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The role of nature in modern literature
Roles of nature in literature
Annotated bibliography on mental illness in literature
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A Blizzard under Blue Sky In Pam Houston’s Blizzard under Blue Sky the narrator is depressed and unhappy about some situations in her life that are taking place. For instance, some of her situations are her bills t not getting paid and a man broke her heart. She goes to the doctor to get a prescription for her depression, but refuses to take drugs. At that point, she decides to go on a small adventure to cure her depression. Houston camp up with a solution to go camping overnight in the mountains of Salt Lake City, Utah in February and its 32 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale with her two dogs Jackson and Hailey. The author is probably not in a blizzard literally, but when you think about the temperature she is going camping in it is dangerously cold. So she must dress very warm. The claim of policy for this story is did the camping trip help cure her of her depression. …show more content…
Yes, the trip did help her on her journey to heal from her temporary depression. Houston did not know how nature was going to heal her, but she believed the idea of going on a small getaway would make her feel like she was doing something to help her depression.
Once, she actually arrived and started skiing she felt like it was not working. Then it got so cold and dark till she had to stop and set-up camp and all she could really think about was how cold it was and how she was more miserable because she could not get any rest. After, these series of events she was so happy to wake up the next morning and know that her and her dogs survived the freezing cold till it distracted her from what she was depressed about and what lets us know she was feeling a little better about her situation was this small passage from the text. “Not once in that fourteen-hour night did I think about deadlines, or bills, or the man in the desert. For the first time in many months I was happy to see a day beginning. (James) This quote is showing us the author is beginning to heal from her temporary depression. In that moment Houston realizes she use the world around her to give her
hope. The author’s solution for her problem did seem to work. What I think this short story is trying to convey to its readers is experiencing nature is an excellent way to deal with depression because it allows one to have remembered about it’s the small things in life that should bring us hope. Nature forces you to step outside of your problems and embrace simplicity. (Thwaities) I can remember a time when I had some of the same problems that the author had. I had gone to see the doctor and she prescribed me some drugs and I refused to take them. My solution to my problem was to journal, exercise and to talk to my best friend. As a result, these things it helped me to understand some of the decisions I made that put me in a depressed state. I don’t think the author went about curing her temporary depression in the wrong way because it actually did make her appreciate life and remember what was right with her life. Furthermore, there is no right or wrong way to handle depression. Each individual should seek help if they experience any type of depression and not just take matters into their own hand. This story makes me think of a quote I heard that others probably have to is that we sometimes in life need to stop and smell the roses and I think the author did just that.
She believed it wasn’t until her junior year in college when she was enlightened and found meaning for her own life, which was simply to take part in a non-western approach and help bring change to her society for the greater good. Houston 's mean focus was on the mind and promoting happiness. Although she does not believe that there is one definition for happiness because it is a unique and we all experience differently have. She believes that happiness could be achieved. When a person has minimum all stress and removed materialistic objects and relationship dependency. People need realize their own self potential and innate worth. She felt that many peoples ego is created by other people. People behave the way they think society wants to. Appealing others rather than doing what truly makes them happy and not allowing the options of others to justify their innate worth. A person must begin to experience the good in living and what life truly has to offer them to be
In her book she talks about being happy and how the Bible says “But may the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful” (Psalm 68:3). Throughout our days we have many thoughts, some are good and some are bad! But something important to remember is that what you think about will come out in your life. So it’s really important to keep your mind pure and think about godly and uplifting things. We also have this thought that we need certain things in life to be happy and that’s a lie. All we need is God, and we don’t need to live life thinking that we have to walk around pleasing everyone’s needs. The most important thing at the end of the day, Is that you pleased God and glorified him with your actions. Many relationships come our way in life, but the most important relationship is the one you share with God.
During their western voyage, the group notoriously known as the “Donner Party” inevitably became trapped in a snowstorm in the winter of 1846 and 1847. Originally, the group set out for California in search of new opportunities. Figure 1 shows the path that the party followed to arrive in their set destination. After departing from Springfield, Illinois, the Donner’s first stop was in Independence, Missouri where they joined the rest of their traveling companions. The party had then planned on arriving at Fort Bridger to join another expedition, but they were too late and the expedition left without them (Johnson, 1). They left from Fort Bridger on July 31, 1846 using their own navigation skills in hopes of landing at their destination (Diamond, 2). When an unfortunate snowstorm hit, the group was left stranded. To make matters worse, they were split up between Truckee Lake and Alder Creek. They struggled during this time for they had few supplies and a limited food source. Of the 81 person party, only 45 survived the horrendous conditions (Johnson, 1). That number of casualties may seem fairly typical based on the condit...
One source commented “They were blindfolded with ice and didn’t flush” (Heynen 1). Helpless animals outside in the freezing rain and temperatures, there aren’t many people who would go out and help them. The Story “What Happened during the Ice Storm” by Jim Heynen is about just that, a group of boys go out in the “Icy rain. Their breath came out in slow puffs of steam” (Heynen 1), and all just to help a group of pheasants who could not help themselves. After carefully analyzing the story, the reader understands both the theme, and what the author says about human nature through the actions of the boys and the diction.
Sometimes all one needs to create a better condition is putting in a little effort. However, as the poem implies, it is easier to do nothing for staying in a comfort zone is better than achieving a better condition. She complains of the heat in the room because the sun for sunlight pours through the open living-room windows. All she needs to do is get up and close the windows, but she won't do it either. She also reveals the futility of trying to get out of the meaningless routine that people adopt. In an attempt to be proactive, she thinks about the essence of living and is almost convinced that routine is the nature of life. She thinks for a long time and thinks again but ironically, the same routine chores distract her yet again. She goes to buying a hairbrush, parking, and slamming doors. At the end, she gives up on finding the essence of living; she wants to do things like she has always done
Quote 1: “Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom were in the branches.” Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God. (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006), Chapter 2, page 8. In this quote, Hurston sets the scene for the rest of the novel.
Setting: The book is set in a high school in Syracuse. Just from the way that Melinda explains Syracuse we can understand that she is not exactly thrilled to live there. The winters being long and brutal are what she hates the most. On a snowy day Hairwoman (her English teacher) asks the class what they though snow symbolized in the book that they were studying. Melinda finds it stupid that such a basic thing as snow has to have a symbolic meaning and she just thinks that “Hawthorne wanted snow to symbolize cold”. Now it is ironic that from such a sentence we can actually get a symbolic meaning. In this case Melinda seems to be talking about emotional cold and she always uses snow to talk about silence.
January 12, 1888, a blizzard covered the northwest part of North America that claimed many lives. This blizzard was considered to be the worst blizzard of all time, and was dubbed the “the Schoolchildren’s Blizzard”, for claiming the lives of so many school children on their way home. The death toll of this murderous blizzard rose, because of lack of preparation and being uninformed. During this time, many farmers and families were unprepared to survive a blizzard of this magnitude, by the lack of clothing they wore. Forecasters were not as accurate enough to inform people on the weather conditions. Also, shelter was a major factor in protecting themselves from the winter storms, but the shelter was not stable
And them behold no more shall I” (Lines 27-28). She suffers through an internal struggle between her love of people and things and her love and service to God. By being able to tell the story of her house, she believes she is special to God and he makes her realize what is truly important in life.
Throughout the Romanticism period, human’s connection with nature was explored as writers strove to find the benefits that humans receive through such interactions. Without such relationships, these authors found that certain aspects of life were missing or completely different. For example, certain authors found death a very frightening idea, but through the incorporation of man’s relationship with the natural world, readers find the immense utility that nature can potentially provide. Whether it’d be as solace, in the case of death, or as a place where one can find oneself in their own truest form, nature will nevertheless be a place where they themselves were derived from. Nature is where all humans originated,
(6) The suddenness of the winter storm caught people by surprise. A roar “like an approaching train” was all the warning the storm gave. (130) The roaring wind and snow brought darkness and dropping temperatures. The people who were inside when the blizzard struck faced a dilemma. Staying inside and doing nothing seemed “heartless,” but going into the storm “on a rescue mission was likely to be fatal to the rescuer and useless to the lost.” (143) The people who were unfortunate enough to be away from home, whether they were at school or working with their livestock, had to make a difficult decision. They could either risk trying to make it home or chance it out and stay where they were. Schoolteachers had to decide whether to send the children home or keep them at the school. If anyone ventured outside, he or she risked frostbite, hypothermia, and likely
Her poem “Believer,” combines her experience of living on the Gulf Coast with the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. She writes that “Four years gone, she’s still rebuilding the shed out back, and now the house is a museum of everything.” It is challenging to some people to forge ahead, and the belongings and photographs represent hope and future possibilities. She concludes her poem with the woman continuing to give to the church, even though she has lost almost everything. “First seek the kingdom of God, she tells me, and the rest will follow.” We all experience hardships in life and everyone needs someone to believe in that may bring them happiness. We can’t worry about the past because we can never change it. We need to enjoy the present and not continue to punish people for what may have happened in bygone days. We are here on Earth for a short while, and we all have to make the best of
When the narrator introduced the main character of the story, the man, he made it clear that the man was in a perilous situation involving the elements. The man was faced with weather that was 75 degrees below zero and he was not physically or mentally prepared for survival. London wrote that the cold "did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold."(p.1745) At first when the man started his journey to the camp, he felt certain that he could make it back to camp before dinner. As the trip progressed, the man made mistake after mistake that sealed his fate. The man's first mistake was to step into a pool of water and soak his legs to the knees. This blunder forced the man to build a fire to dry his wet socks and shoes so his feet would not freeze and become frostbitten. When the man began to build a fire he failed to notice that he was doing so under a large, snow laden spruce tree where he was getting his firewood. When the man had a small fire that was beginning to smolder the disturbance to the tree caused the snow to tumble to the ground and extinguish the fire. "It was his own fault or, rather, his mistake. He should not have built the fire under the spruce tree. He should have built it in the open."(1750).
captive by a sheath of frost, as were the glacial branches that scraped at my windows, begging to get in. It is indeed the coldest year I can remember, with winds like barbs that caught and pulled at my skin. People ceaselessly searched for warmth, but my family found that this year, the warmth was searching for us.