Literary Analysis Of Debra Marquart's The Horizontal World

Stephen Mallatratt’s adaption to play of “The Woman in Black” portrays the story of a man named Mister Kipps, who is a solicitor who has been sent to an abandoned home in the East of the country in order to collect the legal papers of a recently deceased woman. However, the audience learns that the woman living in Ell Marsh House was haunted by a spirit known as The Woman in Black. Being based in the turn of the previous century, the play tackles the themes of how the fear of the unknown can transform a man of science into a man fearful of the dark and every single creek; and how the concept of revenge can cause an embittered woman to seek vengeance and claim the thing she lost: Children. The play is set during the time where superstition was surpassed by science and where a rational explanation was being required for how everything occurs but how science can be destroyed by the unexplainable…

Knowing Our Place is and excerpt from Barbara Kingsolver’s SMALL WONDER. The excerpt is basically all about the places where her life stories and where important times in her life take place. They all end up having to take place in the wilderness in a small town, in a small house in the middle of nowhere; where she had actually grown up. She talks about how her log cabin at the end of Walker Mountain is near tobacco plants and also how it has old historic nature to it. She talks about how she loves the rain and how it sounds in her little log cabin house that was built in the early 1900’s. She grew up and spent most her childhood in these woods filled with neighbor’s miles away and

An exceptional place it was, the place where my voyage began. A place of marvelous happenings, festivities, and majestic sights. A place that is valued for its vast diversity through distinct cultures and its people. A place where even perspicacious meteorologists are incapable of providing the daily forecast, accurately that is.

In the passage, The Horizontal World, Debra Marquart states, “Driving west from Fargo on I–94, the freeway that cuts through the state of North Dakota, you’ll encounter a road so lonely, treeless, and devoid of rises and curves in places that it will feel like one long-held pedal steel guitar note” (Marquart 1). Debra Marquart, along with several others, share a great passion for the Midwest. The Midwest is an area that is truly full of the unknown, as much of its qualities are not known to society. The Midwest can easily be viewed as bland and insipid, yet also overly structured and undisclosed. It can be exceptionally difficult for one to fully understand the Midwest due to its size and variation. Although, all in all, it most certainly can be described as an area, whose positives are not know by all. In Debra Marquart’s writing, The Horizontal World, she utilizes comical satires and evident allusion to characterize the land of the upper Midwest.

Eavan Boland’s poem “It’s a Woman’s World” illuminates the fact that history has shaped an unfair role for women in today’s society. Boland criticizes the gender bias with regards to the limitations placed on women and their job choices despite their ability to be just as successful in the workplace as men. Regardless of the fact that the bias against women in the workplace is often overlooked, Boland aims to show the shared reaction of women to the gender bias prevalent in our society by using short sentence fragments, repetition, and a fire motif throughout the poem.

In The Horizontal Word written by Debra Marquart was a memoir to North Dakota and the Midwest where she states “The Midwest is a place that’s been considered devoid of stories, a flyover region one must endure to get to more interesting places”(Marquart 31). In her memoir to North Dakota as well as the Midwest, she given in-depth example of stereotypes and views of that many Americans believed surrounding the Midwest. Then Marquart also gives a description of the Midwest history and even our ancestors overlooked the MidWest as they declared the region “a dreary plain, wholly unfit for 40 cultivation,” and, of course, “uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for subsistence”(Marquart 39). Debra Marquart expands off this idea as her Grandparents that were immigrants from Russia saw this as a new opportunity of life as they were excited to receive their “allotments of land”(Marquart 73). In Debra Marquart’s memoir, The Horizontal Word, she utilizes hasty generalizations to outline the stereotypes of the Midwest she also incorporates allusions to give outsiders a clear picture of this portion of the country.

In my world, there is a dichotomy between the comfort of my hometown and the excitement of the unknown. Flat and uninterrupted, the Nebraskan landscape is as uniform as the political and religious attitudes of those who occupy it. I know that when I step

In the world of Appalachia, stereotypes are abundant. There are stories told of mountaineers as lazy, bewildered, backward, and yet happy and complacent people. Mountain women are seen as diligent, strong, hard willed, and overall sturdy and weathered, bearing the burden of their male counterparts. These ideas of mountain life did not come out of thin air; they are the direct product of sensational nineteenth century media including print journalism and illustrative art that has continuously mislead and wrongfully represented the people of Appalachia. These stories, written and told by outsiders, served very little purpose to Appalachian natives other than means of humiliation and degradation. They served mostly to convince readers of the

The US is appealing in the eyes of other countries, and even ourselves, because of the “free” and “equal” characteristics we claim ourselves to have, such as: freedom of religion, freedom to own private property, and freedom of equal justice. However, in the eyes of an African America, Atlantic Monthly Journalist, we see that all of these freedoms find a loophole when it comes to the black community. In Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book Between the World and Me, he writes from a political, yet deeply personal standpoint to analyze today’s version of racism. Coates strays away from his usual journalist works to a more deeper and personal view. His book is devoted to his fifteen-year-old son, Samori, and provides him with guidance through the struggle of racism; all while letting Samori fend for himself. Coates’ lets his son know all this through history, and heritage; of his own and of America’s.

In this section, Jeannette Walls starts off, in the present time by telling the readers about her seeing her mom on the street, that she hasn’t seen in a long time. Jeannette uses emotional words like blustering and fretted to show that seeing her mom was an emotional time. Later in the section, she goes way back into her life to when she was three years old and when her family and her was living in the desert. She started off telling a story of when she was on fire. This story was intense, it was really dramatic on her parents part, her dad was screaming at her and the doctor a lot. Then she talked about when they moved to Las Vegas, her family lived in a motel room, which didn’t last long, they had to leave Vegas in a rush, because her dad was cheating in blackjack and the dealer found out. The last story in the section is where her family drove to San Francisco and stayed in another motel. One night her dad was at the bar, across the street. He left Jeannette and her three other siblings in the room. Jeannette got bored so she decided to play with fire and that let to a big disaster resulting in the whole hotel burning down.

Unfortunately for Marquart’s grandparents, North Dakota was not only disappointing in terms of vividness, but it is also overvalued by the media. Entertainment describes a kind of false-facade in correspondence with North Dakota. This is a state where directors get their actors to be “blond, fresh-faced and midwestern” in order to make their “descent into ruthless behavior in places like Los Angeles and New York all the more tragic”. Even the people already living there are so monotone that film writers make characters midwestern for shock-value. Because everyone knows how boring the people are in North Dakota, when characters in entertainment begin to meet their downfall, it is actually seen as a surprise, as if everyone in North Dakota are idols. By juxtaposing midwestern women with the adventurous cities of New York and Los Angeles, Marquart successful shows the contrast of the secluded and undesired area of North Dakota. Marquart shows the difference between the point of view of Keillor’s Lake Wobegon, from A Prairie Home Companion, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average” and the film Fargo, “the macabre land of murder-by-wood-chipper”. Although the two stories make North Dakota seem like an attractive, exciting place, unfortunately, these two tales are just myths- nothing more. The real North Dakota claims to have “easy inclines and farmable plains”, yet an official surveyor,

“He [Jeannette’s father, Rex] will not keep me out of harm’s way, he will put me in harm’s way and I have to find a way to remove myself from the situation.” (Diversity Connection). I feel like this quote, from Jeannette, came t directly from the situation where Rex took her out to the bar to help him earn money for alcohol, but yet she still doesn’t see herself as a victim. Even though Jeannette Walls was the victim of sexual abuse at a very young age, she tries to recreate the freedom from her childhood into her adult life, But in her younger years where she has no occupational activities, no nurturing, no money and no friends to turn to, it proves to be very hard to maintain.

In The Horizontal World, Debra Marquart uses strategies such as defining and ethic appeal. Marquart grew up in North Dakota and explaining how the upper Midwest was like. She uses her strategies with examples of her life and in history to portray the Midwest. Marquart wrote this acknowledging those who have been or are deciding to go to North Dakota. Marquart goes over how people perceive the Midwest and tells her side of it.

The article compares the postmodernist work of Barry Hannah and William Faulkner. Williamson explains how Americans have relied on writers from the south such as Faulkner and Hannah and how the writers have been the ones to describe America’s grand metaphors. The article explains how the world has changed in the postmodern era. Williamson criticizes the work of other writers like Pynchon and explains how postmodern dread like nausea, angst and dread are manifested in the work of Hannah. Williamson explores the opinions of other postmodern writers from the south and compares them to those of Barry Hannah. The article discusses Hannah’s depiction of the American South as a place populated by destitute, aimless and romanticized people. In the article, Williamson discusses Barry Hannah’s works like Coming Close to Donna, Constant Pain in Tuscaloosa, Yonder Stands Your Orphan and highlights the postmodern themes that are evident in the texts. Williamson analyzes themes of racial and religious conflict as illustrated by Hannah in his writing. The article encourages people to shun other southern writers and to embrace the work of Barry Hannah and his contemporaries who write indulgent fiction. Williamson explains why Barry Hannah expresses a postmodernist mindset in his writing. He praises Barry Hannah for his apt portrayal of the postmodern American south in his writing.

The south, a place where everyone owns a pair of cowboy boots and not a soul exists that doesn’t enjoy an ice-cold glass of sweet tea… at least, that’s how the movies say it is. I didn’t grow up in a small country town nor was I raised in a big city. I live twenty minutes away from the nearest grocery store, but only five from the nearest boutique. Our post-office dwells next to a horse stable, and spotting a country music star at the mall is not uncommon. Truth be told, my town is nothing like you would picture, but everything you would dream. Meadows, adorned with office buildings and neighborhoods, surrounded by hills teeming with wildlife. An actual castle lies nestled in the woods right off the interstate, passed daily by cowboys