In his book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche describes the Overman as a model human freed from the constraints and flaws of modern values. It epitomized the ideals of humanity’s future. This vision of the Overman is omnipresent in Timothy Egan’s The Good Rain. Egan indirectly draws his mold of the Overman from an unlikely source, Theodore Winthrop. In Egan’s source text, The Canoe and Saddle, Winthrop lays out a vision of society living a symbiotic relationship with nature in the Northwest. Winthrop romantically imagines man in control of the environment around him, taking what he needs to survive from the land. Egan attempts to see the Northwest in the same way Winthrop did by exploring its “sense of place”, analyzing the many ecological changes and highlighting Winthrop’s Overmen in current society. Through the lens of Nietzsche’s Overman one can see how Egan’s book contrasts the direction that today’s society is heading to the direction imagined by Winthrop. Initially, Egan uses Winthrop as a tool to illustrate how things used to be. As he explores the Columbia Bar, Egan points to Winthrop’s description of the river from over a hundred years ago. Winthrop’s colorful language combined with his artistic talent draws a powerful picture of what the place looked like in the mind’s eye. His talk of the “terrible breakers”, “foul marshes” and “heroic flood” place a powerful image of the Northwest in the reader’s mind (Winthrop 1). After referencing Winthrop, Egan contrasts this image with the current day dull, lifeless area predominated by man’s construction. He says, “The struggle from mountains to sea is considerably more indirect now, with hurdles of concrete at every big bend and more th... ... middle of paper ... ...Century German Writers, 1841- 1900. Ed. Siegfried Mews and James N. Hardin. Detroit: Gale Research, 1993. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 129. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Oct. 2011. Egan, Timothy. The Good Rain, Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest. New York: Vintage Departures, 1991. Lindholdt, Paul J. "Introduction." The Canoe and the Saddle: A Critical Edition. Ed. Paul J. Lindholdt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. ix-xxvii. Rpt. in Nineteenth- Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Kathy D. Darrow. Vol. 210. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Oct. 2011. Pickering, Sam. "Signatures of Experience." Sewanee Review 105.1 (1997): 142. Literary Reference Center. Web. 31 Oct. 2011. Winthrop, Theodore. The Canoe and the Saddle or Klalam and Klickatat. Tacoma: Franklin- Ward Company, 1993. eBook.
“The Boat”, narrated by a Mid-western university professor, Alistar MacLeod, is a short story concerning a family and their different perspectives on freedom vs. tradition. The mother pushes the son to embrace more of a traditional lifestyle by taking over the fathers fishing business, while on the other hand the father pushes the son to live more autonomously in an unconstrained manner. “The Boat” focuses on the father and how his personality influences the son’s choice on how to live and how to make decisions that will ultimately affect his life. In Alistair MacLeod’s, “The Boat”, MacLeod suggest that although dreams and desires give people purpose, the nobility of accepting a life of discontentment out weighs the selfishness of following ones own true desires. In the story, the father is obligated to provide for his family as well as to continue the fishing tradition that was inherited from his own father. The mother emphasizes the boat and it’s significance when she consistently asked the father “ How did things go in the boat today” since tradition was paramount to the mother. H...
Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, describes the adventure of Christopher McCandless, a young man that ventured into the wilderness of Alaska hoping to find himself and the meaning of life. He undergoes his dangerous journey because he was persuade by of writers like Henry D. Thoreau, who believe it is was best to get farther away from the mainstreams of life. McCandless’ wild adventure was supposed to lead him towards personal growth but instead resulted in his death caused by his unpreparedness towards the atrocity nature.
In a passage from his book, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, author John M. Barry makes an attempt use different rhetorical techniques to transmit his purpose. While to most, the Mississippi River is only some brown water in the middle of the state of Mississippi, to author John M. Barry, the lower Mississippi is an extremely complex and turbulent river. John M. Barry builds his ethos, uses elevated diction, several forms of figurative language, and different styles of syntax and sentence structure to communicate his fascination with the Mississippi River to a possible audience of students, teachers, and scientists.
In his journal, Thoreau muses upon twenty years of changes in New England’s land and beasts. He lists the differences in plants and animals, comparing them to past accounts and descriptions. He questions if the growing human presence has resulted in “a maimed and imperfect nature.” Cronon believes that this is an important question to consider. He points out that although changes do happen in nature, it is not so easy to determine how they changed. He is also not sure if Thoreau’s description of “a maimed and imperfect nature” is the correct way to refer to ecology, since it is by its essence, a fluid system of changes and reactions. Cronon does not deny the impact of
“Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” At some point in life one is faced with a decision which will define the future, but only time will tell whether or not the choice was right or wrong. The Boat by Alistair MacLeod demonstrates that an individual should make their own decisions in life, be open to new experiences and changes, and that there is no way to obtain something, without sacrificing something else.
Jon Krakauer, fascinated by a young man in April 1992 who hitchhiked to Alaska and lived alone in the wild for four months before his decomposed body was discovered, writes the story of Christopher McCandless, in his national bestseller: Into the Wild. McCandless was always a unique and intelligent boy who saw the world differently. Into the Wild explores all aspects of McCandless’s life in order to better understand the reason why a smart, social boy, from an upper class family would put himself in extraordinary peril by living off the land in the Alaskan Bush. McCandless represents the true tragic hero that Aristotle defined. Krakauer depicts McCandless as a tragic hero by detailing his unique and perhaps flawed views on society, his final demise in the Alaskan Bush, and his recognition of the truth, to reveal that pure happiness requires sharing it with others.
Rutman’s main purpose for writing this book was to show the differences between what Winthrop thought his American life would be, and what it turned out to be. Winthrop’s Boston: A Portrait of a Puritan Town, 1630 - 1649, portrays the story of John Winthrop setting up his dream. The novel starts with John “aboard the Arabella contemplating his ‘Citty upon a Hill,’” (135). His journey on the Arabella was not just a boat ride, it was where the planning began. Being a puritan and wanting religious freedom Winthrop had left behind his wife and life to start a new one in America. Although his initial thought was a “Citty upon a Hill”, Boston ends up being “The Citty by the Water”. This change in title is just one example that shows what he book reveals about Winthrop’s ideal community. In the end, he did set-up Boston but it wasn’t exactly how he pictured it. Along the way there were situations in which he did not predict.
With the coming of the new century America under goes a change led by many different events. The collection of poems written in Lee Masters book Spoon River Anthology portrays the typical small town at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Show the different social, economical, and political trend and influences throughout the United States.
Eiseley, Loren “The Flow of the River” from Fifty Great Essays 2nd ed. 2002 Penguin Academics New York.
“Into The Wild” by John Krakauer is a non-fiction biographical novel which is based on the life of a young man, Christopher McCandless. Many readers view Christopher’s journey as an escape from his family and his old life. The setting of a book often has a significant impact on the story itself. The various settings in the book contribute to the main characters’ actions and to the theme as a whole. This can be proven by examining the impact the setting has on the theme of young manhood, the theme of survival and the theme of independent happiness.
The great westward expansion of European American pioneers is one of the most celebrated periods in our country’s history. We idealize its ruggedness, its characters, and the many sure dichotomies of the frontier: good versus evil, civilizations versus savagery, man versus the wilderness. The pioneers set out to create a new world, to push the boundaries of home, morality, and familiarity. In the process they irreversibly affected the established ecosystems and Native American dwellers. The challenges and harshness of the environment had their own effects upon the settlers, effects that have engrained themselves into our national consciousness. We celebrate “rugged individualism” while at the same time ignoring the price we pay for that stubbornness and strength of character. Westward expansion resulted in the extinction or endangerment of hundreds of native species of flora and fauna, altered entire ecosystems, such as the Great Plains, and impacted aquifers and watersheds across the entire nation.
- Winthrop, John. "Winthrop's Journal." Original Narratives of Early American History. New York: 1908 Vol. 1
Baym, Nina, Arnold Krupat, Robert S. Levine, and Jeanne Campbell Reesman. "The Storm." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 8th ed. Vol. C. New York, NY: Norton, 2012. 557-61. Print.
Vilbert, Elizabeth. Traders' Tales: Narratives of Cultural Encounters in the Columbia Plateau, 1807-1846. University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
of the book. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2007. 695-696. Print. The.