Analyzing Karen Hesse's 'Finding A Way'

In Out of the Dust the characters suffer loss and grief. Billie Joe’s mother dies and both her and her father were devastated. Billie Joe loses her best friend when her friend’s family moves to California. Having to live in the dust with a dry, dusty environment doesn’t help her or her family either. They can’t grow crops, go a day without being thirsty, and they can’t breathe without dust getting in their nose. Here are some examples of how Billie Joe and her family get over all of their challenging times in the dust.

Although the lovers remain silent, "The wind's incomplete unrest / Builds and disperses clouds about the sky", which symbolizes first an eternal yearning for something deeper than is there, and secondly a "clouded," obscure vision of what this something may be. The previously mentioned yearning is shown also by a definition of clouds as "a type of the fleeting or unsubstantial" (Oxford English Dictionary). Whatever it may be that is being searched for cannot be found by lying inert letting time pass by. While this second stanza contemplates the apparently unattainable, the final two seem to convey a feeling of hopelessness in knowing that the clouds may never subside.

There are clues throughout the poem that express the man’s past experiences, leading him to have a hostile tone. The speaker represents his past as “parched years” that he has lived through (7-8) and represents his daughter’s potential future as

In the book, Out of the Dust, written by Karen Hesse, readers can experience the many emotions of a teenage girl coming of age in the harsh climate of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. The novel is historical fiction, written in first person and free verse poetry. The main character, Billie Jo writes of her turbulent time from the ages of 13 to 14 years, in the form of journal entries. Each entry is titled and broken down into seasons rather than specific dates. There are several themes repeated in the story, such as forgiveness, escape, healing and hope.

Conflict, in general, is a serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one. When conflict is studied in literature, the subject is broken down into a few major types, or classes of conflicts. This includes person versus person, person versus nature, person versus society, person versus self, as well as some others. Out of the Dust, a historical fiction novel by Karen Hesse, contains many types of conflicts, with person versus nature being prominent, as the book is based upon the Dust Bowl. However, there are multiple instances in the novel where a person is having a conflict against him/herself, and those conflicts impact their decisions, actions, as well as their relationships.

Also, ‘the sun threw a bright dust-laden bar through one of the side windows’, this represents that the little hope in the bunk house only helps to further illuminate the darkness and harshness of society. In a setting, such as the ranch, where dreams are suppressed and suffocated, they take on a greater importance and significance to the mens lives, they rely on the dreams to get by.

Hispanics, mostly Mexicans, are not being treated equally because of their different culture and lifestyle and people need to treat them fairly and enforce laws against discrimination. In the book, Crossing the Wire, Hobbs displays what a Mexican has to go through when they are crossing the border to the United States for a good cause. Hispanics have been discriminated ever since the Mexicans gained independence in 1821 from Spain. In recent years African Americans have been receiving the most attention in America because of so much racial discrimination, but they are not the only big race being discriminated. Mexicans are getting just as much hate. This problem is going to continue because the Mexican population in the United States is rapidly growing. Humans need to figure out a solution to stop this hatred, so all races can unite with each other. If we unite we can try to agree with each other on things and make the earth a better place to live.

conveys the majority of the message in the poem, ' does it dry up like

Obviously the author has lived through the depression and was black because one could not write something so accurate in accordance to that time period and have one feel the deep emotional impact of her writings without experiencing it personally.  In the first sentence she writes “…all I seem to remember is dust—the brown, crumbly dust of late summer—arid, sterile dust that gets in to the eyes and makes them water, gets into the throat and between the toes of the bare brown feet.”  In this phrase the words give a harsh, cruel feeling of how the depression was, which could then explain how she remembers the depression and that it was a hard time for her.  Most likely it was a significantly hopeless moment in her life.  In the next paragraph she writes “When the memory of those marigolds flashes across my mind, a strange nostalgia comes with it and remains long after the picture has faded.”  Knowing the marigolds symbolize hope the word “nostalgia” gives a feeling of longing, since the denotative meaning is yearning.  When stating the marigolds give a “strange nostalgia” the author could be thinking how she, sometime in her life, longed to have hope.  She needed to have something to look forward to or just something to look at to give her hope.  Later, towards the end of the story she explains “…Innocence involves an unseeing acceptance of things at face value, an ignorance of the area below the surface.”  The words she uses give a sense of wisdom

A variety of literary devices are used in this poem. After the shift, she repeats the phrase “I rise” for emphasis. Similes show how strong and persevering the speaker is. She compares herself to dust. No matter how many times you clean, dust will always come back. She even compares herself to the sun and moon, which surely rise each morning and night, to prove her confidence. The poem also uses hyperbole and personification. It says: “You may shoot me with your words,/You may cut me with

The novel connotes the Dust Bowl for what it is: a horrific struggle of survival. Steinbeck’s composition of this literary masterpiece gained the respect of many Americans who were previously unaware of the families who faced unbearable hardships during this time and were left with nothing. (Richard Henry) Steinbeck also uses intercalary chapters to provide the reader with information and insight on the Dust Bowl and other situations that were faced outside of the general fiction that

As the speaker casually calls their parents, a setting of calm expectations is established. While greeting the speaker, the mother’s decision to “run out and get” (1) the father highlights the lack of urgency that is present. The mother is calm and fetches the father in an expected and relaxed fashion, further establishing the calm expectations of the ongoing call. The mother additionally states that “the weather here’s so good” (2). Heaney’s use of the word “good” reflects the setting of the mother and father’s home; the atmosphere of where they live is pleasant and unperturbed. The “weather” serves as a projection of the father’s own state, implying that the father is in good health and that death is not yet looming over him. The last spoken words in the poem reveal that the father was conducting “a bit of weeding” (3). The word “weeding” highlights the capability of the

Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia. She had a job as a social worker, teacher, lecturer and she also wrote: “Elethia” which was written on 1981 which means she wrote “Elethia” when she was about 37 year of age. The story Elethia is about the afterlife of Uncle Albert from her view. “Elethia” is a pleasant young girl who works at a restaurant which was owned by the man that had an ancestor who was slave owners of a big plantation in a town. At this restaurant slavery still existed in some ways even after the law was passed, which the commandment ended the slavery, but it still existed in lots of our communities. However, the scatter of slavery was still in the community because of the presence of slave owners who has experience slavery in different ways. The slavery was so essential for them that Uncle Albert was stuffed as a worker and has been made the attraction for the people in the community to view in the restaurant. Even though the restaurant was named after him, the racism and slavery have still been an unchanging fact for American word.

Mary Oliver, who was acknowledged by the New York Times as “far and away, this country’s best selling poet,” was born on September 10, 1935 in Maple Heights, Ohio. At age fourteen, she started writing poetry about the lush woods surrounding her childhood home. Later on, she drew inspiration from Edna St. Vincent Millay, a poet and feminist, whose house she stayed at in New York. While she was there, she met her lifelong partner, Molly Malone Cook. In the 1960s, she and Molly relocated to Provincetown, Massachusetts. Influenced by transcendentalists like Whitman and Thoreau, she is well known for her themes of the natural world. However, while her earliest poems solely focus on nature, she evolved to become more personal and spiritual by

Dust, written by Judith Wright, discusses the concepts of a destroyed, empty world and a mother reflecting on the days when the “Earth was kinder”. Through her poem she shows the audience her fears for the world and how the world will become barren and “sick” if the environment is not cared for. This is typical of Judith Wright, with environmental themes central to many of her poems. The emotive responses that are evoked while reading this poem are extremely strong. A great sadness is experienced as she describes the barren new word and contrasts it to the previous one. To convey the moral of this poem Wright has employed many different literary and poetic techniques. These range over three major categories, imagery, structure and