Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
After the winter, people look forward to having all the flowers begin to bloom again and birds begin to fly, announcing the start of spring. The grass turns green and people begin to be outside without five layers of clothing on and snow falling from the sky. Spring is when everything comes alive after the winter hibernation. My favorite time of the year is spring, when you wake up to the birds chirping outside of your windows. It is the time of year when you walk outside and smell the fresh cut grass and the scent of new flowers. On the first day of spring you are even happy to see the little bugs flying around you because you know you are finally done with winter. It is the best time of year, with so many different things happening outside in nature.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard is a novel that explores the thought of the different times of year in nature. Each chapter talks about a different time of year at a creek called Tinker Creek. Dillard goes into detail about what she experienced while writing the book and sitting at this creek observing the different things. Some consider the book to be a bunch of monologues and reflections about different topics in nature. Dillard splits the book up into four different sections. There is one for each of the four seasons.
Chapter 7 of the book is entitled "Spring." The chapter starts off with a reflection from when she was young. She says she believed foreign languages were simply code words for English. Dillard spends time explaining that every language is just code words for the English word it represents. She quickly finds this to be a false statement when she sat in her first French class and she realized she was going to have ...
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...r, this is when you plant your crops and start to grow them allowing you to harvest and make money at the end of the year. If you are still in school, this is when you end your year and end up going on to the next grade or have to stay back. If you are a college student, this is the time when you have to worry about your GPA and if it is good enough to renew your scholarships or stay in school. While all this is going on, nature is taking over in its way and making the trees come back to life. It grows flowers from the frozen ground. The birth of all of the new life around us is truly amazing if we just stop and give it some thought. Seeds sprout with the gentle spring rains and the warm air melts the hard ground to become fertile for everything. The life cycles that all interact during this time are many and forge ahead weather we pay attention to it or not.
There are many similarities between the war experiences of Kurt Vonnegut and the character of Billy Pilgrim in his novel Slaughterhouse Five. Several similarities between them are shown in the letter from Kurt Vonnegut to his family dated May 29, 1945 (Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect 11-14).
In 1620, seeking refuge from persecution in Europe, William Bradford and his small colony of one-hundred and three Protestant separatists, later known as the Pilgrims, arrived in New England to found Plymouth Plantation. Winthrop established the Massachusetts Bay Colony, now known as Boston, as a theocracy, where elected leaders such as Winthrop himself made decisions with the advice of the clergy based of their belief of pre-destination and enforced strict religious laws upon all people who lived in the colony. Although most of those who migrated to America in 1630 shared a common Calvinist theology, there was by no means unanimity regarding how they would practice their religion. Two prominent figures soon brought dissent among the community; first, Anne Hutchinson spread her sharp challenge to the Puritan faith by spreading the idea that a holy life was no sure sign of salvation and to not bother with obeying the law of either God or man; second, Roger Williams urged
In “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why?” Edna St. Vincent Millay says that “the summer sang in me” meaning that she was once as bright and lively as the warm summer months. In the winter everyone wants to bundle up and be lazy, but when summer comes along the sunshine tends to take away the limits that the cold once had on us. She uses the metaphor of summer to express the freedom she once felt in her youth, and the winter in contrast to the dull meaningless life she has now. There are many poets that feel a connection with the changing of seasons. In “Odes to the West Wind” Percy Bysshe Shelley describes his hopes and his expectations for the seasons to inspire the world.
For each seasonal section, there is a progression from beginning to end within the season. Each season is compiled in a progressive nature with poetry describing the beginning of a season coming before poetry for the end of the season. This is clear for spring, which starts with, “fallen snow [that] lingers on” and concludes with a poet lamenting that “spring should take its leave” (McCullough 14, 39). The imagery progresses from the end of winter, with snow still lingering around to when the signs of spring are disappearing. Although each poem alone does not show much in terms of the time of the year, when put into the context of other poems a timeline emerges from one season to the next. Each poem is linked to another poem when it comes to the entire anthology. By having each poem put into the context of another, a sense of organization emerges within each section. Every poem contributes to the meaning of a group of poems. The images used are meant to evoke a specific point in each season from the snow to the blossoms to the falling of the blossoms. Since each poem stands alone and has no true plot they lack the significance than if they were put into th...
Having the will and the desire to live be what can manage ones’ life from a life threatening situation. When it comes down to it, having the will to fight to live from a disease, or a mortal wound is different than someone jumping off a building knowing their end. Yet, midair they start to realize they want to live. What is living? Living is having life, being able to a reproduce, having a heartbeat, and being able to grow. If you are a living organism you possess the will to live. When it comes to the work known as An Appearance at Owl Creek Bridge, it shows the will to live in a surreal, and fantasy like manner.
The third reason I love West Virginia is because we are blessed with a variety of seasons. These beautiful seasons include; spring, summer, fall, and winter. In the spring I love to watch nature as life renews itself all around me. In the summer I love the warm weather as I take a dip in the calm lake. During the fall I love to watch the leaves change colors as I walk through the woods.
The poem, “Field of Autumn”, by Laurie Lee exposes the languorous passage of time along with the unavoidability of closure, more precisely; death, by describing a shift of seasons. In six stanzas, with four sentences each, the author also contrasts two different branches of time; past and future. Death and slowness are the main motifs of this literary work, and are efficiently portrayed through the overall assonance of the letter “o”, which helps the reader understand the tranquility of the poem by creating an equally calmed atmosphere. This poem is to be analyzed by stanzas, one per paragraph, with the exception of the third and fourth stanzas, which will be analyzed as one for a better understanding of Lee’s poem.
Huck Finn learns from the actions of people around him, what kind of a person he is going to be. He is both part of the society and an outlier of society, and as such he is given the opportunity to make his own decisions about what is right and what is wrong. There are two main groups of characters that help Huck on his journey to moral maturation. The first group consists of Widow Douglas, Miss Watson, and the judge. They portray society and strict adherence to rules laid out by authority. The second group consists of Pap, the King, and the Duke. They represent outliers of society who have chosen to alienate themselves from civilized life and follow no rules. While these characters all extremely important in Huck’s moral development, perhaps the most significant character is Jim, who is both a fatherly figure to Huck as well as his parallel as far as limited power and desire to escape. Even though by the end of the novel, Huck still does not want to be a part of society, he has made a many choices for himself concerning morality. Because Huck is allowed to live a civilized life with the Widow Douglas, he is not alienated like his father, who effectively hates civilization because he cannot be a part of it. He is not treated like a total outsider and does not feel ignorant or left behind. On the other hand, because he does not start out being a true member of the society, he is able to think for himself and dismiss the rules authority figures say are correct. By the end of the novel, Huck is no longer a slave to the rules of authority, nor is he an ignorant outsider who looks out only for himself. This shows Huck’s moral and psychological development, rendering the description of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” as a picaresq...
In the poem, The Runaway Slave at Pilgrims Point by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Browning based the poem on past experience due to the fact her family had owned slaves in Jamaica for several generations. Once these slaves were set free in 1833; sixteen years later abolitionist repudiated the “ unjust- power of the white slave owners.” ( Stephenson, 43). With Browning rejection of her once slave owning father’s irrational authority to refuse his children to marry and leave home, this poem empowered the rage she had suppressed by years.
fauna will start to creep out of hiding. The few summer months are used by many
Since September 11, 2001, the Western world’s view of the Middle East, specifically countries like Iraq or Afghanistan, has shifted drastically. Whenever the media portrays the Middle East, they manage to spin a story negatively or violently. Due to these extrinsic influences, the youngest generation of Americans has never known an America that did not express at least some hatred toward certain parts of the Eastern world. Novels like The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini strive to encourage a healthy interest in Afghanistan and the Middle East while breaking the stereotypes that westerners have come to accept as fact about the culture and religion of Afghanistan. Hosseini manages to conjure a universal story line with relatable characters that introduce the world to the everyday people of postcolonial Afghanistan. On a grander scale, in The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini utilizes his own life experiences alongside his firsthand account of the contemporary history of Afghanistan to craft a novel that breaks down these negative stereotypes and offers a significant contribution to Afghan American literature.
John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegorical story about the Christian religion. It allegorizes the journey of a Christian into "the Celestial City, which represents heaven. Although Pilgrim's Progress may seem simple and straightforward, there are many deeper meanings throughout the whole story. Bunyan uses the names of his characters to signify whom the character represents in the story, for example, the character Hopeful represents hopefulness, Help represents people who are willing to help others in need of assistance, Faithful represents people who are faithful to whatever they are associated with, and the main character, Christian, represents all young Christians in the world. His journey to the Celestial City is a journey every Christian must face in their lifetime before allowed into heaven. Within his journey there are many obstacles such as temptations both tangible and intangible for instance, the merchandises sold at Vanity Fair and the shortcuts offered, illustrate temptations real Christians must face and overcome; finding an easy way into heaven, and being thrown off course by material things. The character Christian overcomes many obstacles before reaching his destination, the Celestial City. But during his journey he does not face all these obstacles alone. He meets a variety of people all through his journey to the Celestial City; some of these people mock his traveling to the Celestial City, some decide to follow him, and some help him along his way. Christian meets Faithful who decides to join him on his travels. Faithful is a character that faces many difficulties on his own journey to the Celestial City; his journey has many diff...
The author of The Pilgrim's Progress is well described by Coleridge's remark: "His piety was baffled by his genius; and Bunyan the dreamer overcame the Bunyan of the conventicle." This remark points out the difficulty that Bunyan faces when he attempts to write a religious piece of work in the style of allegory. The Pilgrim's Progress is "pious" because it is a piece written in dedication to God. It contains important religious teachings -- what a good Christian should do and what he should not do. What Coleridge means by Bunyan's "genius" is basically the story itself. The story is so well written that people become so interested in the story and forget the whole spiritual truth behind and this worry Bunyan. Coleridge also indicates in his remarks, the tension between "piety" and "dreaming". "Dreaming", as we know is unreal, and it can hardly be connected with "piety". But Bunyan, through his "genius", not only managed to bring these two things together, but in way that would be satisfiable to all.
The biggest difference between summer and winter is the climate. One of the main attractions of summer is the warm weather. I like being outside on a bright sunny day, and letting the sun warm my body. I also like that we get an occasional thunder storm. The excitement fills the air when I see the thunder clouds rolling in. The sound of thunder, and the lighting shows that come from the storms are fascinating. On the other hand winter i...
My favorite season of the year is summer because of the warm weather, the school vacation, and the endless fun. I really enjoy the warm weather because it’s the perfect atmosphere to do outdoor activities. My favorite part about summer has to be the fact that school is closed for two months. During summer, you’re free to do whatever you want, not worrying about curfew or waking up early for school. Summer time is a great time to relax with friends and family by soaking up the sun at a beach or simply having dinner together.