"You done heard it the way we know it, sitting on our porches and shelling June peas, quieting the midnight cough of a baby, taking apart the engine of a car--you done heard it without a single living soul really saying a word" (Naylor 10).
Hilton Head Island is more that just another town growing by the sea. It is an island that has a past similar to a place Gloria Naylor writes about in her book Mama Day; this place I'm talking about is called Willow Springs. Hilton Head is a modern evolution, an island that is ever concerned with preserving the fertile land and the beauty, which was fought for long ago. The island that Gloria Naylor writes about, Willow Springs is neither a part of Georgia or South Carolina. It was an island that was uniformly inhabited by descendents of slaves and is uniquely set apart from the rest of the world. It was a community that was kept alive through oral tradition of collective memory. Both Willow Springs and Hilton Head are place where history and nature are inextricably mixed.
Willow Springs' inhabitants were exempt from the laws of both Georgia and South Carolina, and they were free to govern themselves as they saw fit. They were an entirely a self-sufficient community and have only a worn out bridge built back in the 1920's that connected the island to the mainland. This island seemed to have a disregard for a "normal" conduct in society. Although the island was considered a loving family, not one person was considered more significant than the other; everyone mattered whether they wanted to or not. To give a sense of how small the island was Ophelia-or better known as Cocoa- made a statement about how there were more pages in the Sunday Times of the New York's help wanted section than there were in the telephone directory in Willow Springs (Naylor 18). It was a place where everyone knew about everything going on in each other's lives. The residents of Willow Springs built the roofs over their heads, made the roads that they traveled on, and the bridge that connected to the main land. When the realtors came over the bridge to try and buy some of the land and "develop" it Mama Day set a sturdy foot down and was unwilling to let the developers come over and build on her land; she didn't want a thing to change about the island because she was quite happy with the way that it was.
Although the silence had no tangible effect in the beginning, it permeated the thoughts of the citizens as the length of the silences grew. When people realized the calming effects of the silence, reliance upon it grew, ultimately creating a political movement in which silence became effectively mandatory. The obsession with silence grew, until noise gained value through scarcity, turning the obsession towards itself. Intervals of noise replaced the intervals of silence, growing in length each time as well. Over time, noise became the major melody of time again, and the silence was all but forgotten in the din of life. Yet in the pattern and intervals of silence and noise, a cryptographer finds a message in morse code, “LISTENWELL” (Brockmeier
Following the American Civil War, the use of railroads for trade was booming. The Detroit, Michigan and Windsor Ontario border, separated by the Detroit River, was a center for railroads at the time with the Michigan Central and Great Western railroads operating on their respective sides of the border. In the early 20th century, the railroads used ferries to transport shipments across the river. As production and population grew, so did the shipments of goods, specifically grain. An increasing delay in the supply and demand of agricultural products was hurting the economy for both farmers and consumers. In 1909, a tunnel was constructed to transport trains under the Detroit River but the need for a bridge with mass transportation abilities was still needed. This led to the construction of the Ambassador Bridge in 1929, funded by financier Joseph Bower and engineered and constructed by the heralded Pittsburgh McClintic-Marshall Company. No one could have ever foreseen the societal and economical impact the decision to engineer a bridge would have.
Many plantation owners were men that wanted their plantation ran in a particular manner. They strove to have control over all aspects of their slaves’ lives. Stephanie Camp said, “Slave holders strove to create controlled and controlling landscapes that would determine the uses to which enslaved people put their bodies.” Mary Reynolds was not a house slave, but her master’s daughter had a sisterly love towards her, which made the master uncomfortable. After he sold Mary he had to buy her back for the health of his daughter. The two girls grew apart after the daughter had white siblings of her own. Mary wa...
She picked Maine because of the demographics, largely white. Her first home in Maine was at a Motel 6, which became her base to find a job. Her search for jobs started with warehouse jobs, nursing, manufacturing and Good Will. She starts a job as a maid at $6. 65 an hour and a weekend job at a nursing home at $7 an hour. She found her nursing home duties were well entwined with her past at Jerry’s. However she found the maid work to be grueling and experiences the true nature of a low wage job. People are treated like objects and not humans. During her stint as a maid she found out what the lives of working wage people are really about, they have serious health problems however they continue to work. Her experiment in Maine allowed her to understand the struggles that many Americans go
A plantation can be more than a place for work, it can be a center for life. Eudora Welty proves this in her novel Delta Wedding. Welty uses the Fairchild’s to show the importance of family. But she also narrows it down and focuses more on the immediate family. Even the members that have died hold importance.
The story begins by illustrating the Hamilton’s Southern rural society, which seems eerily similar to the slave society that existed almost forty years before. Berry is initially described, as “one of the many slaves who upon their accession to freedom had not left the South, but had wondered from place to place in their own beloved section, waiting, working, and struggling to rise with its rehabilitated fortunes” (1). This description of the “beloved” South is strange considering that Berry, along with many other Southern blacks, had been enslaved here for generations and treated more like animals than human beings. This makes it apparent that while the South has been extremely limiting and unchanged since the Civil War, it still provides comfort and a sense of home for these unfortunate post-antebellum African Americans. It also...
...ve Indians. From the copious use of examples in Winthrop's work, and the concise detail in Rowlandson's narrative, one can imbibe such Puritans values as the mercy of God, place in society, and community. Together, these three elements create a foundation for Puritan thought and lifestyle in the New World. Though A Model of Christian Charity is rather prescriptive in its discussion of these values, Rowlandson's captivity narrative can certainly be categorized as descriptive; this pious young woman serves as a living example of Winthrop's "laws," in that she lives the life of a true Puritan. Therefore, both 17th century works are extremely interrelated; in order to create Winthrop's model community, one must have faith and closely follow Puritan ideals, as Rowlandson has effectively done in her A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.
Even the murders and the beating of African American turned black citizen away from the south and move out because of Jim Crow laws. Isabel Wilkerson use three unique stories to go into detail about the Great Migration. Ida Mae Gladney is one of the three stories, Gladney left Mississippi for Chicago in 1937. She left sharecropping and moved north, but the main reason that Gladney left because a cousin was attacked and almost killed over a theft that he had not committed. Soon after Ida Mae Gladney husband came home and told her “This is the last crop there were making” then left for the north. For the next story George Starling also another character in the book that had hard times in the south and moved to the north and have reasons. Starling is located in Florida and come from one-star motels. A place where people is overworked, pool hustlers, bootleggers, and fake doctors. Also Starling was great student, but had to find work and left school to start work. George finally got a job in Florida as a citrus picker and got into some trouble for speaking for one of he’s co-workers that was being mistreated. Also Starling started asking for better
{It came whispering from the springs of the still-swaying rocking horse, and even the horse, bending his wooden, champing head, heard it. The big doll, sitting so pink and smirking in her new pram, could hear it quite plainly, and seemed to be smirking all the more self-consciously because of it. The foolish puppy, too, that took the place of the teddy-bear, he was looking so extraordinarily foolish for no other reason but that he heard the secret whisper all over the house: “There must be more money!” Yet no body ever said it out aloud. The whisper was everywhere, and therefore no one spoke it. Just as no one ever says: “We are breathing!” in spite of the fact that breath is coming and going all the time.} Pg 236 paragraph 6.
Malaga Island’s population was predominantly African-American. It was a poor community founded by former slaves. The narrow-minded people of Phippsburg were prejudiced in the first place, and they believed that African Americans do not deserve the same rights as they do. The generations that came before them have placed this racial stereotype into their brain. Secondly,
Bethea, Arthur F. "Carver’s ‘Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?’" The Explicator. Spring 1998: 132-134.
Sapphira Wade is a character that Naylor uses as a tool to immediately present the theme of multiple perspectives. Sapphira, who was brought to the island of Willow Springs as a slave in 1819, is at the top of the Day family tree. Through time her legacy had transformed to the point that her true identity became more of a matter of opinion than a matter of fact. Even the simple matter of the appearance of her skin becomes so distorted through the time span of a few generations that each member of the Willow Springs community describes her complexion differently. In regards to her supernatural attributes, members of the community portray Sapphira as being able to “walk through a lightning storm without being touched” and “use the heat of lightning to start the kindling going under her medicine pot: depending upon which of [them] takes a mind to her” (Naylor 3). It is up to the reader to decide which viewpoints to accept about Sapphira. These varying views on Sapphira’s identity provide the reader with immediate evidence of the theme of multiple tr...
...11). Sound Upon Sound: The Conversation. [Online] Available from Sound on Sight: http://www.soundonsight.org/sound-upon-sound-the-conversation/ [Accessed 05 February 2012]
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid presents the hypothetical story of a tourist visiting Antigua, the author’s hometown. Kincaid places the reader in the shoes of the tourist, and tells the tourist what he/she would see through his/her travels on the island. She paints a picturesque scene of the tourist’s view of Antigua, but stains the image with details of issues that most tourists overlook: the bad roads, the origin of the so-called native food, the inefficiency of the plumbing systems in resorts, and the glitches in the health care system. Kincaid was an established writer for The New Yorker when she wrote this book, and it can be safely assumed that majority of her readers had, at some point in their lives, been tourists. I have been a tourist so many times before and yet, I had never stopped to consider what happens behind the surface of the countries I visit until I read this essay. Kincaid aims to provoke her readers; her style of writing supports her goal and sets both her and her essay apart. To the reader, it sounds like Kincaid is attacking the beautiful island, pin-pointing the very things that we, as tourists, wish to ignore. No tourist wants to think about faeces from the several tourists in the hotel swimming alongside them in the oceans, nor do they want to think about having accidents and having to deal with the hospital. It seems so natural that a tourist would not consider these, and that is exactly what Kincaid has a problem with.
In the story “The Tell-Tale Heart” the narrator says, “I foamed –I raved –I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder –louder – louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! –no, no! They heard! –they suspected! –they knew! –they were making a mockery of my horror! –this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony. Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! –and now –again! –hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!” in the story “The Cask of Amontillado” The narrator says in paragraph three, “Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack, but in the matter of old wines he was sincere.” The saying he “was a quack” implies that Fortunato is a madman or so called crazy. In the story “The Fall of the House of Usher” Roderick Usher says, “Not hear it? –yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long –long –long –many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it –yet I dared not –oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! –I dared not –I dared not speak!” the sound Roderick Usher is talking about is Madeline Usher moving around in a casket that he put her in because he thought she was dead. He thought she was dead because she didn’t have a