Why the Ponds are Important in Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
Crow Lake is Canadian author Mary Lawson's first novel，which is narrated by Kate Morrison, the second child in the Morrison family. A serious car accident left seven-year-old Kate, her one and half year old sister, Bo, and her two older brothers, Luke and Matt, orphans. Rather than live with relatives separately, they chose to live together and grow up. Luke and Matt made many sacrifices to support their family and they also got many helps from their community. The story took place in Crow Lake, a remote small farming community in northen Ontario.
In Kate’s childhood, Matt and she often visited the ponds near their house. There are many descriptions of the ponds in the novel, which are closely linked to the theme of the story. The ponds represent the childhood and hometown in Kate’s mind, they help Kate decide her career and they are vital bonds between Kate and Matt.
In the first place, the ponds are full of Kate’s memory about childhood and hometown. They are Kate’s favorite places before she grew up. In the prologue, Kate mentioned that “there is no image of my childhood that I carry with me more clearly than that” (Lawson, p.4). Kate remembers her first trip to the ponds. “ I was so small he had to carry me on his shoulders-through the woods with their luxuriant growth of poison ivy, along the tracks, past the dusty boxcars lined up to receive their loads of sugar beets, down the steep sandy path to the ponds themselves”(Lawson, p.4). From riding on Matt’s shoulders to follow Matt to the ponds, they spent “hundreds of hours” (Lawson, p.5) there. Kate cherishes the vivid and sweet memory of the time she spent in the ponds.
The lake itself plays a major role throughout the story, as it mirrors the characters almost exactly. For example, the lake is described as being “fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans” (125). The characters are also described as being “greasy” or “dangerous” several times, which ties the lake and the characters together through their similarities. The narrator explains, “We were bad. At night we went up to Greasy Lake” (124). This demonstrates the importance that the surroundings in which the main characters’ choose to be in is extremely important to the image that they reflect. At the beginning of the story, these characters’ images and specifically being “bad” is essentially all that mattered to them. “We wore torn up leather jackets…drank gin and grape juice…sniffed glue and ether and what somebody claimed was cocaine” (124). They went out of their ...
The lake is the main symbol in “Greasy Lake” that symbolizes youth corruption. When the narrator enters the lake, he describes it as already being “ankle-deep in muck and tepid water and still going strong” (Boyle 5). The filthy description of the water is used to show the gloomy and corrupt waters in this lake. The lake also was “fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans and the charred remains of bonfires” (1). These descriptions revolving around the lake show that this lake was where people went to be “bad” people. Primitive acts were done here,
The Russian river is a place in California where Dave and his family would usually go for a vacation. He remembers this place as a quiet and peaceful place. He remembers how he and his brothers would play, how his mother would to hug him, and how they would all watch the sunset together
Sarah Orne Jewett's "A White Heron" is a brilliant story of an inquisitive young girl named Sylvia. Jewett's narrative describes Sylvia's experiences within the mystical and inviting woods of New England. I think a central theme in "A White Heron" is the dramatization of the clash between two competing sets of values in late nineteenth-century America: industrial and rural. Sylvia is the main character of the story. We can follow her through the story to help us see many industrial and rural differences. Inevitably, I believe that we are encouraged to favor Sylvia's rural environment and values over the industrial ones.
Frozen River is based on the life of working class families that live in mobile homes in Massena, New York who are trying to survive, solve struggles and meet their needs. One of the families consists of a single mother name Ray trying to raise her 2 children on her own. Ray works part time at a retail store as a clerk. She has worked there for almost 2 years hoping to become a manager. With the disappearance of her husband she struggles paying her bills, providing food for her children, and not being able to finance the purchase of a new mobile home. Ray with all her struggles, one day she decides to search for her husband at the casino in the Mohawk reservation. While at the casino, she meets Lila Little Wolf who she follows after seeing
The book opens on Anderson Lake, he stands in an open street market in Thailand inspecting the various fruits and vegetables for sale until he happens upon an entirely new fruit that he doesn’t recognize. This is important to few and far between, unless you are an economic hitman and a representative for the agribusiness giant, AgriGen. Anderson Lake owns a kink spring factory in Bangkok that is attempting to mass produce a completely new model of spring that will store an enormous amount of gigajoules of energy compared to the old model. The factory is a mere ruse for his true intentions for being in Thailand, which is discovering the location of the Thai seedbank so, AgriGen will have fresh DNA to manipulate. Anderson’s factory is nearly destroyed internally by a rampaging megodont (a genetically modified elephant used to run the power train of the factory). One of the many things destroyed includes algae baths, which are a crucial piece in the manufacturing process of the kink springs. The cost to replace this vital part is extremely high, and must be smuggled in on a dirigible. Anderson orders Hock Seng, a yellow card refugee from China that assists in running the company, to repare the factory as soon as possible, and in hopes of hurring him, threatens the loss of his job. Hock Seng’s job is made even more difficult by the fact that he has not bribed the customs officials because he has embezzled the bribe money given to him.
The two rivers that are part of the Devon School property symbolize how Gene and Finny grew up through the course of the novel. The Devon River is preferred by the students because it is above the dam and contains clean water. It is a symbol of childhood and innocence, because it is safe and simple. It is preferred to show how the boys choose to hold onto their youth instead of growing up. The Naguamsett is the disgustingly dirty river which symbolizes adulthood because of its complexity.
The “better story” is not always the one that is easy to believe. Sure, all the hypotheses are possible, but there is quite a fine line between the better story, and an absurd story. We only know so much about our characters in the story of In the Lake of the Woods. As for what is the truth, what really happened, well that’s up to the reader.
...and little animals roaming about. When Edward first arrived on the Island, Wells used his view from the boat as the view the reader would receive through the text. “it was low and covered with thick vegetation,…..the beach was of a dull, grey sand, and sloped steeply up to a ridge, perhaps sixty of seventy feet above the sea-level, and irregularly set with trees and undergrowth” (Wells 42). Setting helps contribute to the theme because it detailed what the animals lived on, and how the animals were living.
On June 27, 1978, two Crow Indian brothers Bobby and Tyler were killed by a 44-car Conrail freight train. The day before the accident, the two brothers had disappeared from home. Later on, the film revealed that the two brothers had run away from home because they knew what their stepfather was doing to their sister. The Crow Indian siblings were adopted into a white Baptist family that also adopted their biological sisters seven years earlier. The crow Indian siblings were taken from a troubled home in Montana. The filmmaker Chris Billings their Crow Indian brother is investigating what drove his adopted brothers to this point.
Elizabeth G. Speare was born in 1908 and died in 1994. She was an American writer of historical novels for children. Moreover, she was awarded the Newbery Medal by the American Library Association for her great work with The Witch of Blackbird Pond novel in 1959 (Cushman ix). Mrs. Speare’s last book, The Sign of the Beaver, written in 1983 also won the Newbery Medal as well as the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction. Her novels continue to be reading in classrooms. Speare not only wrote novels, but also a number of magazine articles and one-act plays. Finally, she is also cited as one of the Educational Paperback Association’s top 100 authors (Sullivan).
In Crow Lake, Mary Lawson portrays a family who experience a great tragedy when Mr. and Mrs. Morrison are killed in a car accident. This tragedy changes the lifestyles of the seven years old protagonist Kate Morrison and her siblings Matt, Luke and Bo. The settings are very important in this novel. Though there are limited numbers of settings, the settings used are highly effective. Without effective use of themes in this novel, the reader would not have been able to connect with the characters and be sympathetic. Lawson uses an exceptionally high degree of literary devices to develop each character in this novel.
To the readers, this reveals a further truth within the narrator each time. This repeated image that is described is a signifier to her true trauma. The first mention of the body in the river is a critical signifier in the story.
Upon reading the first paragraph, Shirley Jackson describes the town in general. The town is first mentioned in the opening paragraph where she sets the location in the town square. She puts in perspective the location of the square "between the post office and the bank" (196). This visualizes for the reader what a small town this is, since everything seems to be centralized at or near the town square. This is also key in that the town square is the location for the remaining part of the story. The town square is an important location for the setting since the ending of the story will be set in this location. Also, Shirley Jackson creates a comfortable atmosphere while describing the residents of the town. First, she describes the children gathering together and breaking into "boisterous play"(196). Also, the children are described as gathering rocks, which is an action of many normal children. She described the men as gathering together and talking about "planting and rain, tractors and taxes"(196). Finally, she describes the women of this community as "exchanging bits of gossip"(196) which is a common stereotype of women. She creates a mood for the reader of the town and residents of this town on a normal summer morning.
First, White uses imagery throughout his essay to create an effective visual of his experiences at the lake. To start his essay, White reflects on his childhood memories of the lake when he and his family visited every summer: “I remembered clearest of all the early morning, when the lake was cool and motionless, remembered how the bedroom smelled of the lumber it was made of and the wet woods whose scent entered the screen.” This passage enhances