Ron Rash

As children, any one person can remember growing up and having many questions about the new world that they have encountered. So naturally, they would flock to the smartest people in the world to get answers to these questions, at the time, parents. But, as they aged and learned, whether it be from personal experience or schooling, it was understood that parents were not as intelligent as they were previously given credit for. Thus as they age, people become more rebellious and have the urge to reject many of the ideas given to them by someone without a degree, especially parents, simply by nature of being a teenager. Although, once succeeding past this point of rebellion, people learn that this way of close-mindedly ignoring parents isn’t …show more content…
In the literary piece, “Where the Map Ends,” Ron Rash demonstrates this very phenomenon. In the story, the two main characters, an older man near the age of sixty, and a younger one around seventeen, go through a series of trials where they are forced to make decisions to maintain their freedom on the run, and as it would be, the older man makes decisions based on his experience which are rejected by the youth in favor of haste, these decisions then return to create problems for the youth later in the text. Rash conveys the repercussions of haste by using hunger, fear, and gullibility to portray the fatal consequences of the youth’s …show more content…
With the farmer’s permission, the two men scavenge around the farm for food from the apple orchards and water from a nearby spring. While at the spring, the youth notices how crisp and cool the water tastes, which spurs a memory from his days working as a slave to the Colonel that used to own him. “The Colonel say it snows here anytime and when it do you won’t see no road nor nothing. Master Helm’s house boy run off last summer, the Colonel say they found him froze stiff as a poker, said the youth.” (Rash 95) “You believing that then you a chucklehead, Vitticus said.” (Rash 95) The memory that the younger fugitive describes, refers to the treacherous weather conditions of the area where the men are located and clearly strikes nervousness into the youth as the companions venture away from the relative safety that was the house of the man they once served. Vitticus, understanding that this was a false claim intended to scare the slaves into staying, corrects the youth’s gullibility and tells him that this was an idol threat, implying that he should not believe everything he hears, especially coming from a man who “owns” them. This gullibility shown by the youth was a direct result of his hastily made decision to believe the Colonel without pondering the legitimacy and credibility of the