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Metaphor Narative Essay
Metaphor Narative Essay
Metaphor Narative Essay
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The Midwest: land of TV news anchors, housewives, and dreary, never-ending fields. In her memoir “The Horizontal World”, Debra Marquart uses interesting rhetorical techniques to detail this vast, distinctly uninteresting plain. By using unusual figurative language, outside examples to solidify her points, and a geometric extended metaphor, she paints a picture of perhaps the most boring place on Earth. Throughout the excerpt, Marquart utilizes unconventional imagery to solidify the dreariness of the plains. In the very first paragraph, she describes North Dakota’s interstate as “one long-held pedal steel guitar note”. While also alluding to the country music ever prevalent in the Midwest, she personifies exactly how it feels to pass through such a bland area: an endless boredom and monotony, never punctuated by a new note to add to the song. Soon thereafter, she quotes a comedian as saying that the area “spawns both tornadoes and Republicans”. An interesting analogy that grabs the reader’s attention, when put in context with the descriptions of dullness that precede it, the quote imp...
Part I of A Sand County Almanac is devoted to the details of a single piece of land: Leopold’s 120-acre farmed-out farmstead in central Wisconsin, abandoned as a farm years before because of the poor soil from which the "sand counties" took their nickname. It was at this weekend retreat, Leopold says, "that we try to rebuild, with shovel and axe, what we are losing elsewhere". Month by month, Leopold leads the reader through the progression of the seasons with descriptions of such things as skunk tracks, mouse economics, the songs, habits, and attitudes of dozens of bird species, cycles of high water in the river, the timely appearance and blooming of several plants, and the joys of cutting one’s own firewood.
One example to depict Los Angeles as a frontier town is how “Other sidewalk booths, like those ordinarily used as dispensaries of hot doughnuts and coffee, offered wild-cat mining shares, oil stock and real estate in some highly speculative suburb” (29). This shows the developmental activity in Los Angeles due to the real estate, the oil stock, and the wild-cat mining shares. Many people come to Los Angeles hoping to become rich and strike gold. Los Angeles is a frontier town that has a plethora of oil. In Adamic’s “Laughing in the Jungle,” he characterizes some of LA’s citizens as seeing “a tremendous opportunity to enrich themselves beyond anything they could have hoped for ten or even five years ago, and they mean to make the most of it” (52). This characterization of LA’s citizens is another way of Adamic depicting LA as a frontier town due to the exploitative activity that he describes. Another example of how Adamic portrays LA as a frontier town is because “Los Angeles is America. A jungle. Los Angeles grew up, suddenly, planlessly, under the stimuli of the adventurous spirit of millions of people and the profit motive” (54). Adamic clearly depicts the exploitative activity associated with LA as a frontier town. Another author who illustrates the exploitative activity to establish LA as a frontier town is Upton Sinclair. In
Capote opens up his piece with a wide-angled description of an ordinary village in Western Kansas. The reader is faced with an “advertisement [that] has been dark for several years,” “irrelevant sign[s],” and “a gaunt woman.” This grim description points out the unfamiliarity of this isolated village. It paints
In Annie Proulx’s work Close Range she tells stories that emphasize the rugged landscape of Wyoming and how it has shaped the characters in her short stories. In the short story “A Lonely Coast” Proulx uses the Narrator and her friend Josanna Skiles, as the models for what life is like for a single woman in the rugged, masculine, male-dominated culture of Wyoming. Josanna’s boyfriend Elk functions as the personification of the state of Wyoming, pushing Josanna to her limits until she snaps, just like the landscape of Wyoming pushes its residents to the point that they either leave or die there.
Both passages concern the same topic, the Okefenokee Swamp. Yet, through the use of various techniques, the depictions of the swamp are entirely different. While Passage 1 relies on simplicity and admiration to publicize the swamp, Passage 2 uses explicitness and disgust to emphasize the discomfort the swamp brings to visitors.
In “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop, the narrator attempts to understand the relationship between humans and nature and finds herself concluding that they are intertwined due to humans’ underlying need to take away from nature, whether through the act of poetic imagination or through the exploitation and contamination of nature. Bishop’s view of nature changes from one where it is an unknown, mysterious, and fearful presence that is antagonistic, to one that characterizes nature as being resilient when faced against harm and often victimized by people. Mary Oliver’s poem also titled “The Fish” offers a response to Bishop’s idea that people are harming nature, by providing another reason as to why people are harming nature, which is due to how people are unable to view nature as something that exists and goes beyond the purpose of serving human needs and offers a different interpretation of the relationship between man and nature. Oliver believes that nature serves as subsidence for humans, both physically and spiritually. Unlike Bishop who finds peace through understanding her role in nature’s plight and acceptance at the merging between the natural and human worlds, Oliver finds that through the literal act of consuming nature can she obtain a form of empowerment that allows her to become one with nature.
Turner, Frederick J. The Significance of the Frontier in American History. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1966. Print.
The Western portion of the United States includes thirteen states that are home to around 80,000,000 Americans, yet it remains one of the most sparsely settled regions in the country (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). In a sense, the American West is the closest thing left to a “frontier” in the modernized United States. One can travel to Montana and become immersed in a world not dissimilar to that of their forefathers, just as easily as one could travel to California, widely considered to be the epicenter of growth and modernization in the States. With Silicon Valley and Yellowstone all in one region, there is a unique sense of space presented within the West that is unattainable from the American North, East, or South. For instance, a trip to New York City may be fairly comparable to a trip to Pittsburgh, but a trip to San Francisco as opposed to Rapid City provides an entirely different cultural experience. If the West was just a replica of the American East, Kerouac’s On the Road would have never come to be. The wide disparity among spaces in the New West is a main reason behind the effectiveness of Coupland’s Generation X. Without the spaces of the American West the comedic genius of Portlandia would be nonexistent!
In the movie A Beautiful Mind, the description of schizophrenia is shown in many accurate ways. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) states that the symptoms of this disease are delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, or unorganized or catatonic behavior. People with schizophrenia are also socially withdrawn and awkward when in contact with other people. These traits of the sickness are shown in detail throughout the movie by way of the character John Nash’s struggle with the disease. Nash is a very intelligent professor but believes he is working with the government to foil a Soviet attack plot. Nash eventually goes onto win a Nobel Prize for one of his theories. The movie shows the effects of schizophrenia on not only one man, but also on the friends and family of the ill individual. Treatment is discussed but not to any great length due to him ignoring the doctor’s orders on medication. Overall the movie shows some very prevalent traits of the disease in great detail during certain parts of the film.
In Marquart’s “The Horizontal World”, descriptions of North Dakota occur within the passage to emphasize a potential in her hometown. Marquart uses analogy to give the audience a relatable idea, “Devoid of rises and curves in places that will feel like one long-held pedal steel guitar note” (Marquart, L.3-L.5). By having the audience, United States citizens excluded from North Dakota, imagine an empty, long road makes people curious as to what other possibilities the region obtains. Since North Dakota does not attract huge amounts of tourists like Los Angeles, California or New York City, attention to this simple state could have some appeal. A new concept, a significance in simplicity, can attract Americans who are over consumed in busy tourist attractions; the new wave in modern times. With beautiful nature and barren spaces, the author makes the midwest more engaging and alluring.
“I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen, is a story about a mother's struggle to balance the demands of raising children and having to work to make ends meet during the Great Depression. The story’s primary focus is on the relationship between the narrator, a mother, and her first child, Emily. Throughout the story, the narrator reflects on the decisions and mistakes she made while raising Emily. The narrator was detached from Emily almost completely during her younger years, but she desires an emotional connection to her, like she has with her other children. She also wants Emily to have a better life than she had.
Spirituals: African American spirituals are a key contribution to the creation of the initial genre of jazz. African Americans used spirituals during the earliest turmoil of slavery. These spirituals were used as songs to sing during labor and an initial way of communication for the Underground Railroad. These African American folk sounds mixed with gospel hymns were sun fused with instruments such as the harmonicas, banjos, and other instruments that could primarily be found. This initial form of the music started to separate itself from the gospel rendition. This mixture of different styles of music fused and gave birth to such things as minstrel shows, ragtime, and other forms of music. The most important that spirituals truly helped develop, was Jazz. Spirituals were the first true form of Negro expression in the form of music. Marshall W. Steams, Professor of English Literature at Hunter College states that “The spiritual was created out of nowhere by a sort of spontaneous combustion of Negro’s genius” (125). This mixture of hymns and instrumental instruction took form into one of the most versatile genres known to date, Jazz.
While I was reading the novel Beloved, I noticed several testimonies throughout the book, one of them being equality. The novel tells a tragic story about slavery and it is often pointed out that the color of one’s skin determines how he or she will be treated throughout life. The slaves in the book are in constant battle to survive among the white men; however, survival is not always the best things for the slaves.
In Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the author uses foreshadowing to lead up to the unexpected twist of fate that the family finds when meeting the story’s antagonist “The Misfit.” As columnist in English Language Notes David Piwinski explains, “The murders of the grandmother and her family by the Misfit come as no surprise to the attentive reader, since O’Connor’s story is filled with incidents and details that ominously foreshadow the family’s catastrophic fate” (73). The following passage will explore O’Connor’s usage of foreshadowing in “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”
Forensic science plays a vital role in the criminal justice system by aiding an investigator’s case with scientific information based on the analysis of the evidence. Each crime scene is unique in its own way and using the evidence collected, forensic experts try to piece it together. An expert is someone who has had enough education, training, and experience to testify to the matter at hand (Harmon 2010). Unlike other witnesses in a case who testify based on first hand knowledge, the expert witness is not required to have firsthand knowledge of a particular case, and in fact, often does not. Rather, the expert witness testifies to the meaning of the facts (Whitcomb et al. 2005). Each forensic expert typically has a background in another scientific discipline, such as biology, physics, chemistry, etc. An expert with a biology background may work with DNA; chemistry may work in toxicology; and physics in blood spatter trajectories. Working separately on their own respected evidence, an investigator is able to collect all their data and set up a case (National Institute of Justice 2013). Usually, these experts will be hired by either the prosecution or defense in a criminal trial, or by a plaintiff or defendant in a civil litigation. The role of the expert witness exists in variants: between criminal and civil courts as well as the prosecution and defense.