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Personal narrative travel essays
A short essay on wilderness survival
A short essay on wilderness survival
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I remember when I was young. My mother and father always watched over me from tall heights. And I always knew I wanted to be as large as they were. We lived in a large cave big enough to sustain the three of us, and I came to know the rock we lived on. Later on as I grew my parents moved on. I was left to care for the sheep and the cave. In the cave I carried all of our memories the corner where they sat and where we kept each other’s company. I remember these moments when walking along my trail guiding my sheep to and from the field to graze. Every day I thought of them on my path and every day I revisited the memories we shared. As I returned from my path one evening I noticed something strange; a fire had been lit in my cave and small footprints …show more content…
I grew furious. The strangers entered my home and stole my cheese. They assumed that I would care to their needs. (I can be hospitable, but not when someone enters my home and steals from me.) At this I began to take a man in each hand and eat them whole. They were defenseless and the remaining men cowered away from me. I put my sheep into their proper age groups and settled for the night. I knew they could never move the stone, as it weighed tons. I even put some effort towards moving it. I would eat the men over the course of the next week making sure they would pay for being so rude to me. I grew tired and laid down to rest for that evening. My last sight was of the men huddling in a circle whispering to each other. Then I began to drift into …show more content…
The pain seared like a bolt from the sky. Squealing noises came from the immense heat as the pain festered and grew, pounding in my head. I lurched from my slumber and staggered to my feet. I clawed at my eye and tore a needle from my delicate iris. I roared and thrashed my body around the room in an attempt to escape the pain. After hours of a seemingly never-ending night, I fell to my side and yelled to a near Cyclops. “I’ve been blinded! Nobody has blinded me!” I yelled out multiple times, but received no help. “If nobody has blinded you then I cannot help you.” A voice said, as it left the cave. The days proceeding I left the cave with my sheep using only my memory of the path to guide me. I felt the top every sheep to count, and to feel for any men who tried to escape. A few days had passed, and I noticed sheep moving slowly one day, but I paid no mind. Finally that night the voices in the cave I always heard reminding me that the men were also occupying had vanished. Realizing they had managed to use my sheep to escape I ran from my cave to the edge of the water and yelled to Nobody. “Return! Return, Nobody! For you have blinded me!” I yelled across the ocean. “I am not Nobody, I am Odysseus from Ithaca! I, master of deception, have outwitted the single eyed beasts!” He
I had only to close my eyes to hear the rumbling of the wagons in the dark, and to be again overcome by that obliterating strangeness. The feelings of that night were so near that I could reach out and touch them with my hand… Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past. (170)
Once he and he men are sailing away from the Cyclops, Odysseus cries back to the Cyclops “if anyone ever asks you how you came by your blindness, tell them your eye was put out by Odysseus, sacker of cities, son of Laertes, who lives in Ithaca.” Odysseus has regretted his earlier decision for Polyphemus to not know his true name, because it means that anyone hearing the tale of a man defeating a Cyclops will not know that it was Odysseus who did it. The arrogant Odysseus does not like this, because he wants all tales of his prowess to be known for his. As he cannot let the chance of more fame escape him, he reveals to Polyphemus his true identity. This sentence, with which he risks the Cyclops throwing a boulder onto their ship, show the readers just how arrogant Odysseus is. It helps the readers understand quite how willing Odysseus is to risk anything if it will add to his
When his crew entered into the area of the Sirens his true arrogance comes out. To avoid the Siren’s sound, Odysseus comes up with a brilliant plan that saves him and his crew. Instead of continuing to escape the Sirens, he is overly proud of his epic rescue says “But even from there my courage, my presence of mind and tactics saved us all” (12; 229-231). Finally, the biggest mistake Odysseus makes is when the Cyclopes traps the crew in his lair. Odysseus devises another brilliant plan and saves his people. Arrogance comes over Odysseus and he says “Cyclops if any man on the face of the earth should ask you who blinded you, shamed you so- say Odysseus, raiders of cities he gouged out your eye, laertes’ son who makes his home in Ithaca” (9; 558-562). The need to claim the defeat of the cyclops is an ego boost that he found more important than quickly escaping. As a result, more of his crew's lives are
...cked me, until, grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I escaped to the open country. 73
When one of the cyclops, Polyphemus noticed people in his cave, Odysseus was upfront about the situation and told him his name was “Nobody.” Polyphemus ate some of his men and this causes Odysseus to come up with a devious plan. When Polyphemus comes back to the cave, Odysseus gives him wine and sort of pursues and teases Polyphemus so that he drinks more, enough to get him drunk and passed out. This gives them time to prepare for their next step, which is to use the spear they made to stab Polyphemus in the eye to make him blind. He screams loud enough for the other cyclops to wonder what’s going on, but to only hear him say “It’s nobody!” This was genius on Odysseus’s part because the cyclops thought this literally nobody. While the flock of sheep is leaving the cave, Polyphemus uses his sense of touch to make sure it wasn’t any of the men. Little did he know, Odysseus tied his men to the sheep's belly so that they could safely escape without alerting the cyclops. His plan was perfectly executed and well thought out until Odysseus, the arrogant man he is, yells back at Polyphemus as they board their ship. He gloats about how he is Odysseus from Ithaca and how he overcame Polyphemus; however, he’ll soon experience the consequences for upsetting the
But Poseidon who encompasses the land, is ceaselessly enraged because Odysseus blinded of his eye the Cyclops godlike Polyphemus...and since that day earth-shaking Poseidon does not indeed destroy Odysseus, but ever drives him wandering from his land. (2)
“I would not heed them in my glorying spirit, / but let my anger flare and yelled: / ‘Cyclops, / if ever mortal man inquire / how you were put to shame and blinded, tell him / Odysseus, raider of cities, took your eye: / Laertes’ son, whose home’s on Ithaca!’” (500-505, 769).
A calm crisp breeze circled my body as I sat emerged in my thoughts, hopes, and memories. The rough bark on which I sat reminded me of the rough road many people have traveled, only to end with something no one in human form can contemplate.
As the narrator stays for the night he becomes curious about this shepherd, who lives all alone in this stone house, and decides to stay for a while longer. The shepherd, after being widowed, had decided to restore the ruined landscape of the isolated and largely abandoned valley by single-handedly cultivating a forest, tree by tree. The shepherd, Elzéard Bouffier, makes holes in the ground and plants acorns that he had collected from far away into those holes.