A Sacred Place
A Sacred Place A sanctuary is a sacred place where a person can feel safe and find peace within oneself. It is the theme of sanctuary that relates Irene Zabytko’s “Home Soil”, Raymond Carver’s “A Small, Good Thing” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, to one another.
In Irene Zabytko’s “Home Soil”, the narrator tato talks about the harsh experiences he had in his past. He talks about how he was forced by the German’s to go out and herd up the crowds in the streets, “...one of them shoved a gun into my hands and pushed me out into the streets”(Zabytko 492).
Tato finds some excitement and thrill in the power he has over these crowds of people, “I too began to yell at people and held the rifle against my chest, and I was very much aware of how everyone responded to my authority” (Zabytko 493).
One moment he especially remembers when he held that kind of power was when he bullied a young girl, “I ran up and pushed her. I pushed her hard, she almost fell. I kept pushing her...” (Zabytko 493). That experience on what he had done to that poor girl he remembers so clearly and regrets very deeply. He knew he sent her off to be tortured and eventually killed, “I should have shot her. I should have spared her from whatever she had to go through. I doubt she survived” (Zabytko 493). With the memory of that experience with the girl and what he had done to her still in his memory today makes him try to find his sacred place where he can find his inner peace, “I don’t die. Instead, I go to the garden” (Zabytko 493). The garden relaxes him and gives him the kind of sanctuary he needs to help keep his sanity from his memories of the hard times he experienced when he was younger. In Raymond Carver’s, “A Small, Good Thing” Ann wants to find another person she can communicate with and find that special friendship bond with. She first tries to find that bond with the baker, “There were no pleasantries between them, just the minimum
In Irene Zabytko’s “Home Soil”, the narrator tato talks about the harsh experiences he had in his past. He talks about how he was forced by the German’s to go out and herd up the crowds in the streets, “...one of them shoved a gun into my hands and pushed me out into the streets”(Zabytko 492).
Tato finds some excitement and thrill in the power he has over these crowds of people, “I too began to yell at people and held the rifle against my chest, and I was very much aware of how everyone responded to my authority” (Zabytko 493).
One moment he especially remembers when he held that kind of power was when he bullied a young girl, “I ran up and pushed her. I pushed her hard, she almost fell. I kept pushing her...” (Zabytko 493). That experience on what he had done to that poor girl he remembers so clearly and regrets very deeply. He knew he sent her off to be tortured and eventually killed, “I should have shot her. I should have spared her from whatever she had to go through. I doubt she survived” (Zabytko 493). With the memory of that experience with the girl and what he had done to her still in his memory today makes him try to find his sacred place where he can find his inner peace, “I don’t die. Instead, I go to the garden” (Zabytko 493). The garden relaxes him and gives him the kind of sanctuary he needs to help keep his sanity from his memories of the hard times he experienced when he was younger. In Raymond Carver’s, “A Small, Good Thing” Ann wants to find another person she can communicate with and find that special friendship bond with. She first tries to find that bond with the baker, “There were no pleasantries between them, just the minimum