Paul Bunyan's Influence On Jay Gatsby

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From the interesting stories of James bond to Jay gatsby comes the fictional character Paul bunyan. Known for being the lumberjack of american folklore, he is the symbol of bigness strength, and vitality and is accompanied by babe the blue ox. “Tales about Paul bunyan say that he is the person who created Puget sound, the grand canyon, and the black hills.”Known as the most enduring tale in american folklore. Paul bunyan was so big at birth that he was delivered to his parents by five exhausted storks, fit into his father clothes and ate 40 bowls of porridge a day. He received a birthday present that you would never think to receive, a blue ox that he named babe. Legend has it that babe grew so big that her footsteps around minnesota created …show more content…

Born in Quebec in the 1840’s he moved to michigan after the civil war while wanting to take advantage of the high-paying logging industry. He was known for being big and strong because he was 6 foot in height and supposedly had two sets of teeth, which he used to bite chunks of wooden rails. He died in 1875 during a brawl by getting hit the back of the head with a mallet. Commented [1]: This quote is fromhttps://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/real-paul-bunyan.htmCommented [2]: _Marked as resolved_Commented [3]: _Re-opened_Commented [4]: This quote is fromhttps://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/real-paul-bunyan.htmCommented [5]: This quote is …show more content…

People added more details and exaggerations. At some point, the story got mixed with another French-Canadian war hero by the name of Bon Jean. The tales of Bon Jean and Fabian Fournier combined to take their place in American folklore under the name Paul Bunyan. One of the short stories about Paul Bunyan is that one winter, shortly after Paul Bunyan dug Lake Michigan as a drinking hole for his blue ox Babe, he decided to camp out in the Upper Peninsula. It was so cold in the logging camp, the temperature dropped to 68 degrees below zero. Each degree in the camp thermometer measured sixteen inches long and the flames in the lanterns froze solid. No one, not even Paul Bunyan, could blow them out.The lumberjacks didn't want the bunkhouse lit at night, because they wouldn't get any sleep. So they put the lanterns way outside of camp where they wouldn't disturb anyone. But they forgot about the lanterns, so that when thaw came in the the early spring, the lanterns flared up again and set all of northern Michigan on fire! They had to wake Paul Bunyan up so he could stamp out the fire with his boots.Another short story is told by S. E. Schlosser. One spring day, the loggers on the Wisconsin River discovered a huge log jam, the biggest they'd ever seen. The logs were piled about two hundred feet high and the jam went upriver for a mile or more. Those

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