Laura Ingalls Wilder: Little House On The Prairie

780 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: 5 paragraph essay on laura ingalls wilder

I grew up in a little house in the big woods. A log cabin, one room, with a cozy cellar and an attic filled with herbs, garden vegetables, and jams. I ran along the banks of Plum Creek. Bonnet untied, chasing the babbling brook, grasshoppers caught in my small palms. I fell in love out west, in a little town on the prairie. A carriage, sleek and majestic, with two passengers, drawn by gorgeous chestnut horses. At least, I thought I did, as a child. From the age of five, I tucked myself into the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the autobiographical Little House on the Prairie series. These novels were my close companions, and inspired both school projects and road trips. Laura’s homes form a scatter plot across the Midwest and Great Plains, log skeletons being held together today by women who love Laura’s life as much as I do. These homes, and the history inside of them, embedded two desires within me that I have carried with me since opening up the Little House pages the first time: want for the simple and want for the …show more content…

They took risks, abandoning all they knew, all they found comfortable to forge ahead into the United States territories long before they became states. In order to abandon what they knew and seek out new adventures, Laura’s family had to create the comfortable. The first book in the series, Little House in the Big Woods, tells of their home in Pepin, Wisconsin; a comfortable house in the green forests of the Great Lakes region, tiny, filled with baked bread, cured meats, patched socks, and paper dolls. This picturesque image, of the house built by Laura’s Pa’s two hands, just miles away from his mother’s home, cultivated over the years, was the comfort required before the adventure began, before years out on the prairie, chasing the horizon, moving from territory to

Show More
Related

  • Rejecting Heritage: Wangero's Greed Illustrated in Walker's, Everyday Use

    1603 Words  | 4 Pages

    It was a little girl’s second Christmas and, although she does not remember now, she was so excited to open the big red package from grandma. She ripped open the package and the soft, handmade brown bear went poof in her hands. She has kept the ratty, old bear not for its beauty but because it has sentimental value of a simpler time. Like this example, many people have memories of items they grew up with that have more than monetary value, most people forget the real value of these items, however, and commercialize them as art or sell them away as junk in garage sales. In Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” we are shown a vivid example of what can happen when people take these once treasured items for granted. Walker’s character Dee/Wangero is an estranged daughter and sister who has not seen her family for six years reappears at her mother’s home to take away her family’s most sentimentally valuable possessions. Because Wangero’s view of her own heritage has been skewed and distorted by her peers, Wangero forgets the value of her mother’s possessions in an attempt to impress her contemporaries. Through Wangero, Walker reveals how misunderstanding one’s heritage can lead him to search for his place in a fake legacy invented to help him reconcile his misunderstanding of his own origins, and can even cause him to cheapen his family heritage because of a desire to stand out among his peers.

    Read More

  • Drinking Memories In Jeannette Wales's The Glass Castle

    821 Words  | 2 Pages

    Jeannette Wales, author of The Glass Castle, recalls in her memoir the most important parts of her life growing up as a child that got her where she is now. Her story begins in Arizona in a small house with her parents and three siblings. Her parents worked and didn’t do much as parents so she had to become very independent. Her parents and siblings were the highlights to most of her memory growing up. She is able to recall memories that most small children wouldn’t be able to recall with as much detail.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Young Goodman Brown And Good Country People

    1050 Words  | 3 Pages

    Physical surroundings (such as a home in the countryside) in works of literary merit such as “Good Country People”, “Everyday Use”, and “Young Goodman Brown” shape psychological and moral traits of the characters, similarly and differently throughout the stories.

    Read More

  • Animals and Nature in the Work of Margaret Wise Brown

    578 Words  | 2 Pages

    I grew up along the beaches and in the woods of Long Island Sound. This was the country. And from then on I was terribly busy hitching up all the dogs I could find to pull me around on my sled in the snow, and picking cherries high up in cherry trees, chasing butterflies, and burning leaves, and picking up shells on the beach, and watching the new flowers come up in the woods as the seasons passed (Days Before Now)

    Read More

  • Similarities Between Good Country People And Everyday Use

    1390 Words  | 3 Pages

    When looking into works of literature, some stories seem to be similar to others. They can have a similar setting, point of view, theme, or sense of language and style. However, all of these points could be very different as well and could cover different theme or style. Flannery O’Conner’s “Good Country People” and Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” have some contrasting elements, such as their points of view and use of symbolism, but their similarities in the underlying theme, language, and the setting of these stories reveal how these two stories are impacted by education on both the individual and their family.

    Read More

  • Marilyne Robinson's Themes In Housekeeping By Marilynne Robinson

    1914 Words  | 4 Pages

    Countless times throughout Robinson’s work, the idea of the home is used as a way to contrast society’s views, and what it means to the characters of Robinson’s novels. In Robinson’s most famous novel Housekeeping, two young girls experience life in a home built by their grandfather, but altered by every person that comes to care for them. After their mother

    Read More

  • Laura Ingalls Wilder Biography

    978 Words  | 2 Pages

    Laura Ingalls Wilder was born on February 7, 1867 in a log cabin near Pepin, Wisconsin. Her family consisted up of five children. Their names were ( in order of age oldest-youngest) Mary, Laura, Caroline/Carrie, Charles/Freddy(died at birth), and Grace. Laura’s Parents were Charles Ingalls and Caroline Quiner. Throughout her life Laura depended on her family for support, but after she got married, she depended more on her husband. Laura went to a variety of schools. She started her education in Wisconsin when she was five with her sister Mary. When Laura was seven, her father wanted to move somewhere else, so the settled in Walnut Grove. She continued her schooling there until 2 years later, when her father wanted to move again because of failed

    Read More

  • The Character of Mama in Alice Walker’s Everyday Use

    936 Words  | 2 Pages

    Regretfully, though readers can see how Mama has had a difficult time in being a single mother and raising two daughters, Dee, the oldest daughter, refuses to acknowledge this. For she instead hold the misconception that heritage is simply material or rather artificial and does not lie in ones heart. However, from Mama’s narrations, readers are aware that this cultural tradition does lie within ones heart, especially those of Mama’s and Maggie’s, and that it is the pure foundation over any external definition.

    Read More

  • Repression of Women Exposed in Susan Glaspell's Trifles

    954 Words  | 2 Pages

    Even with the pain of bearing children, raising them, doing household and even farm chores, their efforts have never been truly appreciated. Mrs. Wright was “…real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid—and fluttery…” as Mrs. Hale, her neighbor, describes her (22). This would all soon change after her wedding day. With Mr. Wright’s insipid character and lack of patience of any joyous sound, Mrs. Wright’s spirit dwindled to nothing. It seems she spent hours at a time focusing on her quilts, preserves, and caring for the only life there was in the house, her canary. Even when Mr. Hale offered to get a party telephone, Mr. Wright responded, “…folks talk too much anyway…”(5). This silence he preferred also applied to his spouse. There were no hugs given out much less a smile. He failed to give her even the most minimal sing of appreciation much less the emotional warmth she hungered for.

    Read More

  • The Role Of Women In The Yellow Wallpaper

    769 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Story begins with a description of the house. The house in itself is a symbol of isolation women faced in the nineteenth-century. The protagonist describes the house as isolated and miles away from the village, but also described as “the most beautiful place” (Gilman 217). During the nineteenth-century, women were in a sense isolated from society, just like the house. The role of the women was to stay home and tend to the

    Read More

  • Interview with an Elderly Woman

    2237 Words  | 5 Pages

    Marie’s grandparent’s had an old farm house, which was one of many homes in which she lived, that she remembers most. The house was huge, she learned to walk, climb stairs, and find hiding places in it. The house had a wide wrap around porch with several wide sets of stairs both in front and in back. She remembers sitting on the steps and playing with one of the cats, with which there was a lot of cats living on the farm...

    Read More

  • Landon's Childhood In Joyce Oats Where Is Here

    307 Words  | 1 Pages

    In “Where is Here” by Joyce Oats, Landon starts to remember little pieces of his childhood during the times in the kitchen with his family. Landon spent the majority of his childhood in that home with his younger sister, and would do anything to go back to visit the home he grew up in at some point in time. The two story house was painted bright yellow. There was always dead flowers laying across the lawn, he never understood why and never really asked his parents about it. Out of seven rooms in the house surprisingly the kitchen was Landon’s least favorite, the cabinets were all painted white with a black trim. There was a chandelier right above the kitchen table, it was the only light there in the kitchen. The kitchen was a very sad place

    Read More

  • Comparing Family in Breathing Lessons, Homesick Restaurant, and Accidental Tourist

    2902 Words  | 6 Pages

    The perfect, suburban family has become a prominant theme and stereotype in American culture.  Families from the works of Anne Tyler represent the exact opposite of this cultural stereotype.  None of Tyler's novels contain families with faithful, domestic wives, breadwinning husbands, and 2.3 well-behaved, perfect children.  Tyler kills this misconcieved stereotype in Breathing Lessons, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, and The Accidental Tourist.  Anne Tyler grew up with her parents on a series of experimental communes, so she developed a different perception of family life.  She observes domestic life from the view of an outsider looking in.  Minor-- and sometimes major-- flaws characterize the average family in Tyler's novels because many of today's families are imperfect.  Because of her communal upbringing, she observes family life more honestly than do writers who romanticize family life. Tyler's novels show that the picture most people see when they think of the typical American family is shifting from the Cleavers to the Simpsons.

    Read More

  • Childhood Memories of Grandma's House

    1099 Words  | 3 Pages

    A red brick house on top of a small hill is where my memories reside. A slightly curved gravel road led to the front of the house. Eight or nine rose brown apple trees randomly covered the plush green lawn. Down the small hill, muddy brown water trickled down a ditch with cattails surrounding it. One enormous willow tree sat in the background, to the right of the house, to complete the picture. It almost seemed like a picture from a postcard. But when you're a kid none of this really matters. All that really matters to you is to have as much fun as possible. My memories don't come just from this beautiful picture but from the little things making it.

    Read More

  • The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss

    1055 Words  | 3 Pages

    The more the Robinsons explored the woods, the more they found things that would make life easier. They soon discovered some kind of wax berries which they melted and made into candles. They even found a huge salt cavern! The cavern was big enough for them and their supplies, so they moved in, for the rainy season was coming fast. They built stables for their animals, a canoe, and a loom for Mother. The Robinsons were very creative. They made the worst situation into something good and before they knew it, they had spent ten years living on that deserted island! They knew the island like the back of their own hands and Father and Mother watched their sons grow into manhood, as they too got older.

    Read More

More about Laura Ingalls Wilder: Little House On The Prairie

Open Document