Jane Smiley A Thousand Acres

In Harold Bell Wright’s novel “The Shepherd of the Hills,” setting plays a tremendous role in creating an effective story line and contribute multiple aspects to enhance the accountability of the story. Setting is one of the most valuable aspects of a successful novel and plays a part in creating a sense of realness to the reader. Winifred Madison, an author of multiple novels, says that “One of the joys of reading is that it takes you somewhere else or, by comparison, makes the place where you live more understandable” (1). “The Shepherd of the Hills” has a setting that the author personally connects to the real-world location. Just as Daniel Howitt was an outsider, Harold Bell Wright visited the Ozarks as a stranger and experienced the

Jimmy Carter begins his essay the sentence, “This magnificent area is as vast as it is wild, from windswept coastal plain where polar bears and caribou give birth…” This specific sentence gives way to a wide array of emotions and feelings due to his way of descriptive language. His language and word choice makes you feel as if you are there with him absorbing what it feels like to be there. The way he describes this refuge makes you imagine what “the brilliant mosaic of wildflowers, mosses, and lichens that hugged the tundra.” encompasses and what this mosaic resembles. When Jimmy Carter talks about what saddens him, it makes you think of what this place of grandeur could look

While some may say that the Upper Midwest has various discouraging characteristics, Debra describes her passion and endless love for the upper Midwest plains, although some may not see her perspective of the Upper Midwest as she sees it. Debra persuades her audience by using juxtapose by describing how the upper Midwest has much more resources that can’t be found anywhere else. As well she uses analogy and tone to show how other people think of her land as a wasteful plain where no even agriculture could be grown because of how horrible it is. She describes both positions so the reader can listen to both the good reviews of the land and as well the bad ones.

Our Town by Thornton Wilder focuses on the lives of the residents of small town Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire in the early 1900s, more specifically, the lives of young George Gibbs and Emily Webb. Throughout Act I, Thornton describes the daily lives of the people of Grover’s Corners. The milkman delivers the day’s milk, the paperboy brings the morning paper, mothers prepare breakfast, and children get ready for school. The day winds down, everyone has had their supper, homework is finished, and adults arrive home from choir practice. Life in Grover’s Corners is traditional, ordinary, and unremarkable, not much goes on out of the ordinary. Act II focuses on love and marriage in the town. The narrator says “Almost everybody in the world gets married, - you know what I mean? In our town there aren’t hardly any exceptions. Most everybody in the world climbs into their graves married.” and Mrs. Gibbs articulates that “People are meant to go through life two by two. Tain’t natural to be lonesome.”(54) George and Emily get married, much like the other young couples of Grover’s Corners, and proceed to live blithely and contentedly on George’s uncle’s farm. Act III looks into the last act in a person’s life, death. Emily passes away during childbirth, and at the cemetery, she meets the spirits of her mother-in-law and many other deceased townspeople.

The theme of the balance of individuality and community is prevalent throughout The Bean Trees. The reader is introduced to Taylor's unique individuality combined with the community ideal in Kentucky. There,

In The Horizontal World by Debra Marquart, Marquart acknowledges multiple depictions of the dullness that is the Midwest, while also conveying her predisposed love for the land. Through the use of similes and diction, Marquart perpetuates the stereotypes of the bland and boring nature associated with the Midwest, to then use rhetorical modes and allusions to expose her profound connection to the land and possibly redefine the audience’s previous perceptions.

Already in the beginning, miles of farmland wedge between John and Ann as he ventures off to “help [his father] with his chores, while “mak[ing] sure he’s all right in case [they] do have a storm.” Without her husband for company, she spends the day alone at home, painting, “brooding” and witnessing the intensity of the storm grow vicious. As “the double wheel around the moon” foreshadowed, the storm tested the “elements of human meaning and survival,” forcing the wise to stay indoors away from its “sharp, savage blows.” Also, the desolate prairies, themselves, add to the tense, stultifying aura of solidarity. While the landscape lay bleak and uninviting, how even “the distant farmsteads [Ann] could see served only to intensify a sense of isolation” appears clear. Not only “miles deep between her now and John,” Ann faces a natural barrier between the neighbouring homesteads as the “long white miles of prairie landscape” conceived a “region strangely alien to life.” In essence, the physical barriers, from the “sudden, maniac raging of the storm” to the vast stretches of farmland, allows loneliness and the “ever-lurking silence” to creep into the characters’ hearts until suffering takes control of their

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is a novel set during the mid-1930s drought and the fall of the American stock market. It depicts the plight of migrant workers throughout this time period, and follows the life of the protagonist, recently-released Oklahoma state convict, Tom Joad. He met up with former preacher Jim Casy, who renounced his ministerial calling due to his newfound belief that all life is holy, even the aspects that were categorized by others as sinful. After serving four years in prison on a manslaughter charge, Tom found Jim and together they returned to Tom’s family’s farm only to find it deserted, much like all the surrounding farms. The next day, the two men traveled to Tom’s uncle’s home, where he discovered the rest of his family packing to move to California in the hopes of finding a better life. This migration leads to death, abandonment, disappointment, and a new dream of organizing migrant workers to aid the depleted job market. The novel helped me to understand the struggle of the times, and what it means to lose everything and everyone in such a short period. Throughout these things, however grim they may seem, there is always a glimmer of hope.

John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath is one of the most influential books in American History, and is considered to be his best work by many. It tells the story of one family’s hardship during the Depression and the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. The Joads were a hard-working family with a strong sense of togetherness and morals; they farmed their land and went about their business without bothering anyone. When the big drought came it forced them to sell the land they had lived on since before anyone can remember. Their oldest son, Tom, has been in jail the past four years and returns to find his childhood home abandoned. He learns his family has moved in with his uncle John and decides to travel a short distance to see them. He

With the same command of language and imagery, Capote details the success of the agricultural community who had for “…the last seven years…[experienced] droughtless beneficence (5). In essence, the community has experienced much success financially. Capote provides further interpretation of the community’s success: “The farm ranchers in Finney County, of which Holcomb is a part, have done well; money has been made not from farming alone but also from the exploitation of plentiful natural-gas resources... its acquisition is reflected in the new school, the comfortable interiors of the farmhouses, the steep and swollen grain elevators” (5). The society which Luce discusses in his 1941 essay, one which represents ‘the abundant life,’…produced by ‘free economic enterprise’” (qtd. in Foner 863), is representative of Holcomb. In essence, the citizens of Finney County were, for the most part, living the idealistic American life.

Thomas A. Farley and Russell Sykes were able to capture the audience’s attention and keep them emotionally engaged throughout their whole argument. They accomplished this by using emotionally charged language, which helped make the audience relate and connect more with the text. Some charged language they used throughout their argument were terms such as “food desert”, “declining inner-ring suburbs”, “destitute rural areas”, and “pitiful three feet.” (Farley, Sykes) The term “food desert” makes the reader realize, and visualize what the small stores are missing and how they look barren, because there is almost no healthy food. The terms ‘declining” and “destitute” help describe how lacking both rural and suburb stores are, and how the problem

“Small town big heart,” they say locked away behind their cold immaculate castle gates that rest on the remains of the previous farmland and plains. The collective heart beats but only at a convenient time suiting parties involved. “A place where everyone matters,” they utter as their motto in indistinguishable monotone voices. The people are too wrapped up in their everyday lives to ever be concerned about their neighbor, they look through life with gilded glasses. It’s as if a fog had descended slowly creeping into their view distorting what they once held most dear.

We are informed of the lifestyle they were forced to live, the things they had to experience, the way they were treated, and the lack of equality in the country prior to the Civil War. In the other two pieces, “Letters from an American Farmer” and “The Autobiography,” we are able to see the major changes in the country that would be set in stone for the future. Each provides great depth about personhood and the social and political vision of America during this time.

We don’t get the privilege of choosing who we love. Ty definitely knows Andrea is a disaster, but the emotion behind their relationship keeps him accepting of it. In the opening Prologue when Ty asks what Andrea why she wants to meet her response is “for love”. Andrea is aware of her ability to manipulate Ty and uses that to her advantage, finding a way back into his life. The dialogue between them shows how aware Ty is of Andrea’s true personality. I’m between the idea that Ty genuinely loves Andrea to this day, and the idea that he has accepted her once again being a reminder of the great memories had together. I’m not sure exactly how Andrea feel about Ty, and with the narrative told from his perspective we may never see that. Either she

The mid twentieth century represents a turbulent period of history in the western world- from the devastating effects of the Great Depression that began in 1929 to the bloodshed of World War II, people were forced to adapt to unfamiliar and changing circumstances. The effects of these events were especially felt in the United States and Britain, and the two countries set the scene for John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. The Grapes of Wrath recounts the tale of the Joad family, farm owners who, after being forced off their land by big business, head west to California in search of work only to find discrimination and further hardship. Their story exemplifies the struggles faced by low-income families unequipped to deal with the changing reality of the American economy and reveals the nature of big business and unregulated capitalism. At first glance, it seems that Mrs. Dalloway tells a very different story. Clarissa Dalloway, a wealthy London woman, is spending her day planning one of her extravagant parties. Although its characters are not struggling to find their next meal, through a stream-of-consciousness style and an array of unique and complex characters the novel tackles many of the same problems seen in The Grapes of Wrath. As these two nations face and recover from their respective crises, Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway highlight the changing ways in which the American and British people interact with