Things are way different in Modern America then what they used to be like in the Ancient times. In this short story by Jack London a man struggles to face nature on the terms of trying to survive. Throughout his journey awaits many obstacles such as finding a place to sleep, building a fire, and searching for food all without freezing to death. When the man reaches Henderson Creek, he decides to follow it all the way to the camp. Instead of walking on solid ground he decides that walking on the ice would be the better choice. As the man continues his journey, he thinks back to the conversation he had with the old man from Sulphur Creek. He remembers the old-timer telling him that traveling alone is a bad idea with temperatures below minus …show more content…
The man's feet sank into the water. Although the water was not deep, his legs all the way up to his knees were soaked. The man had become annoyed because the accident has now caused him to delay his arrival at the camp. He would have to build a fire to dry himself and his clothes. He walked over to some small trees, that were covered in snow. In their branches were pieces of dry grass and wood. He put several large pieces of wood on the snow, under one of the trees. On top of the wood, he put some grass and dry branches. He then took out his matches, and lighted the fire. To keep the fire growing he added more and more wood. He then rested for a while and continued to on his way to the mining camp. After a while he stopped to start his second fire, which did not really turn out so great because he leaned up against a tree to cut the string from his boots. He did not notice that his fire was under a branch covered in snow, so leaning against it caused the tree to shake and eventually the snow fell and put the fire …show more content…
After accidentally putting the second fire out he takes off his gloves and tries to light another fire. But within a few seconds his hands had frozen, he started beating his hands together to gain the feeling back. He then struck a match to his clothing and attached it to a piece of wood, soon after he began to smell something burning. His hands were on fire, although he could not feel it at first it began to burn and eventually it was painful. The man got tired of trying to ignite fires and came up with a crazy idea. In desperation, he tries to kill his dog so he can cut it open and warm his hands inside its body. But without his hands, there's no way for the man to kill the dog in the first place, and his attempt to give the dog a killer bear hug he fails miserably. That did not turn out so well so he then starts running as hard as he can for the camp. But the place is still hours away. He scolds himself for acting so shamefully and decides to meet death with dignity. With his last spark of brain activity, he imagines himself alongside his camp friends, discovering his own body the next day. Then he is transported into a warm room with the old man from Sulphur Creek. He admits to the old-timer that he was wrong about traveling alone, and then finally
reacts to the crosser. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker’s first impression of the swamp
Written as part of a short story collection, author T. Coraghessan Boyle’s “Greasy Lake” presents itself as a climactic account of one night in a less than savory young man’s life. Upon closer inspection “Greasy Lake” reveals a complex series of foreboding events that incorporate the innocence and ignorance males have when presented with different social scenarios and the female gender. Through his masterful use of the protagonists internal dialogue, Boyle’s artistry shows an evolving dynamic of indifference, aggression, and intimidation towards and by the women of “Greasy Lake”.
Initially, Elisabeth is the matriarch of the four generations of women talked about in the story. Elisabeth works in the house, but she’s married to a field slave and has three daughters. Not much insight is given on Elisabeth and her feelings, yet through the narration it is as if she lived vicariously through her youngest daughter, Suzette: “It was as if her mother were the one who had just had her first communion not Suzette” (20) Even though Elisabeth too worked in the house, Suzette had more privileges than her mother and the other slaves. Elisabeth represented the strength and the pride of her people: “You have a mother and a father both, and they don’t live up to the [plantation] house” (25). She would constantly remind Suzette of her real family, which signifies the remembrance of a history of people and their roots. It is up to Suzette to keep the heritage even through the latter miscegenation of the generations to come.
John Karkauer novel, Into the Wild displays a true life story about a young man by the name of Christopher McCandless, who creates a new life for himself by leaving civilization to live in the wilderness. The story displays how Christopher develops and matures throughout the story by prevailing harsh predicaments and learning valuable lessons on the way. Christopher’s character evolves by comprehending several new lessons and such as finding true pleasure, disregarding other people’s judgments, as well as realizing that material things are just material things and nothing else. All through the story, Christopher struggles to discover the true satisfaction in his life. Christopher struggles to choose what makes him truthfully content over what makes his parents glad. Christopher’s parents want him to attend law school, despite the fact that he wants to follow his passion to live in the northern wild. Christopher’s letter to his sister Carine says, “or that they think I’d actually let them pay for my law school if I was going to go….” (Krakauer.pg21). According to this quote it can be known that Christopher does not really feel any pleasure or happiness in wanting to go to law school. He finds his satisfaction with life on the road and experiences this because life on the road gives him endless possibilities and adventures every day. Christopher’s letter to Ron Franz goes as, “I’d like to repeat the advice I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin in boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt……Don’t settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon.”(Krakaur.pg56-57). The letter details the benefits of living a life in the wild such as the new adventures you face every day. Chris feels what actually happiness is, when he meets face to face with the wild. As he experiences the northern wild, he learns that true happiness doesn’t come from one source, but from various foundations in a person’s life. Chris penned a brief note, which says, “I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL!”(Krakauer.pg199) The brief note shows that even though Chris was on the edge of death, he was finally happy with his life.
In the short story “Cornet at night” by Sinclair Ross, Tom Dickson is a young farm boy who lives on a farm with his parents. He is very naive and has not had a chance to experience the outside world for his own. He knows only what he learns from the farm and school, but now that he gets to go on a small adventure on his on, he grows up in a variety of ways. One way in which Tom grows up is when he goes to town by himself. He has gone before, but with the security of his parents with him, and for a young boy to go to another town “eight miles north of here” is a large task for such a young boy, thus showing one way that he matures. To illustrate this, as Tom rolls into town with Rock he says, “I remember nothing but a smug satisfaction with myself, an exhilarating conviction of importance and
The book “A Long Way From Chicago” is an adventurous and funny story. The story takes place at Joey Dowdel’s Grandmothers farm house in the country. Joey and his sister Mary Alice were sent to their Grandma’s house during the summer because their parents had to go to Canada for their work. At first, Joey felt uncomfortable with his Grandmother because he had never met her before but eventually he got to know her and they became close friends.
Despite the fact that there are people who simply do not want to communicate with others, there are those who do not think or know that there are institutions that they can reach out to for help. In the novel Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, each character sees the world with a different perception of what life should be like, often a distorted perception, and their neurosis is caused by the isolation of the small town. Neurosis is the term for the distress of the mind causing a person to behave socially different from others; it is also seen as abnormal nature. Neurosis includes more specifically depression, mental confusion, dependency, perfectionism, negativity and obsessive thoughts .Usually, neurosis is caused by the common attributes of modernism such as isolation, search for truth, and gender consciousness; in general, modernism is the changes and reactions of the world. Due to lack of communication to the outside world, the people of Winesburg struggle to overcome their unique difficulties by holding in grief and coping life with their own beliefs. Without communication there is no guidance, forcing the individual to form his own misleading truths; one then must cling onto his truths as means of life. However, one can choose to either confront their problems or allow himself to be helpless.
He fig-ured that the normal half hour walk home might take as long as two hours in snow this deep. And then there was the wind and the cold to contend with. The wind was blowing across the river and up over the embankment making the snow it carried colder and wetter than the snow blanketing the ground. He would have to use every skill he’d learned, living in these hills, to complete the journey without getting lost, freezing to death, or at the very least ending up with a severe case of frostbite be-fore he made it back to Ruby.
The next morning as Bill is feeding the dogs he notices the wolf (a she-wolf) amidst the sled dogs and is able to land a blow with a club. The following morning the men find another sled dog, Frog, gone. Unlike Fatty, the first dog to disappear, Frog was "no fool dog" and also the "strongest of the bunch." The men eat a very gloomy breakfast, harness the sled and repeat another day across the frozen Northland. After dinner, however, they decide to tie the dogs to stakes with leather straps to prevent another dog from running away to certain death. As they settle down for the evening the dogs become agitated and Bill and Henry look up to see the she-wolf wandering through the camp, eyeing the dogs. She is a decoy for the wolf pack, remarks Henry, luring the sled dogs away as food for the pack. After much discussion, the men decide it would be prudent to use some of the remaining ammunition to take care of the troublesome she-wolf.
The protagonist, as the narrator remarks, is a shortsighted man who “was quick and alert in the things of life, but only the things, and not in the significances” (London 651), and is instead wrapped up in him-self. His ego is so large that he even ignores the very important advice of never traveling alone in “below seventy-degree weather” (London 653). This man believes himself to be very strong and capable, but the environment around him debunks that sentiment when his dog falls into the river the two companions are walking along. In trying to save the dog, the man takes off his gloves and shoes, which prove to be a big mistake for him. Because it is so cold, his fingers and toes freeze, and he is unable to get a fire going. His inability to understand nature and even perhaps believe that nature is something to be appreciated causes him to essentially lose his life. This series of events proves that nature does not care how capable or intelligent a human may be. Nature does not care that the man saved his dog from dying. Nature does not care what man has accomplished. For nature, humankind is simply another one of its creations. Because the protagonist takes his survival for granted and believes that the cold weather will not affect him, he gets taught a very brutal
“Black Power”, the word alone raises an abundance of controversial issues. Black power was a civil rights movement led by the black panthers which addressed several issues including segregation and racism. Black power had a different meaning to every member of the Mc Bride family, Ruth and James both looked at black power from a different angle. In “The Color of Water”, The author James Mc Bride admired the black panthers at first, but slowly he grew afraid of them after fearing the consequences his mother might face for being a white woman in a black community influenced by black power. James’ worries were baseless, black power’s motive was to educate and improve African American communities not to create havoc or to harm members of the white community.
Jack London’s To Build a Fire follows an unnamed protagonist, who’s only referred to as “the man”, as he travels the Yukon Trail during a severe snow storm. Along with his husky wolf-dog, he determined to meet friends at an old junction by six o’clock. The man, who was warned not travel in the Klondike alone, presses forward through the terrain’s harsh weather. He later falls through the snow in what looked to be a secure spot. With his feet and fingers soaked, he starts a fire and begins drying himself. The man constructs the fire under a spruce tree in order to take its twigs and drop them directly onto the fire. Each time he pulled a twig a branch overturned its load of snow, eventually blotting out the fire. He grabs all his matches and lights them simultaneously to set fire to a piece of bark; it soon goes out. The man decides to kill the dog and use its warm body to restore his circulation, but is unable to kill the animal and lets the dog go. The man attempts to run from the thought of freezing to death but he quickly falls down. He decides he should meet death in a more dignified manner; the man falls off into a calm sleep.
When the narrator introduced the main character of the story, the man, he made it clear that the man was in a perilous situation involving the elements. The man was faced with weather that was 75 degrees below zero and he was not physically or mentally prepared for survival. London wrote that the cold "did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold."(p.1745) At first when the man started his journey to the camp, he felt certain that he could make it back to camp before dinner. As the trip progressed, the man made mistake after mistake that sealed his fate. The man's first mistake was to step into a pool of water and soak his legs to the knees. This blunder forced the man to build a fire to dry his wet socks and shoes so his feet would not freeze and become frostbitten. When the man began to build a fire he failed to notice that he was doing so under a large, snow laden spruce tree where he was getting his firewood. When the man had a small fire that was beginning to smolder the disturbance to the tree caused the snow to tumble to the ground and extinguish the fire. "It was his own fault or, rather, his mistake. He should not have built the fire under the spruce tree. He should have built it in the open."(1750).
During the semester in class, we have learned how authors utilize various elements of writing to make their point more prominent. For Jack London's earlier works, his Yukon setting and rugged, adventurous characters appear quite frequently. Such is the case with the three stories I chose to study; "Love of Life," "The League of the Old Men," and "To Build a Fire." Along with this, I believe that the theme of survival appears in these three, as well as many other stories from London. I took it upon myself to try and find out why London used survival as his main theme. To demonstrate this recurring theme, I will give a brief synopsis of the three stories.
If it was cold or uncomfortable, surely the man would not have died so quietly. This way, in peace and quiet, the man slipped away into death soundly because the fire not only gave him warmth, and comfort but security.