Semiotics of the Landscape

The short story "Death by Landscape" well describes the psychology of Lois, the heroine of the story. One incident that occurred to her when she was 13 years old, affects her whole life. As a thirteen year old, she looses her best friend, Lucy, on a canoeing trip in a summer camp. While Lucy was going to the bathroom behind a tree on the edge of a cliff overlooking a river and Lois waiting where she wasn't able to see her, Lucy disappeared without a trace. The story's setting and characters shows the existence of two egos in one person's life.

The temporary feeling and atmosphere of terror that is throughout the story exemplifies the unexplained supernatural by showing Lois as a victim of an event she has no comprehension or power over. She is affected to a point where “she would never go up north… to any place with wild lake and wild trees and the calls of loons. (Atwood 129). In the rugged landscape of the wilderness, it is equal to death where in that the wild is very similar to the uncontrollable nature of death. Lucy’s presence is emphasized by her absence as she continues

The idea of death can be, and is an enormously disturbing, unknown issue in which many people can have many different opinions. To some individuals, the process of life can progress painstakingly slow, while for others life moves too fast. In the excerpt We Were the Mulvaneys, by Joyce Carol Oates, a innocent farm boy named Judd Mulvaney has an eye-opening encounter by a brook near his driveway. During this encounter, Judd faces a chain of feelings and emotions that lead to his change of opinion of the issues of life and death, and change as a character. This emblematic imagery of life and death, as well as jumpy, and retrospective tones benefit the development of Judd as an innocent child as he begins to change into a more conscious and aware adult.

The garden is the vehicle in which the narrator reveals her reluctance to leave behind the imaginary world of childhood and see the realities of the adult world. The evidence supporting this interpretation is the imagery of hiding. The narrator uses the garden to hide from reality and the

. . took on, over time, the nature of one more hillock in the dramatic rise and fall of the coastal landscape.” (141) Expressed in this statement is the idea that although the Larkins experienced a tragedy that held the town‘s interest for a period, adversity is a natural part of the unpredictability and ups and downs of life. In other words; tragedy and adversity are part of the landscape of life.

In the beginning of the short story, as Brother reflects on Doodle’s life, the author uses personification and foreshadowing to create a mood of remorse. As he gazes out of the window into his backyard, Brother states that “the graveyard flowers were blooming. ...speaking softly the names of our dead” (Hurst 1). The flowers provide flashbacks of the past, and foreshadow a loss of life. The loneliness felt by Brother causes readers to consider how they would feel if their loved one was gone. As Brother observes the seasons, it is noted that “summer was dead but autumn had not yet been born” (Hurst 1). The personifications of the seasons as stages in the cycle of life and death creates an unsure and uncertain mood. The shift between seasons creates an idea of change and uncertainty of events to come. Hurst creates a mood of remorse through

The inception of “Covers The Ground,” begins with establishing the setting of the city of Sacramento. Understanding the natural beauty of the city is best conveyed by establish vivid imagery and Snyder accomplishes this by describing the “blossoming almond orchard acres.” As the image of nature sparks into the reader’s head, Gary Snyder is

“Strawberry Spring” offers the reader an opportunity to “show that we are not afraid” of facing our fears (King, “Why We Crave” 1). After all, anyone who has heard of Stephen King will automatically know that reading one of his stories may result in a thrill. For example, near the beginning of the narrator’s encounter, “a junior named John Dancey” happened upon a “dead girl lying in a shadowy corner of the Animal Sciences parking lot” (King, “Strawberry Spring” 2). Accordingly, the explicitly specific imagery used to reveal the brutality of Gale Cerman’s death is quite unsettling! Most of us spend our entire lives avoiding our “hysterical fear” of death, and allowing us to read such a description is “daring [our] nightmares” (King, “Why We Crave” 1). “Strawberry Spring” fulfills Stephen King’s claim that one reason we watch and read horror is to show “that we are not afraid” (1).

It can be difficult for a persona to understand a different perspective. The 1914 blank verse poem, Home Burial, by Robert Frost explores the death of a child and the consequences of this disturbing event on a mother and father. The poem is set at the burgeoning of WWI in pre-war western society. At its core this text explores the gender stereotypes of its time. The mother and father embody the two differing representations of grief over their child’s death. After a brief introduction, the text consists of mostly dialogue which gives the audience an insight into the emotional rift between two personas and their different experiences in dealing with the emotional consequences of death. The husband questions the emotional response of his wife using a demanding tone, desperate to try and understand the reasons for her longing actions “What is it you see From up there always- for

Atwood’s “Death of a Young Son by Drowning” perfectly grasps the life-altering heartbreak that occurs after the loss of a child by utilizing literary devices such as imagery, personification, simile, and metaphor. In the poem, an image of a voyage is used to characterize a child’s journey from life to death. “The dangerous river”, is used as a metaphor to describe the birth canal which the child victoriously navigates, but after embarking upon the outside world, the child goes into a “voyage of discovery” (4) that results in his death in the river. “On a landscape stranger than Uranus” (14) emphasizes the estrangement felt by the mother without having any knowledge of the environment. Comparing it to Uranus she describes it to be just as strange as a another planet. In the ninth stanza, the mother reminisces the death of her child as she says, “My foot hit rock” (26) which is a representation that she has hit rock bottom and her life will now never be the same. The final simile of the poem, “I planted him in his country / like a flag” (28-29) identifies the relationship between the dead child and the land. It ties the mother to the land in a way that had not been thought of, a way that is fraught with grief. An extended metaphor is developed throughout the poem, comparing the experience of giving birth that the character had, to a river and its contents. It helps to understand the different stages of birth by expressing the hurricane of emotions, and incidents that occurred with the use of waves expressing times of difficulty and pain.

The picture I chose includes the internal meaning about collaboration or cooperation between people and the nature as ‘Semiotic Ecology’. Semiotic ecology is language of sign, but also it could be music, popular culture, and arts which are trying to offer a different idea about environmental issues to connect how we think and remember the environment. This picture would include that people are playing with together in the nature and this means that free place where people can play with the environment includes lawns, trees, leaves, or terrestrial plants and animals. There is no specific sign at Fort Snelling State Park, so I chose this picture which can be meant connection between the nature and people as semiotic ecology.

Death by Landscape does not end at this point. Lois is looking at the paintings on her wall. In all her paintings she sees her friend Lucy and she still can hear her shouting. On page eight block one Atwood writes that a dead person is a body and occupies space, a grave, but Lucy has no body, no grave. She only exists in Lois’ mind and – in her pictures on the wall. “You can’t see her exactly, but she’s there…” (page 8, block 2). Everyone has to be somewhere and the paintings are where Lucy is. In Lois’ mind she is still alive. Lois was going through the happenings of this particular day again and again, throughout her life, torturing herself with guilt and never really finding peace. This feeling of guilt was implanted in her mind from the frustrated owner of Camp Manitou, knowing about the consequences of the loss of a child in her camp. Lois knew that she didn’t push Lucy off the cliff, but she left her alone, just for a moment, unattended and unwatched, knowing about her unhappy family situation, knowing Lucy didn’t want to return to her

The narrator, is a young man living in Algiers, who barely earns enough money for himself. He then receives a telegram that informs him of his mother’s death and he takes a bus to Marengo, where his mother had been living in an old persons’ home. When he arrives, he speaks to the director of the home then the director allows Meursault to see his mother. Meursault walks outside and breathes in the air when the he is approached by the warden. The warden asks if he want to see his mother one last time but Meursault declines. As he is walking along during the funeral, Meursault describes the countryside with vivid details thinks about how now he could understand his mother’s feelings. Something about the landscape left him a bit unsettled for he

Just like in the rest of the works, Sharon Olds’ poem, Still Life in Landscape, is presented on a confessional note. The speaker, who is the author, is a child. This child narrates about her experience as a witness of an accident caused by recklessness due to drunk driving. It is easy to tell from the line 1, “It was night, it had rained, there were pieces of cars and half-cars strewn,” that a terrible accident had happened on the road during that night. The poem presents a truthful meaning of how real reality is, and it can be elucidated and viewed via varying viewpoints by the audience, the child and the reader. The interpretation of the poem by the child is that it is a traumatic exposure to the raw life reality that likely cannot be undone nor can he forget the happenings of the night.

and Atwood mentions in her poem that “the lake is blue, the forest watchful.” (16). Therefore bringing forth the analogy that “In Atwood’s elegies, her attitude toward her father is generally loving and recuperative, but its is not without its moments of private conflict.” which are expressed through her poem (Jamieson).