Analysis Of Rising Tide : The Great Mississippi River

John M. Barry's Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, takes us back 70 years to a society that most of us would hardly recognize.

John M. Barry, author of Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America, communicates his fascination with the Mississippi River by using diction, imagery, and syntax. Barry’s word choice conveys the mechanical force of the river; his use of imagery the beauty, and his use of syntax the unpredictability. Barry’s command of rhetorical devices draws the reader in and brings the Mississippi River to life.

Within the novel Overstory: Zero is a piece of writing authored by Robert Heilman titled “Who Owns the River?”; he describes the effects humans have on the environment from a different perspective. Heilman explains the significance of rivers in his life, allowing the reader to understand how the ecology of the area is effected by human intrusion. Through the history of the South Umpqua River, his life experiences in Myrtle Creek and also, in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, Heilman emphasizes the importance of treating the environment with care so it can do its job of providing for its people. After growing up in Los Angeles, Heilman understands what it is like to live in an environment without a river.

Poetry, more than any other writing style, is filled to the brim with literary devices. These devices are used by the author to communicate their story. Mary Oliver’s, “Crossing the Swamp,” is a tale of one person’s struggles in crossing a swamp. Mary uses the techniques of descriptive language, metaphors, and personification to develop the relationship between the speaker and the swamp.

In Response to the Great Flood of 1927, Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1928. This was because the flood was the first time levees had been built to the Mississippi River Commission’s standards and they had failed. To remedy this problem Congress put $325 million towards flood control measures and the act also provided that the federal government pays for flood control measures along the Mississippi River. According to Hickox a total of 7,000 miles of levees and $25 billion has been spent on the Mississippi and its tributaries since 1927 (Hickcox, David H. 1994). Although billions of dollars have been spent on improving the Mississippi Valley for settlement and commercial uses disaster still persist.

The great flood of the Mississippi river in 1927 prompted the severing of class divisions and the extension of racial oppression. The flood caused over $350 million in property damage, 246 flood-related deaths, and a home loss of 130,00. Many african americans fled north to escape the racial oppression that resulted from the disastrous flood. Police held black african americans at gun point until they agreed to help raise the levees to protect buildings and houses from rising flood waters. After African americans started refusing to work, one got shot in the back and all the african americans fled north to escape the hardships that were brought about when the river flooded. After Hoover won presidency, he did not keep his promises to ensure

Imagine about 100 years into the future, do you see a flourishing earth with sustained life and beautiful scenery or do you imagine a deserted waste land run dry of all natural resources? Which would you rather have? The book Saints at the River written by novelist Ron Rash explores how the single act of a small girl’s drowning can lead to a moral and ethical conundrum about whether alterations should be made to the river to retrieve her body and how this is essential to the families need to grieve over the loss of their child or how the additions of things like a temporary Dam causes more damage than its worth as expressed by those who advocate for the protection of this natural free-flowing river. The protection of natural rivers, like the

rivers as a metaphor for life: "...Trying to learn from what's behind you and never

It was a warm summer day in Bloomham. The birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and the sky was a deep blue. The thin wisps of cirrus clouds shone high above the backdrop of the Flemn Highlands and Herbert Conway Dam. The Crug river flowed smoothly down through Bloomham from the crystal clear Wyz lake. All this beauty would soon prove to become Bloomham’s biggest enemy.

Simply Mystifying: A Language Analysis of “By the Water of Babylon” Authors employ various literary devices in order to tell a compelling story. In “By the Waters of Babylon”, Stephen Vincent Benét introduced a medley of language strategies to create an eerie mood throughout the piece. The three most significant language tools used to depict a mysterious setting in “By the Waters of Babylon” were personification, repetition, and similes/metaphors because they transform a symbol of nature into an antagonist, incite John to discover the truth, and expose John’s worldly ignorance. The personification of a river in this story produces mystery because it makes nature seem like the opposing force to John’s goal of finding the truth. When John

“He watched them holding themselves with their noses into the current, many trout in deep, fast moving water, slightly distorted as he watched far down through the glassy convex surface of the pool, its surface pushing and swelling smooth against the resistance of the log-driven piles of the bridge.” (Hemingway 1925)

It swirled against the log spiles of the bridge. Nick looked down into the clear, brown water, colored from the pebbly bottom and watched the trout keeping themselves steady in the current with wavering fins. As he watched them they changed their position by quick angles, only to hold steady in the fast water again. (Hemingway 177)

Along this journey created by nature, the river interacts with man’s influence to encapsulate the full geographic experience of this region. The succession of dams along the river’s path is a major contribution to how man has decided to mesh with the river. The dams have created reservoirs for water supplies, harnessed energy to provide electric power to the southwestern region, and controlled flooding. Flood control was the main concern at the time between the years 1905 and 1907 when large floods broke through the irrigation gates and destroyed crops in California. The flooding was so large it actually created a 450 square mile sea, named the Salton Sea. As a result of this major disaster, ideas were formulated to

In the passage “Two Ways of Seeing a River,” author Mark Twain attempts to share the feelings of loss he experienced after he was disillusioned to the beauty of the Mississippi River. Twain was a famous Nineteenth century author who had previously worked as a steamboat captain and who grew up along the river. The organization of the paragraphs in relation to each other is linear, and the content of each paragraph is dominated by a different rhetorical device.

“Before us the thick dark current runs. It talks up to us in a murmur become ceaseless and myriad, the yellow surface dimpled monstrously into fading swirls travelling along the surface for an instant, silent, impermanent and profoundly significant, as though just beneath the surface something huge and alive waked for a moment of lazy alertness out of and into light slumber again.” This quote said by Darl describes how the once calm river grew into a more intimidating “alive” being. Nature here uses its element of water to show it no mercy towards the Bundren family, for being impatient. Later in the chapter, the current of the river carries a log which does much damage to the Bundrens including destroying the Bundrens wagon, killing the mule team, scattering Cash’s tools, and almost losing Addie’s coffin. The destruction caused by the river’s current can is comparable to nature’s way of cleansing the the the