Where a person grows up can have a great effect on themselves, and people around them. Someone's hometown or where they grew up may sometimes motivate them to get away from it; going someplace better. A memoir by Debra Marquart released in 2006, exemplifies the opinion that if someone wants to reach the top they must suffer prior to making it. Practically anyone who lives in a place that is secluded or not known would agree that they would like to work their way out of there. Marquart’s characterization of the Midwest is strongly subjective, she recognizes it as dreadful; addressing those who did not grow up in these areas, but in the city. Marquart’s memoir can be seen as subjective since she only gives reasons on why the Midwest …show more content…
Marquart wants to assure city members that people from these places want out. If they want to reach a high peak of success, a place such as North Dakota is not for anyone. Although it may seem as if people from rural areas only want to be well known, it means so much more to them than that. By using imagery she leaves those who live the city life feeling pity for people like Marquart. Her tone is very distressing when revealing her countryside as, “uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for subsistence.” Even the people who live there cannot be provided of a good dependable promising life. This tells not only Marquart's own point of view, but everyone who lives there as a whole. If American books were being published about places such as these since 1995 and it still has not gotten better, people are obviously not going to want to stay there. The push for a greater exciting life has always been in rural areas like this. Emphasizing the appeal for a better life when stating, “They traveled to the Midwest by train to what was then the end of the line--- Eureka, South Dakota.” This land would only be the beginning of a great future for many people. Although, by any means it did not mean that it would be the end of the line for anyone. It is so important for people from these type of areas to get away, so they could find out their own Eureka thus continuing it, and passing it
Have you ever loved a place as a child, but as you got older you realized how sugar coated it really was? Well, that is how Jacqueline Woodson felt about her mother’s hometown and where she went every summer for vacation. The story, When A Southern Town Broke A Heart, starts off with the author feeling as if Greenville is her home. But one year when she has 9 she saw it as the racist place it really is. This causes her to feel betrayed, but also as if she isn't the naive little girl she once was. By observing this change, you can conclude that the theme she is trying to convey is that as you get older, you also get wiser.
He begins in Chestnut Hill, a high-income neighborhood in Philadelphia, at the city’s boundaries on Germantown Avenue. Anderson eloquently points out what most do not notice consciously, but are truly aware of as a matter of self-preservation. This self-preservation becomes more prioritized, or vice-versa, as a ...
Eudora Alice Welty practically spent her whole life living in Mississippi. Mississippi is the setting in a large portion of her short stories and books. Most of her stories take place in Mississippi because she focuses on the manners of people living in a small Mississippi town. Writing about the lives of Mississippi folk is one main reason Welty is a known author. Welty’s stories are based upon the way humans interact in social encounters. She focuses on women’s situations and consciousness. Another thing she mostly focuses on is isolation. In almost all of Welty’s earlier stories the main character is always being isolated. Throughout her short stories, a hidden message is always evident. Eudora Welty does a wonderful job of exposing social prejudices in the form of buried messages.
In the world of Appalachia, stereotypes are abundant. There are stories told of mountaineers as lazy, bewildered, backward, and yet happy and complacent people. Mountain women are seen as diligent, strong, hard willed, and overall sturdy and weathered, bearing the burden of their male counterparts. These ideas of mountain life did not come out of thin air; they are the direct product of sensational nineteenth century media including print journalism and illustrative art that has continuously mislead and wrongfully represented the people of Appalachia. These stories, written and told by outsiders, served very little purpose to Appalachian natives other than means of humiliation and degradation. They served mostly to convince readers of the need for so-called civilized people and companies to take over the land and industry of the region, in particular the need for mineral rights, railroads, and logging as the mountain folk were wasting those valuable resources necessary for the common good.
of fishing, hunting, collecting. This land is the land that the white men cannot encroach and
A number of ideas, suggestions, and points can be extracted from “Illinois Bus Ride,” a passage from Aldo Leopold’s collection of essays entitled A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. However, there must be one main thesis that the author is attempting to get through to his audience. Leopold argues that we Americans have manipulated the landscape and ecosystem of the prairie so that it seems to be nothing more that a tool at our disposal. All aspects of what was once a beautiful, untamed frontier have been driven back further and further, until they were trapped in the ditches.
Typical American by Gish Jen demonstrates the different struggles that a traditional immigrant family encounters. The book being discussed will be explained by means of historical influences and biographical influences during Jen’s life that affected the novel. This essay will also contain a critical analysis of the book and an analysis of the critical response from others.
This text was created to bring to light the hardship Natives went through during the Age of Exploration. The populous, who only hear rumors and short stories from all territories west of the Atlantic Ocean, cannot grasp the tough and difficult task that is at hand in the Americas. From these short blurbs of what is said about the west, they make inferences of what it is like, and how it is possible for another land mass to be unknown to many for so long. But for those who do know what is past the Atlantic, know that this Agenda of the King and Queen must be fulfilled and to do so would be to claim land for Spain for it to be settled upon. On top of that is to further collect the riches of the Americas to benefit Spain in the conquest of the Americas.
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
In the passage “The Heartland and the Rural Youth Exodus”, the authors Carr and Kefalas both describe the different changes that happen to the youth. They depict the issues that arise when the youth leaves in search of bigger things that are outside of the small towns. Throughout the article, the issues of change in small towns is addressed and emphasized as a catastrophe for the future of these towns. The talk about the youth and towns fading away is not the only thing one thinks about when reading this article. The youth are not the only people being affected; the older generation parents of the youth are having to face the biggest change because they have the option of leaving or staying. This change can
The article begins with the author narrating the story of Clyde Ross, whose journey from Mississippi to Chicago is a living example of the trajectory. Ross, the son of a Mississippi sharecropper, saw the small portion of wealth and land his father could attain forcibly stripped from him by
Could the dysfunction of the Walls family have fostered the extraordinary resilience and strength of the three older siblings through a collaborative set of rites of passage? One could argue that the unusual and destructive behavior of the parents forced the children into a unique collection of rites of passage that resulted in surprisingly resilient and successful adults. In moving back to Welch, Virginia, the children lost what minimal sense of security they may have enjoyed while living in their grandmother’s home in Arizona. The culture and climate (both socially and environmentally) along with an increased awareness of their poverty resulted in a significant loss of identity. As they learned new social and survival skills in this desperate environment, there is a powerful sense of camaraderie between the older children. Their awareness, drive and cunning survival skills while living in Welch result in a developing sense of confidence in their ability to survive anything. This transition, while wretched, sets the stage for their ability to leave their environment behind with little concern for a lack of success. As the children leave, one by one, to New York, they continue to support one another, and emerge as capable, resourceful young adults.
A. Rural Community in the Appalachian South. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1981. Murray, Kenneth. A. Down to Earth People of Appalachia.
She list some of the best known names to come out of the Midwest, including “garrison Keillor's and The coen brothers” emphasizing the relativity of the land, and immediately follows it with a stereotypical generalization of the land, calling it “devoid of stories” and “a flyover region one must go through to get to more interesting places”. This juxtaposition reasserts her love for the midwest while simultaneously accusing the well known generalizations as false and mythical. Moreover, Marquart goes on to inform how the Midwest achieved this boring reputation quoting a piece of nonfiction by Richard Manning voicing the history of the land, “the place was a mess, and it became a young nation’s job to fix it with geometry, democracy, seeds, steam, and water” this perfectly lays the ground for juxtaposition in the subsequent paragraph which includes how incoming russian immigrants felt blessed to have received land with such potential, even naming a space in south dakota “eureka” which accentuates her overall feeling appreciation for the midwest and all that it has to
Imagine having to choose to reside in one place for the rest of your life. Which would you opt for? Some people would argue that the hyperactive lifestyle that a big city has to offer has more benefits than living in the country. However, others would contend that the calm and peaceful environment of the countryside is much more rewarding. Several people move from the city to a farm to get away from the hustle and bustle. Likewise, some farmers have traded in their tractors and animals to live a fast paced city life. Of course, not all large cities are the same nor are all of the places in the country identical. Realizing this, ten years ago, I decided to hang up the city life in Indiana to pursue a more laid back approach to life in rural Tennessee. Certainly, city life and life in the country have their benefits, but they also have distinguishable differences.