Some similarities with Ike’s experience and Catherine experience on the dust bowl are, “They noticed something very strange: In the sky thousands of birds were frantically flying south. Hundreds of rabbits scampering across the ground. The animals seemed horrified.” Another similarity is “The prairies vanished, replaced by endless rows of crops.”…
In this work of non-fiction Timothy Egan expresses his wish for sounder government policy to avoid natural disasters. Egan’s The Worst Hard Time is a harrowing tale about farmers who decided to stay on the plains stretching across Texas’ panhandle, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Colorado during the major drought in the 1930’s. The disaster, known as the Dust Bowl, is largely regarded as a human caused problem. Egan, who is a national correspondent on environmental issues for the New York Times, expertly incorporates historical facts from the time with real accounts from those who stayed. Although Egan sees farming as the direct cause of the drought, winds, and dust, he portrays his characters as hardy entrepreneurs who were duped onto unsustainable…
Not everyone was affected by the Dust Storm in the same way. Thousands of Americans were forced off their land and lost their jobs, but those who worked in other types of jobs were not suffering in the same way. Al and Mae were surrounded by food and were clearly not hungry or else they would have eaten some of it. Families traveling west were starving; people were dying of malnutrition and other forms of neglect. This passage, and chapter, gave the reader a different perspective of the 1930s. The Joad’s story- their thoughts, feelings, and experiences- connected the reader and characters. Because of this connection, a reader can forget how others were experiencing and years; until this point, the world was only filled with despair. The restaurant…
Conversing amongst friends. Shopping at the mall. Buying a cup of coffee. These are acts of freedom. Every US citizen is granted freedom the day they are born. Freedom allows people to be themselves. What if these acts were taken away from US citizens? In the story The Chosen by Chaim Potok, Reuven and Danny are both Jewish boys growing up with different lives, Reuven’s more free and Danny’s more strict, Danny dreams of one day becoming a psychologist but is restricted due to him inheriting his father’s position of being the Reb. Nevertheless, this shows that the most prevalent theme in “The Chosen” is that one must follow their dream despite society, tradition, and relationships.…
“The House” by Kim Krupp Pepe is a selection about a girl and her memories of her old house as a child. The main idea is that she is grown up and will never experience the same memories as she once had, but she also cherishes her memories of the house that she once lived in as a child. For example, in the last paragraph, she states that “Now I’m always kind of torn between being sad because I feel like a child and yet knowing I am not and can never be again. Another part of me feels happy for having a place where all my past is stored and secreted away.”…
“He weighs the volume in his hand; this one book has been the center of the whirlwind. Then DRUMMOND notices the Bible, on the JUDGE’S bench. He picks up the Bible in his other hand; he looks from one volume to the other, balancing them thoughtfully, as if his hands were scales. He half-smiles, half-shrugs. Then DRUMMOND slaps the two books together and jams them in his briefcase, side by side. ) At the end of the trial, Henry Drummond finally learns to accept Darwinism with the Bible. He understands that they can exist together and that they don’t have to be exclusive. The lesson from the author is that Darwinism and the Bible should be equal and be treated fairly. Sometimes, there can’t be only one right side of the issue because people…
In Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo, Nigel Rothfels provides his insight on the primary purpose of a zoo. According to Rothfels an animal is just a consolation of people’s ideas. But even so, he discusses their historical record. The principal reason for a zoo is its aesthetic contribution to the current time. For example, Rothfels describes his encounter with viewing a beautiful liger, who was later put on display after being stuffed. However, due to the change in what viewer’s find aesthetic, the liger’s exhibit no longer remains. People find the zoo aesthetic when it is thought to be a safe place for the animals, protecting them from their dangerous habitat, rather than the idea being locked behind bars. The author compares…
Giles Blunt is a Canadian novelist born in Windsor, Ontario. Giles Blunt focuses his novels on psychological thrillers, which is a person suffering from a chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behaviour (dictionary.com). He is the author of the John Cardinal novels which include Forty Words for Sorrow and the Delicate Storm. This mystery series refers to detectives John Cardinal and Lise Delorme who investigate the murders that have been committed in the small town of Algonquin Bay. Giles Blunt writes his novels to engage the reader’s attention by giving his scandalous characters a psychotic profile. This essay will prove that Giles Blunt incorporates psychotic behavior as a theme in the way his characters are presented in his mystery novels Forty Words for Sorrow and the Delicate Storm. This will be proven through poor behavioral controls, impulsivity, lack of empathy, manipulative behavior, and the lack of remorse or guilt by which the characters act upon.…
For the next nine years, massive clouds of dust and dry soil swept across the nation, from Texas to Washington, DC, blackening skies, ruining farmland and leaving millions homeless. The dustbowl was by far the most catastrophic man made event in the United States. It is descried to us as it “Blew all night and still blowing almost black. It is a terrible feeling to be in this blackness. You don’t know what is going on outside and you imagine all kinds of things. It is so still, it just blows and blows but as if there was no wind, just rolling clouds of dust...”…
This was the first time I saw The Witch and the Cow, however, it is the second time I saw Teat Beat of Sex. My reaction to The Witch and the Cow was that it didn’t feel like a story. My expectations for animations are stories which I have broaden my views after Signe explained that she only saw the same type of films in Hollywood. This is like how I’m only exposed to a certain type of animation. Even though there were repetition of actions like the cow poop and chasing cows, I was waiting for a more relevant action for the story. It was very funny and creative because its a tiny witch in a pile of cow’s poop. There were many unexpected reactions like when the witch killed the cow and I was expecting blood, but instead there were millions of…
This article also makes light of the sever drought and mechanized agriculture that together, helped destroy the topsoil and killed native green plants that prevented erosion and created giant dust storms. The article made it seem like a good thing, pointing out that American farmers had gathered all the dust the nation would ever need. In reality these dust storms blew much of the dust away and created the “Dust Bowl” as the areas affected of Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, and Colorado were collectively called. The areas in which these storms raged had cattle dying on the range, 90 percent of the poultry dead and the milk cows drying up. It attempts to poke fun at a very sad, desperate time in which many American farmers lost what they had.…
The 1920’s was a horrible time for all, especially those from the midwest, and those farmers now had to use new and improved methods involving machines and new revolutions to increase the speed and growth of their extravagant crops. But now the damage is done, because World War 1 is over. Most thought this destruction was at an end and only good was to come, but in 1931 things took a turn for the worst and more devastation piled on from an era known as the “Dirty Thirties”. “The most visible evidence of how dry the 1930s became was the dust storm” (Overmiller). This is also more greatly known as the Dust Bowl. “The Dust Bowl got its name after Black Sunday, April 14, 1935”. (Overmiller). And from then on farmers realized no new/advanced technology could get them through this devastation period. Since…
The intriguing novel, To Kill A Mockingbird is written by the prestigious author Harper Lee. Lee has utilised the lifestyle and attitudes towards African-Americans" in the 1930's to create a novel which presents the reader with Lee's attitudes and values. The dominant reading of the novel is focused on the issues of racial prejudice, but there are also a number of other alternative and oppositional readings. Examples of this are the Marxist and feminist readings which can be applied to the text.…
The traditional South, it was something that Faulkner could not help but to put into his crazy and chaotic book. In The Sound and The Fury, William Faulkner involves the decline of the South through some tragic and humorous characters and events. From the chaos of Benjy’s mind to the obsessive mind of Quentin and even the money driven and arrogant mind of Jason, Faulkner shows us how the Compson family represents the decline of the South. Falkner, having lived through the early 1900’s and even through the 1920’s, shows how the male, female, and even entire family changed in the Age of Wonderful Nonsense.…
In a gothic novel, or story, the setting is exclusive to the plot. If a gothic story doesn’t have a great setting, the plot will not be as enthralling with a weak setting. A gothic setting must have dark elements and horrifying twists and turns to drive the story.…