James Agee and Walker Evans Fortune Magazine, in July and August of 1936, sent James Agee and Walker Evans to research a story on sharecropping. In the preface of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Agee describes it as “a curious piece of work.” They were to produce “an article on cotton tenantry in the United States, in the form of a photographic and verbal record of the daily living and environment of an average white family of tenant farmers,” (IX). James Agee and Walker Evans set out to write
Suffering in Photographs Photographs are used to document history, however selected images are chosen to do so. Often times these images graphically show the cruelty of mankind. In her book, Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag asks, "What does it mean to protest suffering, as distinct from acknowledging it?" To acknowledge suffering is just to capture it, to point it out and show somebody else that it exists. In order to protest suffering, there has to be some sort of moral decision that
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” was written by James Agee and Walker Evans. The story is about three white families of tenant farmers in rural Alabama. The photographs in the beginning have no captions or quotations. They are just images of three tenant farming families, their houses, and possessions. “The photographs are not illustrative. They, and the text, are coequal, mutually independent, and fully collaborative.” (87) The story and
Relationships in James Agee's A Death in the Family Spending time with each other, having strong morals and giving a lot of love are a few of the things that give families hope and happiness. In the novel A Death in the Family (1938) by James Agee, a family has to use these advantages in order to make it through a very difficult time. During the middle of one night in 1915, the husband, Jay, and his wife, Mary, receive a phone call saying that Jay's father is dying. Ralph, the person who called
THE AFRICAN QUEEN Short Summary: "The African Queen" is the tale of two companions with different personalities who develop an untrustworthy love affair as they travel together downriver in Africa around the start of World War I. They struggle against the climate, the river, the bugs, the Germans and, most of all, against each other. In the course of much misery, they develop love and respect for each other. Detailed Summary: In September 1914, the German occupying forces hold East
Whilst watching ‘Hoop Dreams’, the respect that is held for William Gates and Arthur Agee by the filmmakers Steve James, Peter Gilbert and Frederick Marx within the observational documentary (Bill Nichols, 2001) is obvious, and their decorum after the film’s release remains an integral part of the film’s legacy. As a whole, documentaries often do not perform as well as their narrative film counterparts, and so when ‘Hoop Dreams’ soared beyond expectations to make $11.8million at the box office
the rest of the way to her front door. The young woman opened up her door and immediately felt that sense of uneasiness again even though her home was full of light. She could hear the water running in the bathroom and figured that her boyfriend, James, was just taking his usual night shower. She went into the kitchen to get a quick drink of water. As she drank the cool liquid she felt an immense feeling of relief. She advanced toward the bathroom. She walked down the hallway heading towards the
There the 4 of us were sitting in New York at a bar when an army recruit comes over to us and says “Do you want to make your country a better place?”.Then he says “Join the army right now all I need is your name and home address. Jack and Fred said they had wanted to sign up since kids but were scared. So we all signed the paper and gave him what he needed. We all went home in the city as normal working men that got drunk most nights out the week. After two days of signing up to join the army we
March 22, 2006, should have been a regular Wednesday for me. Me being in first grade, a regular Wednesday was to wake up at 8 a.m. to my father turning on my lights, and spiritedly but annoyingly singing, “Wake up, wake up!” Wincing at the light and my father's terrible voice, I was always able to wake up in order to shut him up. However, the most memorable part of this day was not during school but rather what happened later that day at home. It was my father’s birthday. My father was turning 33
“The Curse Which Still Lived” It was a depressing and grey afternoon. James had just turned twenty-five, and as adventurous as he was, he anxiously waited for a task. Next thing he knew, he has found himself scrolling on an LED screen which entranced him as if he knew nothing more. There he sat, alone in his dusty old room looking through various websites for interesting locations near him. His fingers stopped with a jerk. A picture of a castle intrigued him as he stared at the blinding screen