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Romanticism and nature
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The needle hovered between the 45 marking and the 50 marking as I looked out north of my westerly position that was constantly changing. To the north was a herd of deer moving parallel to the small convoy of friends as we traveled down a dirt road easily 70 miles from any modern asphalt covered roads. The connection was almost immediate. The need to move across the land, not necessarily fast, but fast because the world around us was as big as any eye can behold at one time and asked for swift movement. I felt the wildness of their kind and want to know it more. George Straight has a song called “Cowboys Like Us” that I have a strange connection to. It’s not that I look at myself as a cowboy or even close for that matter, but that this song speaks to an internal desire to occasionally set out to answer why there is a longing be, well for lack of a better word, wild. Not wild in a sense that you may view some PCP addicted client on the TV show Cops, but wild like you would view a little boy in the backyard fighting off the bad guys to save the world, because girls are still yet to be ...
"Relocating the Cowboy: American Privilege in "All the Pretty Horses"" Pepperdine University: Global Tides Seaver Journal of Arts and Sciences. Maia Y. Rodriguez, 2014. Web. 2 May 2016. . The Western typically illustrates the journey of a man, usually a horse riding cowboy, into the Western frontier where he must conquer nature "in the name of civilization or [confiscate] the territorial rights of the original inhabitants... Native Americans" (Newman 150). What this brand of mythology promotes is precisely the values of American culture: rugged individualism, achievement and success, activtity and work, democracy and enterprise, and--most importantly--
In the book Into The Wild the main character Alex did some questionable things. Although he did some unusual things, he was sane. Alex was well educated and highly respected by everyone who knew him.
Lewis, George H. “Lap Dancer or Hillbilly Deluxe? The Cultural Constructions of Modern Country Music”. Journal of Popular Culture, Winter 97, Vol. 31 Issue 3, p163-173, 11p
The image of the cowboy as Jennifer Moskowitz notes in her article “The Cultural Myth of the Cowboy, or, How the West was Won” is “uniquely
For many Americans, the image of the cowboy evokes pleasant nostalgia of a time gone by, when cowboys roamed free. The Cowboy is, to many Americans, the ideal American, who was quick to the draw, well skilled in his profession, and yet minded his own business. Regardless of whether the mental picture that the word cowboy evokes is a correct or incorrect view of the vocation, one seldom views cowboys as being black. The first cowboy I met was from Texas and was black. After he told me that he was a cowboy, I told him that he had to be kidding. Unfortunately, I was not totally to blame for my inability to recognize that color has nothing to do with the cowboy profession; most if not all popular famous images of cowboys are white. In general, even today, blacks are excluded from the popular depiction of famous Westerners. Black cowboys were unheard of for almost a century after they made their mark on the cattle herding trade, not because they were insignificant, but because history fell victim to prejudice, and forgot peoples of color in popular depictions of the West and Western history.
Some of the captain?s crew began to regret their situation and even the captain had some anxious thoughts. They realized that it could be a dead end. They were uncertain where to go and of their situation. Suddenly, they noticed something was passing by them at a distance of half a mile. ? We perceived a low carriage, fixed on a sledge and drawn by dogs, passing towards the north.?
Sometimes a character may be pushed over the edge by our materialistic society to discover his/her true roots, which can only be found by going back to nature where monetary status was not important. Chris McCandless leaves all his possessions and begins a trek across the Western United States, which eventually brings him to the place of his demise-Alaska. Jon Krakauer makes you feel like you are with Chris on his journey and uses exerts from various authors such as Thoreau, London, and Tolstoy, as well as flashbacks and narrative pace and even is able to parallel the adventures of Chris to his own life as a young man in his novel Into the Wild. Krakauer educates himself of McCandless’ story by talking to the people that knew Chris the best. These people were not only his family but the people he met on the roads of his travels- they are the ones who became his road family.
BUCK, A POWERFUL DOG, half St. Bernard and half sheepdog, lives on Judge Miller’s estate in California’s Santa Clara Valley. He leads a comfortable life there, but it comes to an end when men discover gold in the Klondike region of Canada and a great demand arises for strong dogs to pull sleds. Buck is kidnapped by a gardener on the Miller estate and sold to dog traders, who teach Buck to obey by beating him with a club and, subsequently, ship him north to the Klondike.
Cheryl Strayed gained strength through the long grieving process from the loss of her mother. The unexpected, horrid journey on the Pacific Crest Trail has changed her character in a way that she can now bear living another day in life; she now is married with two kids. The wilderness taught her how to find her own inner self-actualization. From heroin abuse to multiple sexual encounters, Strayed was finding different paths to feel something within her again; to feel alive. “I get to do this. I get to waste my life. I get to be junk” (Strayed 53). It took strength, motivation and determination to start working extra shifts to save up for the expense of the hiking equipments, to then quit her job, and set out on this “preposterous” journey to hike 1100 miles without realization of what she was really asking for.
The cowboys of the frontier have long captured the imagination of the American public. Americans, faced with the reality of an increasingly industrialized society, love the image of a man living out in the wilderness fending for himself against the dangers of the unknown. By the end of the 19th century there were few renegade Indians left in the country and the vast expanse of open land to the west of the Mississippi was rapidly filling with settlers.
As a student in Introduction to Literature I have had the opportunity to engage in reading and writing from the books listed: The Call of the Wild, Harry Potter and the sorcerer’s, and I know why the cage bird sings. These books have taught me that a message could be delivered in many perspectives. I have learned that a book is more than a story being told. It is up to the reader imagination to take then to that magical place. From these books I have choose to challenge myself to critic The Call of the wild by Jack London. It is an outstanding book that could be a positive feature for fifth grader to college students. The best thing about this book is that your view will change as you get older and wiser. For example I read this book in sixth grade and then again as a third year student and my views have change. Presently this book informs me that one’s life may end up different then the life they started. Also you change depends on the world that surrounds them such as people, environment, and life experiences just to name a few. I believe that The Call of the Wild is one of the best books written, because it educate the readers that throughout life you will continue to learn and be thought. In this paper I will explain Social Darwinist and the terms, technique I us to base the true agenda, and agree my thesis represented by quotes from the book. I will tackle number 3 for this take home midterm.
The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line - that was the woods on t'other side; you couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away-trading-scows, and such things; and long black streaks-rafts ... and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up.
Chris McCandless and Buck serve as examples of the archetype of the wild through their experiences of leaving where they feel most comfortable and answering the call of the wild. They show that each experience is inimitable because the wild is unique to every individual. For Buck, the wild is a place outside of civilization and his dependence on man, where the external threats of nature exist and he must prove himself as a true animal with instincts for survival. In McCandless' case, the place outside of civilization is actually an escape from his fears because the wild for him is in relationships, where the threat of intimacy exists and he must learn to trust others for happiness. This is because for each of us, the wild is what we fear, a place outside of our comfort zone and, as McCandless' experience shows, not necessarily a physical place. To render to the call of the wild we must leave everything that makes us feel protected, and we must make ourselves completely vulnerable to the wild. McCandless and Buck show that in order to successfully respond to the call of the wild we must relinquish control and drop our guards, until ultimately the fear subsides and we find peace with ourselves as well as with our environments.
I was nearly finished with my cigarette when behind me I heard the sound of something moving through the grass. I quickly but quietly extinguished my cigarette in the palm of my gloved hand and turned around. My eyes scanned to see exactly where the sounds had come from, and I only hoped that the smell of my cigarette hadn't spooked whatever was walking behind me. After about ten seconds I saw the ears of a deer sticking up above the tall grass about thirty yards from me. I slowly reached to my right to remove my bow from a hook in the tree. The deer was now moving towards me through the long grass, and behind it was another deer. I knew that the rut (the peak mating season) was well under way and this second deer may be a buck. After what seemed like an eternity the second deer came into view. It was a buck, as I had thought, but it was bigger than any deer I had ever seen.
I looked up at the black sky. I hadn't intended to be out this late. The sun had set, and the empty road ahead had no streetlights. I knew I was in for a dark journey home. I had decided that by traveling through the forest would be the quickest way home. Minutes passed, yet it seemed like hours and days. The farther I traveled into the forest, the darker it seemed to get. I was very had to even take a breath due to the stifling air. The only sound familiar to me was the quickening beat of my own heart, which felt as though it was about to come through my chest. I began to whistled to take my mind off the eerie noises I was hearing. In this kind of darkness I was in, it was hard for me to believe that I could be seeing these long finger shaped shadows that stretched out to me. I had this gut feeling as though something was following me, but I assured myself that I was the only one in the forest. At least I had hoped that I was.