A Walk in the Woods - Original Writing
The wood was enormous. It was dark and it was cold and I needed to get
home and quickly. I had had the strangest feeling all day that I was
being followed, and due to past experiences I knew that these strange
feelings often resulted in something much more. I wiped the sweat from
my brow and desperately and frantically tried to find my way in the
darkness of the wood. The spring foliage was so thick I could barely
see ten metres in any direction but I knew that I had to venture on to
safety. The ground beneath me was soft from last night’s rainfall and
dragged on my feet almost gluing them in place.
A snapping of a twig was all it took to make me freeze. I turned
around frenetically searching for whoever or whatever was nearby, but
I could hardly see in the sparseness of light. Almost immediately
after, there was a sudden thunderous noise in the distance which
instantaneously made me sprint off deeper into the woods - still
urgently searching for the clearing.
Branches were hitting me in all directions like convicts reaching out
beyond their bars. Trunks of trees seemed to press in on me from all
sides threatening to bar my way. I was constantly praying to God under
my breath for my safe arrival home but how could I possibly find my
way? I was panting heavily and a sharp, piercing stitch in my stomach
made me come to a stumbling, sweating halt.
I had come across the most beautiful lake and even in the darkness I
could witness its radiance. I kneeled down, cupped my hands together
and slowly and gratefully began to drink from the water. But it was
then I saw it. A sudden image of my body lying vulnerably at the
bottom of the lake which reminded me that I had to go, I had to get
home.
With this I took off once again almost falling over some entangled
roots.
April Henry doesn’t really give a whole lot of information, at the beginning of the book. Throughout the book, you learn about the characters, where the setting is, learn about the plot, and about the moral of the story.
"Children of the Forest" is a narrative written by Kevin Duffy. This book is a written testament of an anthropologist's everyday dealings with an African tribe by the name of the Mbuti Pygmies. My purpose in this paper is to inform the reader of Kevin Duffy's findings while in the Ituri rainforest. Kevin Duffy is one of the first and only scientists to have ever been in close contact with the Mbuti. If an Mbuti tribesman does not want to be found, they simply won't be. The forest in which the Mbuti reside in are simply too dense and dangerous for humans not familiar with the area to enter.
John Karkauer novel, Into the Wild displays a true life story about a young man by the name of Christopher McCandless, who creates a new life for himself by leaving civilization to live in the wilderness. The story displays how Christopher develops and matures throughout the story by prevailing harsh predicaments and learning valuable lessons on the way. Christopher’s character evolves by comprehending several new lessons and such as finding true pleasure, disregarding other people’s judgments, as well as realizing that material things are just material things and nothing else. All through the story, Christopher struggles to discover the true satisfaction in his life. Christopher struggles to choose what makes him truthfully content over what makes his parents glad. Christopher’s parents want him to attend law school, despite the fact that he wants to follow his passion to live in the northern wild. Christopher’s letter to his sister Carine says, “or that they think I’d actually let them pay for my law school if I was going to go….” (Krakauer.pg21). According to this quote it can be known that Christopher does not really feel any pleasure or happiness in wanting to go to law school. He finds his satisfaction with life on the road and experiences this because life on the road gives him endless possibilities and adventures every day. Christopher’s letter to Ron Franz goes as, “I’d like to repeat the advice I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin in boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt……Don’t settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon.”(Krakaur.pg56-57). The letter details the benefits of living a life in the wild such as the new adventures you face every day. Chris feels what actually happiness is, when he meets face to face with the wild. As he experiences the northern wild, he learns that true happiness doesn’t come from one source, but from various foundations in a person’s life. Chris penned a brief note, which says, “I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL!”(Krakauer.pg199) The brief note shows that even though Chris was on the edge of death, he was finally happy with his life.
In the book Nature, Emerson writes in a way that deals with the morals we have in our lives and how these things come from nature at its’ base form. Emerson says that nature is the things that are unchanged or untouched by man. When Haskell writes his journal entries in the book The Forest Unseen he refutes Emerson a good bit of the time. He does this by the way he focuses in on things too much and looks past their importance in the macrocosm we live in. Emerson says these things should not be zoomed in on but should just be looked at in awe. I feel that although Haskell refutes Emerson a good bit, Haskell is not trying to refute Emerson and at one point in his book he actually confirms a few of Emerson’s ideas.
In society there is a longing for a story to have a nice and neat happy ending. Broadway and the theater originally would give this to their audience, especially in America. Give the audience what the want! They want happy endings that mirror their own values and interpretations of how the world should be and at the end of it should be, “and they all lived happily ever after.” The fairy tale ending is something society hopes, dreams, and strives for since we could listen to our parents read us fairy tales with these sweet stories of finding true love and having to fight the odds to be the Prince or Princess you deserve to be. With Into the Woods, Lapine and Sondheim sought out to explore what could go wrong with “happily ever after.” Effectively leaving the audience with the adage, “be careful what you ask for…”
The persona begins to think about how he cannot take both paths and be the same “traveler”
when it all was gone, oh the torture how there is water all around us
of that accursed existence. And I wanted to go on living after I had left
I knew taking this shortcut was a mistake, yet I didn't think I had enough strength to keep climbing this monumental cliff with the others. The humidity was affecting my vision and the ground now started to spin. The muscles in my legs felt
“The Road Not Taken” is a part of a series of poems written by Robert Frost. In the poem, the speaker is walking on foot and comes to a fork in the road where he has to choose between two paths that are right for him to take. As he is trying to figure out what route to take, he wishes he could take both routes. The path he chooses is supposed to be less worn out, but in actuality both roads are worn out equally. The phrase, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference," talks about the choices we make in life and then how those choices one makes may have a difference in the long run. Even though the speaker in the poem wants to take the other road like people do today, it is hard to come from a decision someone has already made his or her mind up about. Taking the route a person has already chosen makes it easier and more exciting to take the road a person has chose. The speaker states that in the near future when he is older he will talk about how the road he chose changed his life in some way. Robert Frost uses roads and nature as a symbolic feature of figurative language to help readers visualize things in the poem.
Hardships in Birches by Robert Frost In any life, one must endure hardship to enjoy the good times. According to Robert Frost, the author of "Birches", enduring life's hardships can be made easier by finding a sane balance between one's imagination and reality. The poem is divided into four parts: an introduction, a scientific analysis of the bending of birch trees, an imaginatively false analysis of the phenomenon involving a New England farm boy, and a reflective wish Frost makes, wanting to return to his childhood. All of these sections have strong underlying philosophical meanings.
it got too late. I walked into the woods and soon I was beside a lake
“A Bird came down the Walk,” was written in c. 1862 by Emily Dickinson, who was born in 1830 and died in 1886. This easy to understand and timeless poem provides readers with an understanding of the author’s appreciation for nature. Although the poem continues to be read over one hundred years after it was written, there is little sense of the time period within which it was composed. The title and first line, “A Bird came down the Walk,” describes a common familiar observation, but even more so, it demonstrates how its author’s creative ability and artistic use of words are able to transform this everyday event into a picture that results in an awareness of how the beauty in nature can be found in simple observations. In a step like narrative, the poet illustrates the direct relationship between nature and humans. The verse consists of five stanzas that can be broken up into two sections. In the first section, the bird is eating a worm, takes notice of a human in close proximity and essentially becomes frightened. These three stanzas can easily be swapped around because they, for all intents and purposes, describe three events that are able to occur in any order. Dickinson uses these first three stanzas to establish the tone; the tone is established from the poet’s literal description and her interpretive expression of the bird’s actions. The second section describes the narrator feeding the bird some crumbs, the bird’s response and its departure, which Dickinson uses to elaborately illustrate the bird’s immediate escape. The last two stanzas demonstrate the effect of human interaction on nature and more specifically, this little bird, so these stanzas must remain in the specific order they are presented. Whereas most ...
¡°The Road Not Taken¡± by Robert Frost is s poem of description as he was revealing what he experienced when he had to make a decision. The physical journey Robert Frost described in his poem was there were two different ways for him to choose where they would both end to the same place.
The Road Not Taken By Robert Frost is a poem about decisions and how they can impact someone’s life. However, many other literary devices are used in the poem in order to make the theme more obvious to its readers. This poem is often confused as focusing on how the narrator takes the road less traveled, when it is actually meant to focus on the choice that the narrator denies, or the road not taken. Frost mentions the doubt and worry that comes along with decision-making, but how perseverance can make it worthwhile. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost introduces a theme of making life decisions, while using symbolism and tone as tools to show his readers that the right choice is not always the easy one.