I am reading “ The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant” by W.D Wetherell. This story is about a boy who loves fishing and a girl next door. He decides to go on a date with her but in the end has to choose will it be the girl or the fish. In this journal I will be questioning and
While I was reading this story I was wondering if he would pick Sheila or the bass.
One possible answer is that he might pick the bass. One of the reasons is that he’s been fishing all of his life. He can also fish the rest of his life instead a girl wont last a lifetime.
When he was going on the date he brought the fishing pole on to the boat. When there was a fish on his line he paid more attention to the fish the when she was talking. He also thought that that fish
was one of the biggest fish he has ever caught. In the book the narrator refers to Sheila as a memory. This may be a clue to which he picks in the end. On the other hand there is a possibility he picks Sheila. For one thing is that he likes her there’s no denying that. In the book he goes into detail of what he loves about her he is crazy about her. He has taken a lot of his time to go and watch her in her backyard. He has been watching her enough that he knows all of her moods to a detail of her posture when siting. In my opinion I think he would pick the girl over fishing. There may be a lot of things that happen in life you regret this is about some decisions I regret and some the narrator could regret. The narrator made a terrible choice in my opinion. He chose the girl over his fish of a lifetime. We know this because he cut the line and continued to talk to the girl. He did this because thinking he would spend more time with her or to not make her think badly of him. He regretted his choice in the end because Sheila went off with another guy in his car. I have made some bad decisions I regret also. I regret letting myself get SO many missing assignments last year. I regret it because I missed out on a lot of school activities like some sport games and having my parents take my phone away. Both the narrator and I regret so many things in our choices but we now have learned never to do it again.
I am reading “The Bass, the River, and Shelia Mant” by W.D. Wetherell, The story is about a young boy trying to choose between a beautiful girl and his passion of fishing. In this journal, I will be questioning and evaluating.
Wetherell, W.D. "The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant." Responding to Literature: Stories, Poems, Plays, and Essays. Fourth Edition. Ed. Judith A. Stanford. Boston: McGrawHill, 2003. 191-196.
The concept of displacement from rape in “Woman Thou Art Loosed” and “Mississippi Damned” is represented by mental distortion, trauma, and self-degradation.
James Duncan’s book entitled, The River Why, focuses around the main character, Gus, and how he changes throughout the book. In this book Gus is discovering what life really is and that the whole world does not revolve around fishing. After moving out of his erratic house he spends all of his time fishing at his remote cabin, but this leaves him unhappy and a little insane. He embarks on a search for him self and for his own beliefs. Duncan changes Gus throughout the book, making Gus realize that there are more important things to life than fishing, and these things can lead to a happy fulfilled life, which in turn will help Gus enjoy life and fishing more. Duncan introduces a character, Eddy, who significantly changes Gus’s views on what he needs in his life and she gives Gus a sense of motivation or inspiration. Eddy changes Gus by their first encounter with each other, when Eddy instills in Gus a need to fulfill his life and when they meet up again, completing his need. Fishing is Gus’s first passion but he loses it after he puts all of himself into it, and when Eddy comes into his picture Gus feels a need to have more in his life, like love. Through finding love he re-finds his passion for fishing and learns more about himself. When Eddy and Gus finally get together, he sees this “equilibrium” between his old passion, fishing, and his new one, Eddy. Duncan’s use of Eddy gives Gus a new found sense of purpose and to have a more fulfilled life is a critical step in Gus’s development as a character. This is why Eddy is the most important character to this book, because she gives Gus inspiration to find himself.
He owned a small motor boat that he used to take Anna to a new country. Along the way he smiled at Anna and tried to make her smile, but other than those few times, he was a quiet man. The Fisherman was a good man that did a favor for the Swallow Man. He was bringing Anna to a new country where she would have to live life on her own. 1.
The story describes the protagonist who is coming of age as torn between the two worlds which he loves equally, represented by his mother and his father. He is now mature and is reflecting on his life and the difficulty of his childhood as a fisherman. Despite becoming a university professor and achieving his father’s dream, he feels lonely and regretful since, “No one waits at the base of the stairs and no boat rides restlessly in the waters of the pier” (MacLeod 261). Like his father, the narrator thinks about what his life could have been like if he had chosen another path. Now, with the wisdom and experience that comes from aging and the passing of time, he is trying to make sense of his own life and accept that he could not please everyone. The turmoil in his mind makes the narrator say, “I wished that the two things I loved so dearly did not exclude each other in a manner that was so blunt and too clear” (MacLeod 273). Once a decision is made, it is sometimes better to leave the past and focus on the present and future. The memories of the narrator’s family, the boat and the rural community in which he spent the beginning of his life made the narrator the person who he is today, but it is just a part of him, and should not consume his present.
Love, an emotion that grips over people in intense ways, and holds them for an everlasting time. In the short story called “The Bass, The River, and Sheila Mant” written by W.D. Wetherell shows how love, or having a passion for someone, or something can drive a person into doing things in different ways. The story deals with the narrator trying to impress and go out with a girl named Sheila Mant, but at the same, the narrator loves fishing very much, so these two different passions would go in conflict with each other in the story. The theme of the story is not letting your love of something be overshadowed by anything else. The story portrays the theme through literary devices such as; the characterization of the narrator, the ironies involved
“The Bass, The River, and Sheila Mant,” written by W.D. Wetherell, tells the story of a fourteen-year-old boy and the summer in which he met Sheila Mant. After weeks of failed attempts and longing for the older woman who seemed just out of his reach, the boy worked
The title of the poem itself dictates the simplicity Bishop wishes to convey regarding the narrator's view of his catch. A fish is a creature that has preceded the creation of man on this planet. Therefore, Bishop supplies the reader with a subject that is essentially constant and eternal, like life itself. In further examination of this idea the narrator is, in relation to the fish, very young, which helps introduce the theme of deceptive appearances in conjunction with age by building off the notion that youth is ignorant and quick to judge.
He teaches the kid what to do in order to successfully reel in a large, beautiful fish. Ironically, the narrator is the one who learns from the kid in the end. At the beginning of the story, everything is described negatively, from the description of the kid as a “lumpy little guy with baggy shorts” to his “stupid-looking ’50s-style wrap-around sunglasses” and “beat-up rod”(152). Through his encounter with the boy, the narrator is able to see life in a different way, most notable from how he describes the caught tarpon as heavy, silvery white, and how it also has beautiful red fins (154). Through the course of the story, the narrator’s pessimistic attitude changes to an optimistic one, and this change reveals how inspiring this exchange between two strangers is. This story as a whole reveals that learning also revolves around interactions between other people, not only between people and their natural surroundings and
of weakness. The fearless fish circled the boat for hours. It was then that Santiago saw the size of
Hemingway often depicts nature as a pastoral paradise within the novel, and the fishing trip serves as his epitome of such, entirely free from the corruptions of city life and women. Doing away with modern modes of transportation, they walk many miles gladly to reach the Irati River. While fishing, Jake and Bill are able to communicate freely with each other, unbound by the social confines of American and European society. The men also enjoy the camaraderie of English Veteran, Harris. This is quite different from the competitive relationships that can develop between men in the presence of women. Bill is able to express his fondness for Jake openly without it “mean[ing] [he] was a faggot,” (VIII), and Jake has no qualms over his fish being smaller than Bill’s, in what could be interpreted as an admission of lesser sexual virility.
The first element to analyze when looking at “The Fish” is figurative language. The reader is drawn to this element because of its heavy emphasis throughout the poem. Elizabeth Bishop profusely uses similes with the intention of heightening the sensation of fishing. She writes:
As I am reading the story I am wondering whether he will pick the bass or Sheila Mant. I think that the bass will be chosen. I am thinking this because he fishes a lot in his free time and he knows almost everything about bass. He could tell whether it was a big or little bass and he defiantly did not want Sheila to know. He has spent a lot of money into his fishing and a lot of time into fishing to know what he is doing. He knows it
The fish withholds a great part in this book. The Old Man and the Sea is a book that’s about a small town where the residents revolve their lives around fishing. The fish is a symbol of beauty and it is a greatly admired creature to these people. An example from the book is on page 49. Santiago has been fishing for 84 days and decides not to return home without a fish on the 85th day. On the 85th day, alone in the boat, he manages to hook an enormous marlin, the biggest fish he's ever seen in all his life. The fish is larger and stronger than Santiago. Santiago's experienced fishing skills and his will to catch and survive push him to pursue the fish for many days and many miles out to sea.