This created tensions with the local people who had inhabited the land for many years and later with government officials who wanted to preserve the land for national parks. The local people would reconsider their attitudes toward the timber barons, however, when the Great Depression struck in 1929: while they were being pushed off their land, the logging industry was providing many with jobs at a time when employment was sparse. Ron Rash’s novel Serena portrays this struggle using the fictitious Serena and George Pemberton whose ambitions for their own logging company strain the environment around them physically and endangers those entangled in their …show more content…
She urges the workers to cut as quickly as possible in order to leave the land barren before it is turned into a national park. After the Pembertons and the other shareholders go on a hunting trip for deer, Rash describes “a mound of the carcasses in the meadow’s center, and blood streaked the snow red” (Rash, page 119, chapter 6). On the same trip, Serena kills a bear that was attacking Pemberton and tells a worker to add its body to the pile instead of tanning the hide or mounting the head (Rash, page 124, chapter 6). One critic of the novel says, “[n]one of the animals are used for meat nor are they killed for their hides or trophies. It seems as if the animals are murdered, for a reason worse than the trees, just because they are there” (Lee). Serena also imports an eagle and trains it to hunt rattlesnakes that are harming the workers. This causes another upset in the balance of the ecosystem as the rat population in the camp increases without its natural predator present. It would appear that her eagle and her white Arabian are the only parts of nature that Serena respects because they are symbols of power. Serena elevates herself by riding through the camp on the horse and also how a man would ride it rather than the traditional side-saddle style of women. She shows her reverence for her eagle when she says, “[i]t’s so beautiful […] [i]t’s no wonder it takes not just the earth but the sky to contain it” (Rash, page 147, chapter 8). One of the workers also comments on the relationship between Serena and her eagle saying, “I’d no more strut up and tangle with that eagle than I’d tangle with the one what can tame such a critter” (Rash, page 172, chapter
The Great Depression is one of the worst time for America. Books, cartoons, and articles have been written about the people during the Depression and how they survived in that miserable period. For example, the book Bud not Buddy takes place in the time of the Great Depression. Bud is a ten year old orphan, who was on the run trying to find his dad. There are many feelings throughout the book like sadness and scarceness. There are many diverse tones in the book about what people were feeling at the time.
Jones, Dorothy. "Sharing Memories: 1930's Life on the Farm During the Great Depression." MrDonn.Org. 28 Oct. 2007. 13 Mar. 2008 .
Billy and his hounds face unexpected struggles each time they hunt. For example, there is always a battle to catch the coons. The first time Billy goes hunting, the hounds tree a coon in the biggest sycamore tree in the forest. For two whole days, Billy chips away at the tree until it finally falls down and the coon is caught. Billy is hot, exhausted, and aches all over. Another example of man versus nature is the weather during the Championship Coon Hunt. During this hunt, Billy and his hounds face a terrible blizzard. The winter weather is described as roaring and “the north wind seemed to be laughing at us” (202). The wind blows and the snow falls so fast that the Earth is instantly covered. Even the hounds have to stay in constant motion to keep from freezing to death. The biggest conflict occurs at the end of the story. Billy and his hounds encounter their biggest opponent, a mountain lion. All alone, they struggle with the wild creature that Billy refers to as a “devil cat” (226). The mountain lion has “yellow slitted eyes that burned with hate” (226). Billy watches as his hounds and the mountain lion tear at each other and fight till the end.
As a way to end his last stanza, the speaker creates an image that surpasses his experiences. When the flock rises, the speaker identifies it as a lady’s gray silk scarf, which the woman has at first chosen, then rejected. As the woman carelessly tosses the scarf toward the chair the casual billow fades from view, like the birds. The last image connects nature with a last object in the poet's
The Mother is among a family of four who lives on a small farm and takes immense pride in what interests her, however her passion does not particularly lie in her two children; James and David; nor in her husband and their interests; but instead lies within her chickens. Though chickens bring the most joy to the Mother, they are not the sole animals that live on the farm. The animal that draws the most interest from the father, James and David is their horse, Scott. At a young age, Scott was used as a working mule for the family and grew up alongside the Father and two Sons. To the father, Scott was like one of his own sons, and to James and David, Scott was like their brother; but according to the Mother, “He’s been worthless these last few years”(Macleod, 267). Ever since Scott was young, he was a burden on the Mother’s lifestyle; she never took a liking to the horse even when he served as a source of profit for the family. The Mother had never appreciated the sentimental value that Scott possessed because he had never been a particular interest to her. Once Scott had aged and was no longer able...
Ever wonder what it is like to live through the Great Depression as a farmer? Being able to work on the land and of a sudden people are leaving their homes because they were forced to leave. The only hope these farmers have now is to move out west to look for work and to have a better life. Would these farmers be able to rebuild their lives after having their old lifestyle they have known for so long to be ripped away from them or will this new idea of moving out west turned out to be hopeless in the end? This issue happens to the Joads family in the novel The Grapes of Wrath written by John Steinbeck. The book takes place during the Great Depression. Steinbeck’s novel is about a man named Tom Joad who travels with his family from Oklahoma
The tile of the poem “Bird” is simple and leads the reader smoothly into the body of the poem, which is contained in a single stanza of twenty lines. Laux immediately begins to describe a red-breasted bird trying to break into her home. She writes, “She tests a low branch, violet blossoms/swaying beside her” and it is interesting to note that Laux refers to the bird as being female (Laux 212). This is the first clue that the bird is a symbol for someone, or a group of people (women). The use of a bird in poetry often signifies freedom, and Laux’s use of the female bird implies female freedom and independence. She follows with an interesting image of the bird’s “beak and breast/held back, claws raking at the pan” and this conjures a mental picture of a bird who is flying not head first into a window, but almost holding herself back even as she flies forward (Laux 212). This makes the bird seem stubborn, and follows with the theme of the independent female.
Since its first appearance in the 1886 collection A White Heron and Other Stories, the short story A White Heron has become the most favorite and often anthologized of Sarah Orne Jewett. Like most of this regionalist writer's works, A White Heron was inspired by the people and landscapes in rural New England, where, as a little girl, she often accompanied her doctor father on his visiting patients. The story is about a nine-year-old girl who falls in love with a bird hunter but does not tell him the white heron's place because her love of nature is much greater. In this story, the author presents a conflict between femininity and masculinity by juxtaposing Sylvia, who has a peaceful life in country, to a hunter from town, which implies her discontent with the modernization?s threat to the nature. Unlike female and male, which can describe animals, femininity and masculinity are personal and human.
A devoted mother, Anne Bradstreet is concerned with her children as she watches them grow up. “Or lest by Lime-twigs they be foil'd, or by some greedy hawks be spoil'd” Anne Bradstreet uses to describe her fear for her children. Not wanting to see her children suffer, Anne Bradstreet turns to God to help her children. Bradstreet imagines her bird’s being stuck on a branch and a hawk eating them, a grim image of all of her sacrifice being lost in a single moment. “No cost nor labour did I spare” describes how much Anne loves her children.
Once while hunting for boar with Arab Maina, Arab Kosky, and her dog, Buller, Markham comes face to face with a dangerous, lone lion. In this section, Beryl is extremely descriptive and recalls the memory in a fashion that allows the reader to see the events unfolding through her eyes at a lifelike pace. “Buller and I crouched behind them, my own spear as ready as I could make it in hands that were less hot from the sun than from excitement and the pounding of my heart.” (Markham 87), depicts Beryl’s thrill at the possibility that she may go toe-to-toe with the lion. This excitement outweighs her fear of injury for herself; however, she restrains Buller, as to prevent him from trying to sacrifice himself in the conflict.... ...
Within the first eight lines, the poet asserts his desire, yet inability, to capture a deer. Wyatt highlights the deer’s femininity by making the word “hind” an unstressed syllable. This poem is written in iambic pentameter. It is simply too exhausting and futile for the speaker to continue chasing after her, but his passions nearly override his mental state. He is “wearied,” “sore,” and “fainting,” but she is intrinsically
Sylvia was a 9 year old “nature girl” who met a charming ornithologist hunter on a mission to find the allusive white heron. Sylvia was about 8 years old when she moved with her grandmother from the city to a farm, “a good change for a little maid who had tried to grow for eight years in a crowded manufacturing town, but, as for Sylvia herself, it seemed as if she never had been alive at all before she came to live at the farm.” (Jewett, 1884, 1914, qtd in McQuade, et.al., 1999, p. 1641). Sylvia finds the secret, the white heron. Instead of telling the young hunter, she keeps the secret, because in her mind nature is more powerful than her feelings for “the enemy.”
The Great Depression created the conditions that has control of all the characters in the novel. The creation of “Bindle stiffs,” is a direct result of the cultivation challenges that came from the Depression. The fact that the men are “at bay” to a certain extent impacts the characters. Few to none of the characters are happy in the novel, for they were bound to work with so little being present. Lennie and George are representative of this novel. For their dream of having a farm shows the desire for economic autonomy and empowerment, something that few people showed during the Great Depression. The fact that Curley’s wife is able to make fun of them shows how desperate they are to stay and keep working at this ranch. They hold their
Sarah Orne Jewett uses Sylvia in the white heron to illustrate her theme that man and nature must share the earth, and because man has the power to destroy most other animals, the responbility for protecting the these animals lies within each person through symbolism and conflict, Jewett creates the story of a young girl who follows her conscience. Just as certainly as the mouse in Robert Burns poem what have a horrible opinion of mankind come the heron would have a story of a girl who saved it from destruction.
This story, “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, was written and set in the Great Depression, centering around two migrant workers, George and Lennie, in California who work on ranches. It details their work and dreams until tragedy strikes, which forever alters their lives, including their dream of owning a few acres of land with a shack, that they could call their own. The dream was shattered when Lennie would unintentionally kill Curley’s wife, and George was forced to kill Lennie in order to keep Lennie from a possible grisly death by a lynch mob assembled for Lennie’s blood. George, because of the circumstance outside of his own control, once again changes his outlook on life from hopeful and confident to suspicious and bitter to finally becoming morose and losing what little hope he had in life.