The narrator was eight years old and her brother was three when her mother died. They were raised by their father, maternal grandfather, and an old ranch hand named Chubb on land fenced in order to keep other people's cattle out and the wilderness in. On some nights, she recalls, the two children would go running through the moonlight, “through owl-call and cricket-chirp and frog-bellow… There is no other way to explain it: we'd run until Mother was alive. It was like blowing air on a fire, bringing coals to flame. We'd run until we ignited… in her presence. Something was out there - something just beyond” (104). This brings us back to the image of the mother’s body being “planted”. The narrator also goes on to say that her “Mother returned to the land” (119). Nature is always a balance between life and death. Nature supports the life of an organism and, once that life is extinguished, the vessel of that life is reused to support the life of another organism. Such is the circle of life. After being “planted” in the ground, the mother literally became one with nature again. She helps the grass and trees grow that feed the cattle and house the bird. She supports the life of a flower that feeds an insect that feeds a frog. Everything is connected. “The Stars, the Sky, the Wilderness” appears to be about the life of a woman who grew up on the plains of Texas, but that is not the main focus of the novella. While the reader thinks that they are reading about the narrator’s life and experiences, they instead are focused on the nature and its connections with the narrator. The land and its inhabitants are important to the narrator’s life, and thus, the only conflict that Bass makes apparent to the reader is one that involves the endang... ... middle of paper ... ... as well. Stories can be used to captivate, communicate, and motivate. Stories are an integral part of our lives and are part of what define us as individuals. They serve to remind us of our past and teach us important lessons. As Hilary Mantel said in Wolf Hall, “Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.” It does not matter what the subject is or what the idea being conveyed is. All that matters is that it makes a good story. Works Cited Bass, Rick. The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Print. Cronon, William. "A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative." The Journal of American History 78.4 (1992): 1347. Print. Spirn, Anne Whiston. "Restoring Mill Creek: Landscape Literacy, Environmental Justice and City Planning and Design." Landscape Research 30.3 (2005): 395-413. Print.
Shurbutt, Sylvia Bailey. “Burning Bright: The Language and Storytelling of Appalachia and the Poetry and Prose of Ron Rash.” Shepard University. 2011. Web. 10 Nov. 2013.
Cashin, Edward J., ed. A wilderness still the cradle of nature: frontier Georgia. Savannah: Beehive, 1994. Print.
Purpose and effect of storytelling/The art and desire of storytelling has been in our blood since the beginning of creatures, humans and animals alike.
Rielly, Edward J. “Out of the Landscape of His Past.” Journal of American Cultuer 16.3 (1993): 47.
King, Thomas. “Let Me Entertain You. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. 61-89. Print.
1. Growing up we all heard stories. Different types of stories, some so realistic, we cling onto them farther into our lives. Stories let us see and even feel the world in different prespectives, and this is becuase of the writter or story teller. We learn, survive and entertain our selves using past experiences, which are in present shared as stories. This is why Roger Rosenblatt said, "We are a narrative species."
Davidson, James W., and Michael B. Stoff. The American Nation. Eaglewood Cliffs: Paramount Communications, 1995.
Brands, H. W.. American Stories: A History of the United States. 2nd ed. Boston: Pearson Education, 2012. Print.
Stories are an integral part of growing up because stories create an escape from reality for children and adults as they grow up, furthermore there are
The purpose of storytelling is mainly to teach a lesson. These stories that are told have a character who does something wrong, then something
stories and the beginning trials and errors of our species. The readers are told stories of a great
the stories create immersion in the game for the players and the players and those who play the game can start sharing some of their funny experiences in the game with people in their own life as well as
Pizer, Donald. Dictionary of Literary Biography Volume 12 : American Realists and Naturalists . Boston: The Gale Group, 1982.
Stories are not merely made up works of fiction for one-time consumption. They are nuanced compositions that are meant to be pored over, full of hidden meaning and implication that can be applied to real life situations. The reasoning behind the telling of these stories is perhaps even more important, as storytelling has several functions for which it has been used for thousands of years. In both contemporary and historic societies, storytelling has had a significant impact on human life, often functioning as an outlet for emotions, a way to fulfill the innate human desire to create and unearth meaning in everyday life, and as a means of connecting with an audience through a larger message.
Stories are our essence of life. They grow and change with us. They allow us to reconstruct the pas, and put our slant on things. They don’t’ have make sense, and they don’t all have to be fact. That’s what kind of story this is.