Impact of Geography in Richard Russo's Novels Essay

I have lived in only one location my entire life: Edwardsville, Illinois. A peripheral suburb of St. Louis, it stands as the rare oasis of people in a desert of corn, pinned in its own personal bubble. Due to this blend of time and isolation, I developed a natural familiarity with my hometown. But, throughout my childhood, I longed to break free from the confines of the bubble and venture outward. However, this changed last summer, as I walked through Richards Brickyard, our family heirloom, that my great-grandfather, Benjamin Richards, founded over 120 years ago. I felt these childlike sentiments slip away. The bubble that had surrounded me for so long began to vanish, and the picture that it had been obscuring was slowly revealed.

In the chapter “Geography Matters …”,Thomas Foster says geography in literature is usually about people occupying “spaces” and vice versa. It is the environment, but also it can be whatever else that location can establish in the residents there. Geography can be used several ways in a work of literature.

The Five Themes of Geography are: Location – Absolute points on a map or grid or Relative to where something may be; Place – The physical and/or human characteristics of a locations; Human/Environment Interactions – How humans have impacted the landscape or environment; Relationship between places Movement – How humans interact on the earth (i.e. how they communicate over distance (short or long)) and Regions – a unit of space that has commonalities defined by physical, human and environmental geography. The Explorers of the New World may have not known what the Five Themes of Geography were but they quickly learned. Of the five themes the ones that they all took advantage of was the physical Location and Place as they learned to navigate

Another premise I found while reading this story and from my experience with small towns is that

In a time and place where people had no worry of locking their doors, or leaving their possessions unattended, the citizens of Grover’s Corners always possessed a sense of safety and protection. This small town life is set in the play Our Town, by Thornton Wilder. The modest New Hampshire town rarely procured any disturbances or quarrels, resulting in a quiet and tidy place to live. In many ways, the town of Grover’s Corner may be comparable to the petite city of Colby, Kansas. However, the twin towns contain only a few contrasting traits. Considering daily living, love and marriage, and the fragility of life itself, these communities share an abundance of similar characteristics, while only containing a few differences.

Times were difficult in Habersham County. The skyrocketing prices of fuel and food were threatening to bankrupt the Johnson family’s small farm, which was no match for the multi-million-dollar mega-farms that had been popping up all over the southeast. Joseph, the family patriarch, was especially troubled by the farm’s

William Attaway’s novel, Blood on the Forge, displays a family torn apart as a product of systematic exploitation. In the compelling narrative, the Moss brothers, Big Mat, Chinatown, and Melody, migrate to the north in motivation of Big Mat committing the murder of his riding boss. As they begin to adjust, their perception of the north’s assumed and rumored opportunities quickly conforms to the reality of what is actually offered. Through plot lines of the very act of migrating, acclimating to regenerated labor and norms, and, finally, the dissolution of the brothers’ identities and close family connection, it is observed that their exodus to the north is just as empty of benefits as the south. Attaway accomplishes depicting an accurate account of the contrasting exploitation that occurred in both the north and the south by portraying the Moss brothers’ demise as a result of their migration from a systematic, rural setting to an industrial, diminishing, and, ultimately, unfamiliar environment along with how the two regions parallel in similarities concerning economical and social consequences, permanently affecting the brothers altogether mentally and physically. Where there was great potential for a rebirth of opportunity and success, the result was a contrasting reality of misery and permanent damage.

When a young author from New York City decides to take a trip to the southern city of Savannah, he finds himself falling in love with the town and ends up renting an apartment. He encounters many different characters, including Danny Hansford and Jim Williams, that gives the reader a good look into the aura of Savannah. The main conflict in the book occurs when a murder happens in an old mansion located in the town. The book follows the progression of the trial and the outcome following the court’s decision.

Taylor Greer has lived in Kentucky all her life. Yet, the life available to her in Kentucky is not what she always dreamed of: "none of these sights had so far inspired me to get hogtied to a future as a tobacco farmer's wife" (3). Living with her mother, Taylor becomes more independent and striven to find a better life. Taylor's father disappeared before she could even remember

In the detailed story of an impoverished family during the late 1900’s, Jeannette Walls describes her experience from the young age of 3, up until adulthood. The family of 6, with Rex Walls as the father, Rose Mary as the mother, and her three siblings, Lori, Brian and Maureen, were constantly moving throughout the country with little to no food or cash. The memoir shows how dysfunctional the family was, but never seemed to force the reader to condemn the parents. In a life of poverty, the have to move for own to town, and often lived in various mining towns. Although they each found something they learned to love (like Jeannette’s rock collection) in the desert, they had to leave them behind once Rex’s alcoholism only worsened, and they ran

This book described the horrifying conditions in the stockyards and meatpacking industry. The story depicts a young man and woman who have recently immigrated to Chicago from Lithuania. They have a wedding feast at a bar in Packingown. The couple and some of their relatives go to Chicago for a better life but Packingtown, the center of the city’s meatpacking industry, is dangerous, filthy, and hard. It was also difficult to find a job. The couple become a hundred dollars in debt to the saloonkeeper and Jurgis has faith in the American dream that he could just work harder to make more money. They go through struggles with hard laboring jobs such as digging freight tunnels (which resulting in him going to the hospital), getting arrested because of attacking a man for not giving him correct change, he starts to commit crimes such as burglaries and soon gets recruited to work for a corrupt political boss. His spirit soon gets crushed by misery and wanders into a socialist political rally which fills Jurgis with inspiration through a speech. He finds a job as a porter at a socialist run hotel and later reunites with wife. This story is filled with signs of corruption and immorality. A big symbol in this story was the animals and slaughterhouses of Packingtown which represent the working class. Just like the animals were killed with impunity, made to suffer and had no choice about their fate, so were thousands of immigrant workers who lived in poverty. They were forced into capitalism. Waves of animals pass through Packingtown, just as the generations of immigrants continue to eventually be replaced by a new

Geography is an important factor to consider when you look at this worlds past, present, or future. So whether it be the earths physical geographic features, the geopolitics stirring up trouble across the globe, or the economics of growing or shrinking countries; geography plays a major role. In todays society, geographic knowledge is one of the most important and valuable tools to possess. Without it, we are victims of ignorance and endanger ourselves, others, and the world. This ignorance, possessed by many, is posing a great risk of self-destruction. The author of “Why Geography Matters More Than Ever”, Harm de Blij, makes many strong points on this matter, but occasionally makes unsupported and unclear statements which tend to stray off topic.

The speaker in the book The Geography of Genius by Eric Weiner is Weiner himself. The book consists of Weiner recounting his experiences as he visits cities that, at some point in time, flourished as cities full of so called geniuses. Throughout the book, Weiner presents himself in his writing as well as in his interactions with people as pretentious. He speaks about time travel, suggesting that being in the city that geniuses once roamed could allow him to travel back to that era when the city was flourishing so as to understand why these cities were special enough to host a multitude of geniuses. His has an informative tone, as his motive was to educate others on why geniuses pop up in the places that they have in the past.

With the exception of Key 1949, a masterful study of Southern politics, few political science works have

In ‘Silas Marner’, people tend to live in secluded communities and rarely have any contact with people living in different areas, which illustrates how relationships are conventionally formed based on similarities in term of daily routine, living areas, tradition and customs. This is demonstrated in how Silas Marner is ostracized from the rest of the community in Raveloe at first, for he comes from a land that is not commonly known by the other villagers, as ‘the world outside their own direct experience was a region of vagueness and mystery’. The fact that they feel almost threatened by the uncertainties and how they quickly the relevance of the existence of any other place but their own illustrates a sense of utter security they feel towards their land, which again suggests how they must have been clinging to the place and will be more accepting towards their fellow villagers than those coming from faraway lands. The exclusiveness is further highlighted by the location of Raveloe, which is a village ‘nestled in a snug well-wooded hollow, quite an hour’s journey on horseback from any turnpike’. This does have significant impacts on their social relationships, for narrow-minded villagers, who do not travel frequently, appear to be vastly prejudiced and are not willing to welcome new or seemingly strange-looking people, which leads to much social segregation, misunderstanding