Human Nature through Ron Hansen “Wickedness” In the winter of 1888, in a small town in Nebraska, a massive and unexpected storm paralyzed the community without warning. Humans, animals, agricultural life forms experienced massive destruction. Ron Hansen, in his short story called “Wickedness,” describes the brutality of the storm, and it’s affect on individual lives.…
Following the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, Chris Rose through his book 1 Dead in Attic discusses the life in New Orleans, and the peoples attitude towards life. Unlike many unfortunate individuals, Rose was one of the lucky ones who's home and belongings were not destroyed, after the hurricane. Unfortunately, not all individuals and families in New Orleans had the same fortune . Many were left homeless, starving, and with the loss of their loved ones. Much of what occurred after Hurricane Katrina in the city of New Orleans as described by Rose is astonishing.…
It was a cold day in Summertonville, TN. Summertonville was a very rural area. Whenever looked outside, you were surrounded by trees. In the back woods of Summertonville lived the Winkledomes. The Winkledomes were a fairly poor family.…
Have you felt that your home was a beautiful and safe but then you started to realize that it was a beautiful heartbreaking and complicated place ? Well that’s how Jacqueline Woodson felt. As we grow and change, so do our perspectives on a variety of things that we experience in life. The central theme in the story When A Southern Town Broke A Heart by Jacqueline Woodson is that as you get older the way you see the world changes.…
The weather was not intrigued by Cathy Hillman’s birth on November 8, 1920, but everybody else was. It snowed that day, the first and the harshest snowfall of the year. Nobody was prepared for the snow just like nobody was prepared for Cathy’s arrival. The wind felt like icicles taking over anybody that stepped outside into a foot of snow. Across the road, there were a pile of brand new Ford Model T’s aligned off the road, waiting for somebody to arrive to take care of them.…
It is the story of an overconfident meteorologist named Isaac Cline, and his experience of the devastating hurricane that struck Galveston Texas, in 1900 leaving more than 6,000 people dead in it’s destruction. This hurricane occurs after Cline stated that a hurricane…
In the short story “Safe” by Cherylene Lee reveals the narrator’s divulgence of her experience with “true danger”. During the reading, we find that she and her brother live with fearfully careful parents while, ironically, the brother dives from great heights for a living after engulfing his body in flames. He is the narrator’s first example of peril. Paragraph six especially exemplifies the naivety of our narrator, clarifies her misunderstandings of danger, and establishes her warped expectations of consequence. She finds revelation in this example and learns from her brother instead of being conditioned to fear the future.…
Author, Joan Didion, wrote to the Los Angeles notebook about the events of a Santa Ana to describe to others that had not been there what develops. Within her text, Didion writes using person pronouns such as “we, I, and us” to include herself with the people who experienced the storm first hand. She also uses colloquialisms including “Route 66” and “Cajon/San Gorgonio Passes,”information only people that live in or have visited that area would know. Her explicit audience is to people that live in the California but may not have experienced the storm themselves while her implicate audience would be to the people that had not been in the storm. As Didion describes the strange occurrences that happen in the preparation of a Santa Ana, she works…
Throughout the short story “The Weather” by Deborah Willis there are many present themes, perhaps the most common and recurring one is how people can affect each other and their relationships, and how fast they can change between “passion and sweetness and sadness.” The ever changing relationships between the three main characters Edith, Braden, Rae and even Nina, the non-existent mother, are a constant drama throughout the story. The changes between Edith and her father is ever-changing, in the beginning her hostility towards her father is increasingly present when Braden, her father recalls how she said to her mother after the storm “Even then, she used that cold tone. “He’s here, mom.…
Ten: Bedlam in Berlin The silence in the basement was disrupted by air raid sirens which roared out in the distance. Anna gritted her teeth and rehearsed acting brave and Willy sat still, not wanting to move. They could hear the deafening bombs being dropped from planes overhead and carpeting the city. The air in the basement became thick, and they, both began to cough and gasp for air.…
At 5:30 AM, the young, naive, Jenny Drpich is all dressed up finally ready to leave her home and head to her job for the first time. On her way, she grabbed a copy of West Australian newspaper, a leftover of cinnamon bun from last night and a freshly brewed cup of Long Black Arabica. The placidness of her home is unwieldy; the constant sound of the dead air seems remind her of pure elation of her little farmhouse in upper Swan Valley. These reminiscing values seem to ponder in her mind as she heads out of the driveway. It was a heinous drive from her house to the suburb.…
Being forced to abandon a safe haven can cause one to hopelessly cling to the memories created there. In Gerda Klein’s memoir, All But My Life, she and her family are forced to leave their house. In this excerpt, she wanders throughout her garden for one last time. She then starts to reminisce about all the memories created there and realizes that her life will never be the same again, she has truly lost the innocence that her childhood once possessed. Through the use of concrete diction and juxtaposing imagery, Klein establishes a nostalgic yet sorrowful tone to illustrate how one can cling to their past yet cannot avoid the inevitable future, which causes them to see the world around them in a new light.…
No one likes to lose. Not one individual can find any pleasure in losing something that is dear to them. In Carolyn Smart’s poem “October” the speaker approaches their loss of the beauty of the summer as almost catastrophic. Their loss of the summer weather, the wildlife, and the scenery takes a toll on the speaker. However, in the last stanza of the poem they realize that they can cherish the memory of these moments of happiness, but cannot grieve their losses forever.…
The further they drive from the home, the calmer the storm becomes. The reader’s realization of what the storm is a symbol of becomes the metaphor and theme for the story – mental illness in the family. Throughout “The Stormchasers”, Adam Marek vividly describes the atmosphere outside…
In The Great Derangement, Amitav Ghosh begins by discussing that he intends this novel to be innovative in its environmental story telling. Instead of telling a fictional story with crazy superstorms, Ghosh wants to write about crazy superstorms that have actually occurring, killing scores of humans and impacting billions of dollars of damage. Ghosh wants to bring to light the great plight of peoples around the world from the effects of extreme natural disasters, rather than use the various disasters to tell a story. In recent years, people have been turning to museums and literature to learn more about the world and the effects that humans may have had on it.…