Abigail Long Mrs. Raynor English 10 Honors - 5 19 March 2024. Learning from Legends and myths are an important part of any society, as they teach lessons to those who know them. In the mythos of Watership Down by Richard Adams, El-ahrairah is the mythical trickster prince of the rabbits. He outsmarts his many enemies using his trickery, bravery, and cunning, along with the help of other rabbits and non-rabbits. Throughout the journey of Hazel, the leader of the group of rabbits that escape the destruction of their home, and his companions, many of their adventures parallel that of the legends of El-ahrairah. Hazel and his friends reach a new warren of fat, healthy, and strange rabbits. They are led by a rabbit named Cowslip, and do not know …show more content…
In the legend, El-ahrairah steals King Darzin’s prized lettuces using his trickery and cunning. King Darzin was a militaristic ruler of “...the biggest and richest of the animal cities... his soldiers were very fierce and his lettuce garden was... guarded by a thousand sentries day and night” (Adams 94). This story parallels when, far later in their journey, Hazel’s second in command, the courageous and strong Bigwig, must infiltrate Efrafa, a militaristic warren run by a powerful, authoritarian leader named General Woundwort. He must do so in order to steal some do from Efrafa, so that Hazel’s warren can survive and reproduce. In the legend, El-ahrairah and his people have been driven from their homes and are in a new land. Likewise, the rabbits from the Sandleford Warren must leave their home, and travel to Watership Down, which is a new and unfamiliar place. El-ahrairah infiltrates King Darzin’s …show more content…
The next story told is “The Trial of El-Ahrairah”. This features El-ahrairah enlisting the help of other animal races to trick his enemies. A treacherous rabbit, Hufza, is sent by King Rainbow, the enemy of El-ahrairah, to report on anything El-ahrairah is up to. In order to discredit Hufza as a witness, El-ahrairah asks a hedgehog and a pheasant to do strange things, and then lie about it to a jury, making Hufza seem crazy. This parallels Hazel’s use of other animals to aid the Sandleford rabbits in their adventures. Some notable examples are when Hazel befriends a mouse, who helps find the rabbits nice places to eat and warns them about the Efrafan invasion, when Woundwort comes seeking vengeance for Bigwig’s deception, and when he helps the seagull, Kehaar, who helps them find Nuthanger Farm and the Efrafan Warren. Kehaar even assists in the plot to take the does from Efrafa, and after they escape, Hazel admits that, “For all the courage of Bigwig and Silver, they would have failed without Kehaar” (382). When Silver asks Hazel his plan for befriending these animals, Hazel responds, “We’re in a strange place we don’t know much about and we need friends. We ought to do all we can to make these
Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp is an essay written by Joy Williams, about the overwhelming complacency that todays culture shows towards nature.Williams argues in a very satirical way, that todays culture has all but completely lost touch with what nature really is, and that unless we as a nation change our morals regarding the role that nature plays in human existence, we may very well be witnessing the dawn of our own destruction.
Richard Adams novel, Watership Down, is the account of a group of rabbits trip to search out a new location to inhabit. After escaping the Sandleford Warren because of one rabbit’s instincts, nearly a dozen rabbits cross virgin country. Along the way, they run across a few other warrens. These places exhibit a completely different way of living to the fleeing group. What they learn is vital when they develop their own warren. From these places they manage to collect some rabbits to increase their size once they reach a resting point at their final destination. Each of the places they encounter is set up differently. These warrens contain a distinct and unique social system, belief and leadership role.
Many of Margaret Wise Brown’s most famous books have animals as the main character. For example, Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon, two of her most popular books, feature rabbits as the main characters. Further, in Goodnight Moon, the animal’s behavior is parallel to that of humans. For example, the motherly figure on the rocking chair is reading to the young rabbit as many parents do to their children. Additionally, Brown adds a humorous element as the young rabbit seems to have pets.
Though the significant difference in the setting, but equally in the subject of separation, the authors, Bass, and Stuphen, communicate their thoughts mainly through imagery of the situations that happened in their lives. In the poems “The Albatross” by Kate Bass and “Ever After” by Joyce Sutphen, in the book 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day, they use metaphoric language to expose their feelings. They capture the frustration of being apart from their partners and the urge to understand why the man that the woman in the poem loves is now strange and no longer has any part in their present. Shawn Lewis explains, “Next to the death of a loved one the death of a marriage is one of life 's most devastating experiences.... When the pain
The story Watership Down by novelist Richard Adams details a small band of rabbits trying to find a new home. Fiver, a clairvoyant rabbit, convinced his brother, Hazel, and other rabbits to leave their current home and find a new one, due to a danger Fiver sees in his visions. American writer Joseph Campbell, known for his work in comparative literature, created the monomyth; a pattern of narrative found in many adventure stories. One of the many stages in the monomyth is Crossing the Threshold: the point where the hero leaves the mundane world and enters the world of adventure. In Watership Down, Crossing the Threshold appears when Hazel and his company arrive in the unfamiliar woods, just outside of their warren. After they enter the
In this story, Richard Adams' creates an interesting part of the story when eleven rabbits unite to form a group and flee from their warren, in hopes of avoiding a great tragedy. These rabbits leave their warren without knowledge of why they need to leave their homes. The one thing the rabbits have in common is their faith in Fiver's dreams and visions. Together these rabbits will have to put aside their differences in order to face the danger ahead of them.
Up until December 6,1865 slavery had taken place in the United States. Slavery is the practice or system of owning slaves. People were treated as property, forced into labor and had their freedom taken away from them. Middle Passage by Charles R. Johnson is a book containing a story of newly freed, Rutherford Calhoun. This first person journal documentary is set in 1830 and is his personal description of the unfortunate time spent boarding the Republic heading to Africa. Rutherford has first hand experience of being a slave. At the time the book took place, 1830, slavery was still an issue in real time. Even though Rutherford was a manumitted slave, he still spent his time enslaved to the Republic. He was unable to escape slavery in some kind of way. Different ways to look at slavery, in the literal sense, is if they were born into slavery like Calhoun was, or if they were to be forced into it like the Allmuseri was sent to be.
As highlighted by the author, Mary Louise Adams in her article, “Excerpts from The Trouble with Normal”, ‘a norm’ “can be defined as something that is usual, typical or standardized” (Hacking, Adams, 2003). Norms are often already so established that most individuals do not realize how much they have shaped society and the people who live in it. Audrey Lord tells us that being a “White, thin, young, heterosexual, Christian, male” defines the characteristics of being “normal” and “privileged,” in which she calls “the mythical norm” (Perry, 2011). We use our sexuality, race and class as a way of giving ourselves an identity for the world to see. This identity will ultimately allow us to understand our place in the world and give
The reading “Stranger Than True” by Barry Winston is not familiar to me, yet an intriguing and fascinating story. The principal point of the writer, who specializes in criminal law tried to convey was that everything isn't so black and white. Everybody is honest until demonstrated blameworthy despite all proof points against them.
Stephen Crane’s short story “The Open Boat” is a story of conflict with nature and the human will and fight to survive. Four men find themselves clinging to life on a small boat amidst a raging sea after being shipwrecked. The four men, the oiler (Billie), the injured captain, the cook, and the correspondent are each in their own way battling the sea as each wave crest threatens to topple the dinghy. “The Open Boat” reflects human nature’s incredible ability to persevere under life-and-death situations, but it also shares a story of tragedy with the death of the oiler. It is human nature to form a brotherhood with fellow sufferers in times of life threatening situations to aid in survival. Weak from hunger and fatigue, the stranded men work together as a community against nature to survive their plight and the merciless waves threatening to overtake the boat. The brotherhood bond shared between the men in “The Open Boat” is evident through the narrator’s perspective, “It would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the seas. No one said that it was so. No one mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it warm him” (Crane 993). Crane understood first-hand the struggle and the reliance on others having survived the real life shipwreck of the S.S. Commodore off the coast of Florida in 1897. “The Open Boat” is an intriguing read due to Crane’s personal experience and though it is a fictional piece it shares insight into the human mind. Crain did not simply retell a story, but by sharing the struggles with each character he sought to portray the theme of an inner struggle with nature by using the literary devices of personification of nature, symbolism of the boat, and iron...
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a story about a little girl who comes into contact with unpredictable, illogical, basically mad world of Wonderland by following the White Rabbit into a huge rabbit – hole. Everything she experiences there challenges her perception and questions common sense. This extraordinary world is inhabited with peculiar, mystical and anthropomorphic creatures that constantly assault Alice which makes her to question her fundamental beliefs and suffer an identity crisis. Nevertheless, as she woke up from “such a curious dream” she could not help but think “as well she might, what a wonderful dream it had been ”.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit was a fictional story for children written by Beatrix Potter. The main character of the story was Peter Rabbit, who had three sisters by the names of Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail. The four bunnies lived with their mother, Mrs. Rabbit, underneath a huge tree in the woods. All the characters displayed the element of anthropomorphic because they are dressed in human clothing and display human characteristics such as walking straight up on their hind legs. The three sisters were wearing a pink to reddish cloak, Peter Rabbit a blue jacket with brown shoes, and the mother a blue chambermaid dress. While Peter Rabbit’s sisters were obedient little bunnies who gathered blackberries, Peter Rabbit was a naughty, disobedient and mischievous young rabbit who gave into temptation rather than to listen to direction.
In all of her poems Grace Nichols explores a variety of themes such as immigration and emigration in her poem “Icons”. However in “Black” she also explores several other themes such as race and perception. In this essay I aim to determine whether or not “Black” is mainly a poem about skin colour or of it can simply be perceived as such.
Raymond Carver’s The Bath is a revised version of his early work of A Small, Good Thing. In his two pieces of the short story, the length of the story significantly varied as The Bath is a lot shorter. Moreover, his former work has more detailed emotional expressions while The Bath lacks communications and leaves to the reader a suspenseful ending. The story begins in a third person view with a mother has her son’s birthday cake made to order at a bakery. Then his son is hit by a car when crossing the road. The mother and father come to hospital and exchange words from the doctor. Finally, the story ends with an unfinished ending which doesn’t show any sign of boy’s fate but a strange phone call that says the son’s name. There are several things
Alice in Wonderland belongs to the nonsense genre, and even if most of what happens to Alice is quite illogical, the main character is not. “The Alice books are, above all, about growing up” (Kincaid, page 93); indeed, Alice starts her journey as a scared little girl, however, at the end of what we discover to be just a dream, she has entered the adolescence phase with a new way to approach the mentally exhausting and queer Wonderland. It is important to consider the whole story when analyzing the growth of the character, because the meaning of an event or a sentence is more likely to mean what it truly looks like rather than an explanation regarding subconscious and Freudian interpretations. Morton states “that the books should possess any unity of purpose seems on the surface unlikely” (Morton, page 509), but it’s better to consider the disconnected narrative and the main character separately, since the girl doesn’t belong to Wonderland, which is, as Morton says, with no intrinsic unity. Whereas, there are a few key turning points where it is possible to see how Alice is changing, something that is visible throughout her journey. Carroll wants to tell the story of a girl who has to become braver in order to contend with challenges like the pool made by her own tears, or assertive characters, like the Queen.