed. Her tone in the book is tense consist angry and sad. As she said “I wrote with a kind of recklessness in that book. I didn’t know what I would say ahead of time. Once I wrote it, I felt much radicalized
Ernest Hemingway was an intricate and dedicated writer who devoted a significant portion of his life to writing multiple genres of stories. Throughout his stories, the similarities in his style and technique are easily noted and identified. Two of the short stories he wrote contain themes and motifs that specifically explain the plotline. The first story, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” sets its scene in the depths of a desolate area in Africa, where the main characters, Harry and his wife, decide to make their home. After living there for a few years, Harry ventures out and falls into a thorn bush, thus infecting his leg with gangrene. A few weeks later, he finds himself on the brink between life and death, unable to treat such a severe infection. Throughout the whole story, his life is flashing before his eyes as he recalls all of the major events that occurred in his past. By nightfall, Harry is acting unusual, and he begins to feel as if life is not worth living anymore. After he drifts off to sleep that evening, his wife goes to check on him and discovers that her husband has passed away (Hemingway 52-77). The second great work of Hemingway, “The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” is also set in a deserted section of Africa. Francis and his wife, Margot, are on a safari adventure along with their tour guide named Wilson. The way these three characters interact with each other creates tension and provides an adequate plot for the story. The trip begins with the couple intending on hunting big game. At first they track down a lion that continuously roars throughout the night, and later decide to chase after buffalos. To add to the complications of the trip, Margot has an intimate relationship with their tour guide. The story c...
...atures that make Australia what it is today. He uses the words “sunlit plain”, “vision splendid” and “wondrous glory” to provide the reader with an image that represents Australia’s reminiscent landscape. This is done to capture the reader’s thoughts in an attempt to persuade them. Paterson silences the negative aspects of rural life and the positive aspects of city life.
Ernest Hemingway was a man whose writing could be summed up as minimalistic and dynamic. While his stories at first glance seem simple, they are deceptively so. He wrote sharp, deliberate dialogue with exact descriptions of places and things. A postmodernist icon, Hemingway broke chronology in his stories and nudged towards the idea of multiple truths. In his story, "In Another Country" he uses both of these postmodern techniques. By effectively using fewer words than his contemporaries to deliver works that resonated stronger with his audience, Ernest Hemmingway earned his place as one of the great postmodernists of the twentieth century.
Mastery of the material an author writes about is not merely enough to get one’s point across, yet Butor uses his mastery of how to travel wherever you are in life and, in addition, uses language that presents the picture in such a manner that one does not have to delve deep into the meaning behind the words to retain the full idea portrayed in them. The higher arching purpose to his work, though, turns out to be the overall connection of ties between the book and travel ultimately depends on the book’s “literariness” to determine what journey one might have while reading (83). All in all, the tone of voice and writing style that Butor uses in this piece are second to none in their ability to influence a reader of following his procedure of travel transformation, and a rhetorical analysis essay on his work only reassured the authenticity of the section about how Butor chose to entertain the reader as the main purpose behind his essay. His attitude toward the audience was strong enough to elicit advice that originated straight from the heart, and in doing that, he empowered readers with the ability to look at books and reading differently for the rest of their
After exploring the backgrounds of Joseph Conrad and Alan Paton, we realize the differences in their upbringings and how that may have had an effect on their outlooks of Africa. These authors grew up in completely different settings in completely different time periods; Joseph Conrad in a predominantly white area amongst those who would be the colonists of Africa in the future, and Alan Paton in the Africa itself amongst those who the colonization affected most greatly. These factors contribute to the different viewpoints that are apparent in their respective works. From analyzing the content of their writings, it is apparent that, although, both authors have the same overall opinion of colonialism, these opinions are due to two very different reasons.
The fishing trip within Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises provides a pilgrimage of rejuvenation to the novel’s participating characters, Jake Barnes and Bill Gorton. Escaping the wasteland that is Paris, the two men “shove off,” (Hemingway, VIII), to Burguete, Spain, where they fish for trout on the Irati River.
The Green Hills of Africa is Hemingway’s second non-fiction work, set in 1933, following the author and his second wife, Pauline, on a big-game safari in Africa. It was first serialized and then published in 1935. The first run was of 10,500 copies selling at $2.75 a piece. While many smaller critics passed their typical glossy review of Hemingway, those at the height of literary criticism bombarded it. Particularly with respect to what Hemingway claimed the novel was. In the foreword of the novel, Ernest Hemingway writes, “The writer has attempted to write an absolutely true book to see whether the shape of a country and the pattern of a month’s action can, if truly presented, compete with a work of the imagination.”1 Fittingly the critical response to Hemingway’s second non-fiction work examined the novel in that respect, as well as in its achievement as a free-standing novel.
Both, the poem “Reluctance” by Robert Frost and “Time Does Not Bring Relief” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, revolved around the theme of lost love. Each poet used a similar array of poetic devices to express this theme. Visual imagery was one of the illustrative poetic devices used in the compositions. Another poetic device incorporated by both poets in order to convey the mood of the poems was personification. And by the same token, metaphors were also used to help express the gist of both poems. Ergo, similar poetic devices were used in both poems to communicate the theme of grieving the loss of a loved one.
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid presents the hypothetical story of a tourist visiting Antigua, the author’s hometown. Kincaid places the reader in the shoes of the tourist, and tells the tourist what he/she would see through his/her travels on the island. She paints a picturesque scene of the tourist’s view of Antigua, but stains the image with details of issues that most tourists overlook: the bad roads, the origin of the so-called native food, the inefficiency of the plumbing systems in resorts, and the glitches in the health care system. Kincaid was an established writer for The New Yorker when she wrote this book, and it can be safely assumed that majority of her readers had, at some point in their lives, been tourists. I have been a tourist so many times before and yet, I had never stopped to consider what happens behind the surface of the countries I visit until I read this essay. Kincaid aims to provoke her readers; her style of writing supports her goal and sets both her and her essay apart. To the reader, it sounds like Kincaid is attacking the beautiful island, pin-pointing the very things that we, as tourists, wish to ignore. No tourist wants to think about faeces from the several tourists in the hotel swimming alongside them in the oceans, nor do they want to think about having accidents and having to deal with the hospital. It seems so natural that a tourist would not consider these, and that is exactly what Kincaid has a problem with.
Behind every piece of literature, there is a story. Ernest Hemingway’s life experiences definitely led to the creation of his countless and remarkable novels and short stories. He traveled to many places and was able to see much of the world. Whenever something terrible or unpleasant happened to him, he always found a way to express it through his works. Ernest Hemingway’s experiences in World War I and his trip to Africa are reflected in the conflict of the main character and in the setting of his short story, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”.
There are people bustling, merchants selling, Anglo-Indians watching, and birds flying overhead. How many perspectives are there in this one snippet of life? They are uncountable, and that is the reality. Modernist writers strive to emulate this type of reality into their own work as well. In such novels, there is a tendency to lack a chronological or even logical narrative and there are also frequent breaks in narratives where the perspectives jump from one to another without warning. Because there are many points of view and not all of them are explained, therefore, modernist novels often tend to have narrative perspectives that suddenly shift or cause confusion. This is because modernism has always been an experimental form of literature that lacks a traditional narrative or a set, rigid structure. Therefore, E. M. Forster, author of A Passage to India, uses such techniques to portray the true nature of reality. The conflict between Adela, a young British girl, and Aziz, an Indian doctor, at the Marabar Caves is one that implements multiple modernist ideals and is placed in British-India. In this novel, Forster shows the relations and tension between the British and the Indians through a series of events that were all caused by the confusing effects of modernism. E.M. Forster implements such literary techniques to express the importance or insignificance of a situation and to emphasize an impression of realism and enigma in Chandrapore, India, in which Forster’s novel, A Passage to India, takes place.