Lost Salt Gift of Blood

In the selections, Of Plymouth Plantation and The Life of Olaudah Equiano, they both start a new beginning. Through hard work, perseverance, and the determination not to give up, these two stories tell the tale of survival to begin. However, one story’s beginning is much happier than the others.

Overall, James Bartleman successfully addresses the issues of marginalization and assimilation of First Nations people in Canada. Through Bartleman’s stylistic choices, As Long as the Rivers Flow narrates the fictional story of a Native raised in

The short story “The Boat” by Alistair MacLeod is narrated by a man who comes from a fishing family. His mother’s side of the family has forever lived and worked by the sea and continues this tradition. The narrator’s father always wanted to be an academic, but worked on the boat to support his family. Through this passage it is evident that the parents’ characters clash in many aspects of their lives and are in constant conflict. MacLeod demonstrates this through the use of repetition, the contrast in other unrelated ideas, and through information that is withheld.

The objects people keep in their homes can tell a story about who they are or were. Each item possessed by the residents of a house is evidence of how these people may have lived. Ted Kooser’s poem “Abandoned Farmhouse” takes the reader on a walkthrough of the remains of a farmhouse where a poor family once lived. In “Abandoned Farmhouse,” Kooser selects seemingly insignificant relics left behind by each family member to illustrate who these people were and how they lived. The picture he paints is a bleak one and reflects the impoverished life which the residents lived within this now lonely and desolate building.

Traditional gender roles are constantly evolving, and can differ drastically depending on the geographic area. With this being said, even in localized areas gender roles can differ depending on economic, social, and familial factors. In Alistair Macleod’s collection The Lost Salt Gift of Blood, we see “traditional” gender roles being expected, and when they are challenged or altered, conflict arises. This essay will focus on “The Boat” as well as “In The Fall” and explore how the women and men in these stories experience and set gender expectations. These stories stem from women being letdown with the expectation they have of what a man’s role in the family is and should be. Traditionally, we think of the male being the authority figure

In chapter 5, “The Vanished Settlements”, John Viele reveals information about the 21-year span of life on the Keys. The Civil War, living conditions, mosquitoes, fresh water, and isolation are some of the main hardships that many of the settlers had to experience, but only a few could endure the setbacks and live prosperous lives, as well as their families. Henry Geiger, Temple Pent, and Happy Jack were the most prosperous men during the hard times of the Key West, and through others around them, their stories can now live on.

Gray uses the images of an “Aboriginal, not attempting to hitch, outside town” to emphasise the discomfort and disconnection he feels with land and the environment around him. This image is very strong as it shows his disempowerment towards the environment. He feels lost in this town so he moves away from the foreign constructions.

Imagery, detail, and symbolism play a crucial role in this work. Imagery has the function of painting a picture of the situation in the reader’s mind so that he or she is able to develop a version of the story individually. It makes the reading a more personalized experience that helps the reader to understand what’s going on. When O’Brien was just about to escape to Canada to avoid being drafted, he described the scene that was presented in front of him. “The shoreline was dense with brush and timber. I could see tiny red berries on the bushes.” In this quote, the reader can visualize the setting of the lake where he has to make his life-changing decision. It appeals to the visual sense by describing the shoreline and even the sense of

This paper is a critical analyze of the book “Indian Ernie” written by Ernie Louttit who was a native police officer in Saskatoon for thirty years. First section will be focus on the major theme of the book and its subsequent ideas will be examined in terms of how are they related to class materials and academic literature. Conclusion and the insights will be discussed at the final section of the paper.

3)Margaret Conrad, "The Politics of Place: Regionalism and Community in Atlantic Canada," The Constitutional Future of the Prairies and Atlantic Canada (1992): 18-36

Indigenous communities in Canada have long suffered from trauma that has largely been afflicted by Canada’s colonial past. This very idea is still prevalent today. “it takes an ocean not to break,” begins with the somber thoughts of the narrator reflecting on the suicide of a youth, she deeply cared about. who was close to her. Her statement: “i was in love with the idea that finally we had given birth to a generation that didn’t have to spend their adult lives recovering from their childhood.” (Simpson 79) represents the hope that in 21st century intergenerational trauma would no longer be prevalent in Indigenous society. The narrator also mentions “you weren’t going to drown yourself in anything.” (Simpson 79) This references the idea of substance abuse that has been prominent in Indigenous communities. The hopeful ideas quickly disappear when the speaker faces reality and the fact the youth was in a collision course with “a diagnosed train wreck”. (Simpson 79)

“The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” by Ambrose Bierce tells the story of a man being punished for a crime. While he is dying, he vividly imagines his escape, the one thing that urges him on is the thought of his family. “White Heron,” by Sarah Orne Jewett follows a girl named Sylvia who lives in a small country home with her grandmother. She has a simple life: walking with her cow and hanging out with the forest creatures. However, when a young hunter arrives on the scene with a very alluring offer, Sylvia is faced with a tough decision. The setting of the short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, is in northern Alabama during the Civil War. The short story, “A White Heron”, takes place in New England during the summer on a farm. Throughout the short stories both Jewett and Bierce, describe the similar scenes a pond, a forest, and a faint sunlight.

Religion and tradition are two ways that families come together. However in Norman Maclean’s novella, A River Runs Through It, the Maclean family’s devotion to their Presbyterian religion and their tradition of fly-fishing is what undeniably brought the family together. Under the father’s strict Presbyterian values, his sons, Norman and Paul used fly-fishing as the link that brought them closer together and helped them bond with their father on a different level. The family’s hobby of fly-fishing was started just for fun. It was a sport that was taken up every Sunday after church to take their minds off of the worries in life. After a while, going fly-fishing every Sunday turned into a tradition and soon a

Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach incorporates words and phrases from the Haisla language in an effort to reflect the protagonist’s culture while also satiating the cultural curiosity of a non-indigenous audience. The incorporation of Haisla is one of the mechanics of the Glorious Northern Gothic novel, as it provides a reformation of traditional Gothic conventions through an Indigenous lens. The Haisla language is presented through the protagonist’s narration and is usually introduced in an instructional tone or story. Italics mark most of the language in the text; however in some instances the words are not italicized or are only implied. It is through this process of marking that the use of Haisla language moves beyond a mode of integrating the protagonist’s culture into the story and provides a critique on Non-Indigenous Canadians’ appetite for Indigenous stories: what language the text contains and what language is omitted defines what parts of the culture Non-Indigenous Canadians have already consumed or are permitted to consume.

Alistair Macleod, a Canadian author, enjoys writing about the Canadian culture in Nova Scotia. He is the author of the novel No Great Mischief and many short stories including The Boat. Both creations of his have a common subject: Culture in Nova Scotia. It is also noted that “Macleod’s short stories are pervasively somber in that they depict a culture that is an gradual loss or erosion of value” (Riegal 133) In his short story, The Boat, the reader senses this mourning of the decline of this culture that comes with the newer generations. The message received in this short story is to never let anyone stop you from doing something you love and the importance of doing what you want to do. This message is important because it allows the reader to realize that if they are not happy they might not have enough time to do anything about it. Through out the story, the reader senses the struggle the narrator has which is to pick between the traditional life of a fisherman and the new life of education. After he was a fisherman along side his father’s he then followed his father’s dream of having an education and became a professor. However, the short story’s narration is nostalgic as if regretting his final decision. The narrator’s lack of connection with a loved one, a loss of culture and his reminiscing of his past experiences with the sea demonstrate this nostalgia.