Both N. Scott Momaday’s “The Way to Rainy Mountain” and Raymond Carver’s “My Father’s Life” involve reflection of the respective author’s relationship with a late family member. While the nature of the retrospectives vary greatly, in purpose of the writing and in relationship to the deceased, ultimately, each author concludes with similar emotional catharsis. Carter used the essay as a means to evaluate his feelings regarding his father’s life and their somewhat distant relationship. After his father’s death, Carver expresses remorse over that distance, and of how he made no further attempt to connect to his father emotionally, “I didn't have the chance to tell him goodbye, or that I thought he was doing great at his new job. That I was proud of him for making a comeback.” Meaning that Carver’s conclusive reaction to his father’s death was regret. Momaday’s goal is different, his essay, and journey to the eponymous “Rainy Mountain” was one created less out of a sense of regret than a sense of duty to his …show more content…
From reading the essay I gathered that these actions were a part of Carver’s reasoning for distancing himself from his father as he got older, along with the excuse of needing to tend to his own family. Compare Momaday, whose admiration for his grandmother was much more obviously written, and was able to receive his grandmother’s death with much more comfort. Throughout the essay, Momaday describes the mythic origins of his people, as well as their historical hardships, he recalls his grandmother’s amazing ability, “She could tell of the Crows, whom she had never seen, and of the Black Hills, where she had never been”. In doing so he reveals the purpose of his journey: to physically venture to these places where his grandmother had only been
Well known essayist, Ted Kooser, in his essay, Hands, describes the dramatic changes in his life pertaining to a strong connection with his father. Kooser’s purpose is to impress upon the readers that the strong bonds formed with important people in one’s life will carry on no matter whether if they are still with you or not. He adopts a sentimental tone to convey that he is mourning the struggles of someone special in his life.
The day is unlike any other. The mail has come and lying at the bottom of the stack is the favored Outside magazine. The headline reads, “Exclusive Report: Lost in the Wild.” The cover speaks of a twenty four year old boy who “walked off into America’s Last Frontier hoping to make sense of his life.” The monotony of the ordinary day has now vanished from thought as Jon Krakauer’s captivating article runs through the mind like gasoline to an engine. The article is not soon forgotten, and the book Into the Wild is happened upon three years later. The book relates the full story of Christopher Johnson McCandless and how he left his family and friends after graduating college in order to find himself. Krakauer based the book off of his article on McCandless that was printed in January of 1993. From the time of writing the article to the printing of Into the Wild, Krakauer was obsessed with the tale of the boy who rid himself of society and later turned up dead in the Alaskan frontier. In the foreword of Into the Wild, Krakauer describes McCandless as “an extremely intense young man [who] possessed a streak of stubborn idealism that did not mesh readily with modern existence” and who was in deed searching for a “raw, transcendent experience” (i-ii). Krakauer is correct in assessing this conclusion about McCandless. This conclusion is seen throughout the book in many different assessments. Krakauer uses logical appeal, a comparison to his own life, and assumption to bring about his assessment of McCandless’ life.
It is an emotional and heart-rending chronicle about raising in the dirt-poor of the Alabama hills--and all about moving on with the life but never actually being capable to leave (Bragg, 1997, p. 183). The exceptional blessing for evocation and thoughtful insight and the dramatic voice for the account--notifying readers that author has gained a Pulitzer Award for this featured writing. It is a wrenching account of his own upbringing and family. The story moves around a war haunted, alcoholic person (Bragg's father) and a determined and loving mother who made hard efforts to safeguard her children from the harsh effects of poverty and ignorance, which has constricted her own living standard. In this account, author was talented enough to create for himself on the strength of his mother's support and strong conviction. He left house only to follow his dreams and pursue a respectable career in life, however he is strongly linked to his ancestry. In addition, the memoir shows the efforts of Bragg in which he has both compensated and took revenge from the cruelties of his early childhood. Author's approach towards his past seems quite ambivalent and
In this memoir, James gives the reader a view into his and his mother's past, and how truly similar they were. Throughout his life, he showed the reader that there were monumental events that impacted his life forever, even if he
The Way to Rainy Mountain was written in 1969 by Pulitzer Prize winning author N. Scott Momaday. The novel is about Scott Momaday's Kiowa ancestors and their journey from the Montana area to Fort Sill near Rainy Mountain, Oklahoma, where their surrender to the United States Cavalry took place. In The Way to Rainy Mountain, Momaday traces his ancestral roots back to the beginning of the Kiowa tribe while not only learning more about the Kiowa people but rediscovering himself and finding out what his true identity is. The death of his grandmother prompts Momaday to dig deeper into the background of his family. To better help him become closer with his ancestral roots, Momaday returns to Rainy Mountain to visit his recently deceased grandmother’s grave where the spirit of the Kiowa tribe was thought to be very strong. Scott Momaday’s grandmother was believed to be the last of the Kiowa’s; with her death came the death of the Kiowa culture. Momaday wouldn’t let such a spiritual people who meant so much to him be forgotten so he created The Way to Rainy Mountain with this motivation. As Momaday works through each of the Kiowa’s mythical stories, he begins to learn a lot about his ancestors and, in turn, about himself. After reading the novel, it is evident to the reader that from beginning to end, Momaday has grown tremendously and has an increased sense of knowledge and appreciation for his Kiowa ancestors and their spiritual way of life. While Scott Momaday’s was creating his world renowned novel, The Way to Rainy Mountain, his relationship with past events greatly contributed to the overall meaning of the book in three major ways. During the novel, Momaday uses his recollections of the past to help understand Kiowa myths a...
In The Way To Rainy Mountain, the author N. Scott Momaday makes a clear use of figurative language throughout the story and descriptive language to describe the nature around them, explains their myths about how their tribe came to be a part of nature, as well as the importance in nature that are a part of the Sundance festival and the tai-me.
Wright had a large family that all lived close to one another in Jackson, Mississippi, but Wright felt isolated from them because he didn’t have complete faith in the beliefs and values his relatives had. At a young age, Wright’s father left his family, leaving his own family to support themselves with little money. Wright constantly blamed his father for his constant hunger, and “whenever I felt hunger I thought of him with a deep biological bitterness.” (Wright 16). Living on practically nothing, Wright’s mom, Ella began to push her son into becoming the man of the household. Despite Wright’s constant fear of getting hurt, he slowly started to develop bravery. Without being brave, Wright would have never found the courage to write about his own life. The only source of support his family received was from his maternal grandmother, who ...
Carver tells the story in first person of a narrator married to his wife. Problems occur when she wants a friend of hers, an old blind man, to visit for a while because his wife has died. The narrator's wife used to work for the blind man in Seattle when the couple was financial insecure and needed extra money. The setting here is important, because Seattle is associated with rain, and rain symbolically represents a cleansing or change. This alludes to the drastic change in the narrator in the end of the story. The wife and blind man kept in touch over the years by sending each other tape recordings of their voices which the narrator refers it to being his wife's "chief means or recreation" (pg 581).
Throughout life, people face obstacles. The time and type of such events can determine a person’s character, outlook and their goals in life. “Walking Out” was about a young boy who takes a vacation with his father which turns tragic because of a gun accident. The author of “Walking Out”, David Quammen moved to Montana in the early 1970’s; there has been no indication that the author and the boy depicted in the story are the same person. Some parallels might be assumed with both the character and author having the same name; both men grew up near big cities and venture into the back country to get away from life. Both also do not enjoy the lifestyle at first, but come to enjoy it. In David Quammen’s Walking Out, David and his father venture
Throughout his villanelle, “Saturday at the Border,” Hayden Carruth continuously mentions the “death-knell” (Carruth 3) to reveal his aged narrator’s anticipation of his upcoming death. The poem written in conversation with Carruth’s villanelle, “Monday at the River,” assures the narrator that despite his age, he still possesses the expertise to write a well structured poem. Additionally, the poem offers Carruth’s narrator a different attitude with which to approach his writing, as well as his death, to alleviate his feelings of distress and encourage him to write with confidence.
Through an intimate maternal bond, Michaels mother experiences the consequences of Michaels decisions, weakening her to a debilitating state of grief. “Once he belonged to me”; “He was ours,” the repetition of these inclusive statements indicates her fulfilment from protecting her son and inability to find value in life without him. Through the cyclical narrative structure, it is evident that the loss and grief felt by the mother is continual and indeterminable. Dawson reveals death can bring out weakness and anger in self and with others. The use of words with negative connotations towards the end of the story, “Lonely,” “cold,” “dead,” enforce the mother’s grief and regressing nature. Thus, people who find contentment through others, cannot find fulfilment without the presence of that individual.
The point of view from the narrators perspective, highlights how self-absorbed and narrow-minded he is. “They’d married, lived and worked together, slept together—had sex, sure—and then the blind man had to bury her. All this without his having ever seen what the goddamned woman looked like. It was beyond my understanding” (Carver...
A transformation took place during the story and it is evident through the narrator?s character. In the beginning he was lacking in compassion, he was narrow minded, he was detached, he was jealous, and he was bitter. Carver used carefully chosen words to illustrate the narrator?s character and the change. Throughout the story his character undergoes a transformation into a more emotionally aware human being.
This is highlighted through the final words of the narrators “It’s really something”, this is him realizing that he is an inarticulate man and has always been this way. The use of zero-ending the story is very clever from Carver as he leaves the reader with their breathe held as the narrator sees a new world start to appear through his
When writing, Carver’s specific choices such as his minimalist style, symbolism, and diction greatly impact both the meaning and the development of the piece. Carver’s minimalist style is immensely important to the development and understanding of the story’s plot. He successfully establishes this technique through extreme spareness and simplicity. This style in Carver’s writing is intended to make the reader think. An example of this is when the man is speaking to his daughter about her mother.