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The theme of loneliness in literature
The theme of loneliness in literature
Essay the characterization approach to storytelling
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Sue Hubbell, an amateur botanist, a bee keeper and a heart torn women, who decides to stay on her Ozark 105 acre “something more like ninety-nine”(3) farm in the Ozarks of Missouri after her long term marriage ends in divorce. In her book, “A Country Year, Living the Questions” Hubbell describes how her life as a 50 year old women living alone over comes heartbreak and poverty living off the land that she alone doesn’t own “ that those who inhabit the land and use it have a real claim to it in a nonlegal sort of way.”(6)
The poem in the beginning of the book by Rainer Maria Rilke pretty much explains where the sub title came from that Hubbell used “Living the Questions.” She not only used it as a subtitle but lived it as teaching guide to get her through her break up, that in her words put her “out to lunch” (9) for a spell. The poem says, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek the answer, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” On her
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Ozark farm she did just that through the various plants, animals and insects that resided there with her. Through her writing Hubbell gives an almost humanistic life to all that dwell with her on her farm.
She identifies with frogs, snakes and spiders with an almost sympathetic attitude towards them, seeing the beauty and necessity behind what they have to do to survive. Like her helping out a three legged frog with food and water and giving him the shelter of her barn, knowing when the inspector comes it could cause her problems with the honey business she runs so she too can survive. You can almost hear her having a conversation with each one of them. They in turn give her “answers” to her own dilemmas by watching them get in and out of situations such as, the snake that just wants to get away when she is smoking her hives; and they have a “quick but meaningful stare
down.” She learns to handle the chores that are mostly done by men with an “I have no choice, so I just do it” attitude. She has little contact with other humans but when she does it is not very intimate. Through out the book you clearly see she identifies better with the habitant’s on the farm. Her beekeeping is hard work with long hours however she enjoys the interaction she has with the bees. Like splitting a colony and watching them adjust to new surroundings and a new order, just like she had to when her husband left. In a book review done by Kirkus on line magazine they quoted Hubbell as saying, “When all is said and done, they are simply a bunch of bugs. But spending my days in close and intimate contact with creatures who are structured so differently from humans, and who get on with life in such a different way, is like being a visitor in an alien but ineffably engaging world. In town I am known as the Bee Lady. Whatever could I do to equal that?" (Kirkus) Sue Hubbell through all intent and purpose did learn to mend a broken heart and to survive through her interaction of the “humanistic creatures” who shared her Ozark farm with her. She lived the questions of “how to go on, how to survive winter, how to be happy?” by watching them do it. By turning to nature she found nurture and a peacefulness that insured her she was done being “out to lunch.” Her book will restore a “love and fascination of nature appreciate the Ozarks and its beauty,” to those of us who live in today’s fast pace life and for those of us who live here. Hubbell, Sue. "A Country Year." Hubbell, Sue. A Country Year. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983-1986. 221. Book. Kirkus. Kirkus Review. 10 April 1986. Review. 25 Febuary 2016.
Her first sentence “I have a farm on a dead-end street in the ghetto” (3) lures you in right from the opening. But it’s her ability to describe in detail the color and taste of her first homegrown turkey that had my mouth watering and ready to raise my very own turkey. Her attention to details of the way the fathers look on her turkey to the smell of the bag of entrails from her pigs gives you the feeling of being part of the experience. Having grown up on a farm I feel the rage she talks about when she tells of the possum killing one of her ducks and the goose. But, also the joy in having a hand in raising an animal from a youngling, to full grown and ready to eat. Her talk of rabbits hit home the most for me. I raised rabbits, one year to serve them at my mother’s wedding. But when she describes the pig’s auction and Bill’s enthusiasm to get not only one, but two pigs I too am there with them standing at the gate watching the
Chandler Cook November 5th, 2015 HIST3417 Book Review Embodying agriculture in Gender Systems Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country gives readers a look into the federal government’s failed policy to preserve grazing lands by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of livestock with a particular focus on women. Centering around women because they are the primary owners and caretakers of livestock in Navajo reservations. Weisiger’s narrative explains the relationship of “livestock grazing, environmental change, cultural identity, gender, and memory during the New Deal era of the 1930s and its aftermath” (p xv). Weisiger relies on oral histories, environmental science, and government documents.
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.
In her novel, she derives many of her characters from the types of bees that exist in a hive. Lily and Zach have characteristics that are akin to that of field bees, August has that nurturing personality of a nurse bee, and the Lady of Chains is revered by her subjects just like a Queen bee is by her hive. Nowadays, no one ever faces a problem that someone, or something, has already faced. No one really has a secret life to themselves.
A number of ideas, suggestions, and points can be extracted from “Illinois Bus Ride,” a passage from Aldo Leopold’s collection of essays entitled A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. However, there must be one main thesis that the author is attempting to get through to his audience. Leopold argues that we Americans have manipulated the landscape and ecosystem of the prairie so that it seems to be nothing more that a tool at our disposal. All aspects of what was once a beautiful, untamed frontier have been driven back further and further, until they were trapped in the ditches.
Born in Home, Pennsylvania in 1927, Abbey worked as a forest ranger and fire look-out for the National Forest Service after graduating from the University of New Mexico. An author of numerous essays and novels, he died in 1989 leaving behind a legacy of popular environmental literature. His credibility as a forest ranger, fire look- out, and graduate of the University of New Mexico lend credibility to his knowledge of America’s wilderness and deserts. Readers develop the sense that Abbey has invested both time and emotion in the vast deserts of America.
Labrie, Janet M. "The Depiction of Women's Field Work in Rural Fiction." Agricultural History 67 (Spring 1993): 119-33. JSTOR. Web. 15 Mar. 2012.
Print. The. Cashin, Edward J., ed., pp. 113-117. A wilderness still the cradle of nature: frontier Georgia.
Pilcer, Sonia. "2G." Visions of America Personal Narratives from the Promised Land. Ed. Wesley Brown and Amy Ling. 4th ed. New York: Peresea Books, 1993. 201-206.
When looking at the vast lands of Texas after the Civil War, many different people came to the lands in search for new opportunities and new wealth. Many were lured by the large area that Texas occupied for they wanted to become ranchers and cattle herders, of which there was great need for due to the large population of cows and horses. In this essay there are three different people with three different goals in the adventures on the frontier lands of Texas in its earliest days. Here we have a woman's story as she travels from Austin to Fort Davis as we see the first impressions of West Texas. Secondly, there is a very young African American who is trying his hand at being a horse rancher, which he learned from his father. Lastly we have a Mexican cowboy who tries to fight his way at being a ranch hand of a large ranching outfit.
The poem “America” by Tony Hoagland reflects on how peoples’ minds are clouded by small-scale items, money, and the unimportance of those items. Metaphors and imagery are utilized to emphasize the unimportance of materialistic items in America. How America is being flooded with unnecessary goods. The poem uses examples of people to create an example and connection to the overall meaning.
Williams, Michael Ann. "Folklife." Ed. Richard A. Straw and H. Tyler Blethen. High Mountains Rising: Appalachia in Time and Place. Chicago: University of Illinois, 2004. 135-146. Print.
Her realization that she is not alone in her oppression brings her a sense of freedom. It validates her emerging thoughts of wanting to rise up and shine a light on injustice. Her worries about not wanting to grow up because of the harsh life that awaits her is a common thought among others besides the people in her community. As she makes friends with other Indians in other communities she realizes the common bonds they share, even down to the most basic such as what they eat, which comforts her and allows her to empathize with them.
Clark, Mindy Starns. A Pocket Guide to Amish Life. Eugene, Or.: Harvest House, 2010. Print.
Thompson, Paul B. and Stout, Bill A. Beyond The Large Farm. Westview Press, Inc.: Colorado 1991