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Edgar Poe influence in literature
Edgar Poe influence in literature
Edgar Poe influence in literature
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In "The Cowboy and His Cow" speech, Edward Abbey delivered a furious talk based on his personal experience.Abbey began by talking about the childhood dream of becoming a cowboy, so consistently I expected him to write about how and why the cowboy is a child's legendary hero and how a child idolizes them for all the kindness they appear to do. Instead, Abbey began tearing down the praised cowboy by making the people realize the issues that the cowboys and their cattle have brought.
Abbey began this rant by stating that Cowboys were nothing more than "welfare parasites" ,and how cows in the Mid-West of the U.S. were "ruining the land" just by grazing.Abbey added more that "overgrazing is too weak of a term", and pointed out that most of the
Mid-West was "cow burnt", where he meant that the formerly beautiful, green grass has now been turned into brownish fields filled with dead weeds because of the increased number of cattle. After Abbey's anger was over, he began to come up with ways to quench the "overgrazed" problem in the Mid-West. He provided examples such as "reducing the number of cows on public lands", and opening a hunting season on cattle. Despite this rational perspective he had by the time, he didn't focus on practical ways to diminish cow farming in the dry regions. Instead of offering solutions he condemned livestock owners and launched an attack on cowboys and ranchers. Personally, I think that the negative way Abbey used to convey his point across wasn't the best strategy to introduce his opinion. Maybe just exposing the problem with its downsides besides proposing some practical solutions would have been a better idea.
By building upon Rawls's Theory of Justice to address gender injustices, Okin’s liberal-feminist work has retained an enduring relevance in political philosophy, as many of the gender inequalities she addresses, such as women undertaking the majority of unpaid domestic labour, still exist today. Her work has had a major significance in political theory due to her illuminating the tendency for liberal philosophers to be gender-blind. This essay intends to firstly summarise the Rawlsian feminist theory in Okin’s ‘Forty acres and a mule’ for women: Rawls and feminism and secondly critically assess whether, due to her Western perspective and narrow definition of the ‘family’, her work is too limited to evoke a change within a patriarchal society
In his book “Cattle Brings Us to Our Enemies”, McCabe does a 16-year stint in East Africa, specifically in Northern Kenya, doing research on the Turkana. He does this through STEP, the South Turkana Ecosystem Project. In “Cattle Bring Us to Our Enemies”, McCabe follows four families through his years in Kenya and notes how they live in a very demanding environment. He uses ecological data to analyze how and why the Turkana people make decisions about their everyday life. McCabe focuses on four main areas of study: how the Turkana survive and adapt to a stressful environment by nomadic pastoralism, how the techniques used to extract resources and manage livestock modify the environment, the effects of the environmental and cultural practices have on
McCarthy’s plot is built around a teenage boy, John Grady, who has great passion for a cowboy life. At the age of seventeen he begins to depict himself as a unique individual who is ambitious to fulfill his dream life – the life of free will, under the sun and starlit nights. Unfortunately, his ambition is at odds with the societal etiquettes. He initiates his adventurous life in his homeland when he futilely endeavors to seize his grandfather’s legacy - the ranch. John Grady fails to appreciate a naked truth that, society plays a big role in his life than he could have possibly imagined. His own mother is the first one to strive to dictate his life. “Anyway you’re sixteen years old, you can’t run the ranch…you are being ridiculers. You have to go to school” she said, wiping out any hopes of him owning the ranch (p.15). Undoubtedly Grady is being restrained to explore his dreams, as the world around him intuitively assumes that he ought to tag along the c...
Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness is an autobiographical narrative written by naturalist Edward Abbey. Abbey composed the account based on his personal experiences as an employee for the United States Park Service at Arches National Monument in Utah. Abbey’s anecdotal account is nonlinearly comprised of occupational experiences and renditions of the region’s folklore. These illustrations analogous because they exhibit related themes and trends associated with the author’s experiences and beliefs.
The setting of the essay is Los Angeles in the 1800’s during the Wild West era, and the protagonist of the story is the brave Don Antonio. One example of LA’s Wild West portrayal is that LA has “soft, rolling, treeless hills and valleys, between which the Los Angeles River now takes its shilly-shallying course seaward, were forest slopes and meadows, with lakes great and small. This abundance of trees, with shining waters playing among them, added to the limitless bloom of the plains and the splendor of the snow-topped mountains, must have made the whole region indeed a paradise” (Jackson 2). In the 1800’s, LA is not the same developed city as today. LA is an undeveloped land with impressive scenery that provides Wild West imagery. One characteristic of the Wild West is the sheer commotion and imagery of this is provided on “the first breaking out of hostilities between California and the United States, Don Antonio took command of a company of Los Angeles volunteers to repel the intruders” (15). This sheer commotion is one of methods of Wild West imagery Jackson
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.
In this book, Robert M. Utley depicts the life of Sitting Bull a Hunkpapa Indian, from when he was born to his death in 1890. Utley shows both the personal life and political life that Sitting Bull endured throughout the years. Utley looks at Sitting Bull's life from both “...the white as well as the Indian perspective. From both, he emerges as an enduring legend and a historical icon, but above all as a truly great human being.” (xvi). To his tribe Sitting Bull was an extraordinary man who was brave and respected, but to many in the US government believed him to be a troublemaker and a coward. Utley works to prove how Sitting Bull was a man who became an American patriot.
In All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy reveals the limitations of a romantic ideology in the real world. Through his protagonist, John Grady Cole, the author offers three main examples of a man’s attempt to live a romantic life in the face of hostile reality: a failed relationship with an unattainable woman; a romantic and outdated relationship with nature; and an idealistic decision to live as an old-fashioned cowboy in an increasingly modern world. In his compassionate description of John Grady, McCarthy seems to endorse these romantic ideals. At the same time, the author makes clear the harsh reality and disappointments of John Grady’s chosen way of life.
...that actually experienced it. The author gives a good background of the relationship white settlement and Indian cultures had, which supported by the life experience. An author depicts all the emotions of struggle and happiness at the times when it is hard to imagine it. And it actually not the author who is persuasive, but the Black Elk himself, because he is the one that actually can convey the exact feeling and images to the reader.
e dress in our work clothes, loose and baggy as we slip on our boots, and stroll to the barn. Kim is tall and lean, but strict and firm and expects perfection. I recall many memories while in the horse barn, The taste and smells so violently invade your senses. You can taste the hay dust and smell the grain the moment you enter, slowly but surely I hear the sounds of pounding hooves running from the pasture just waiting for feeding time. The moment I see Kim grabs a halter, I suddenly can feel the tension in her voice and feel the aches in my hands. I slowly catch a horse and brought to Kim, " Go gets/got the Hoof Cleaning Hook and now. " I slowly grab and fight over the tools trying to find what tool is what. In the background, I hear " to hurry the Fuck up. "
On March 10, 1892 the Billings Gazette reported, “The opening of spring may be more red than green for the horse thieves and cattle thieves of Johnson County” (Brash, 143). The writer of the article could little have known how truthful their premonition would prove to be. The late 1800’s were turbulent times in the West. Large tracts of publicly held range ground would be at the center of Wyoming’s very own civil war. Gil Bollinger, author and western researcher, reports that by the 1870’s and 1880’s fencing of land to enclose both crops and water sources was common (Bollinger, 81). This practice, however, was still illegal according to the federal government. In 1877, the United States Government sued Swan Land and Cattle Company, in an effort to set an example that all fences on open range must come down (Bollinger, 81). The fencing of lands was a major problem, as agricultural producers needed open access to the limited resources, especially water. Johnson County, in northern Wyoming, was an agricultural nucleus for cattle and sheep producers who knew the lush grass and good water supply would greatly benefit their operations. Since fencing was illegal, these resources were available to everyone. Cattle operators, large and small alike, ran their livestock loose and participated in large roundups once a year where all the cattle were branded. Slick calves, called mavericks, were often unrightfully claimed. Lack of fencing made any free ranging livestock available to whoever was devious enough to take them (Smith, 25).
The cowboy hero, The Virginian, as portrayed in Owen Wister’s novel was the first of his kind and today is known as the stereotypical mythic cowboy figure which our view of the western frontier are based from. The Virginian was the first full length western novel apart from the short dime novels which marked the final stage in the evolution of the cowboy hero to a national icon. The Virginian was published in 1902 and at that time was wildly popular because of the settlement of the west. The story of the cowboy who had the skill and courage to take control of the untamed frontier enthralled people. The cowboy hero had a few distinguished qualities, he was a self-appointed vigilante, he had a very strict moral code, he had exceptional perception skills and he had the ability to adapt. Owen Wister’s The Virginian was the first to portray these qualities and really created a deeper cowboy character.
O. Henry’s "Art and the Bronco" tells the story of Lonny Briscoe, a cowboy who is also an aspiring artist. It follows his quest to sell his first painting to the state legislature; to have it hung in the capital building. Lonny sees the sale of the painting as validation of his talent and worth as a painter. What he ends up learning is that the actual value of the painting turns out to be secondary to what other feel they can gain from it.
Like any other novel or short story, a lot can be learned about the actual story by understanding the historical content embedded in the piece. Louise Erdrich draws from her her imagination, life experiences, and social climate to piece together American Horse into a fictitious short story that somehow manages to give the reader a very real sense of the socioeconomic divide between the two groups portrayed in the story.
We can do the same if we take a step back, and look at the bigger, general picture as well. The universal lesson of this short story was surrounded around trust and perhaps even greed. In our text about William Faulkner’s life, it states: “Irritated at how hard it was to find publishers for his serious or experimental works, the novelist set out to write a best seller–and succeeded” (Puchner 372). Understanding how determined Faulkner was, it is obvious in his works that he takes bits of his own life and injects them into his stories. One article states: “The Southerner’s obsession with never allowing anyone to get the best of him drives Faulkner’s novella ‘Spotted Horses’” (Bernardo). The story was also written in in 1931, which was in the midst of the Great Depression, so the lack of finances parallels that of his own time. Doing this was an element of his own writing style, later termed “Faulknerian.”