Joe Unsworth
MAR 356
29 Nov. 2016
Book Review “Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938” by R. A. Scotti was first published in 2003 by Little, Brown and Company in New York City. The novel attempts to recreate the confusion, chaos, and devastation before, during, and after one of the largest hurricanes to hit New England. The “Long Island Express,” as it was named for its speed and impact location, killed 682 people and had massive implications for the region as a whole particularly, the coastal areas where its effects were felt the most. The novel draws less on these implications and instead focuses on a play-by-play of the storm from several perspectives. As such, it ventures from the realm of nonfiction and towards that of historical fiction.
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These scenes are stitched together in a way that is meant to bring nuance to the story, but instead was hard to interpret and confusing. It was sometimes hard to know which characters were being referred to and where each stood chronologically with relation to the others. For example, two of the plot lines had characters with the same surname. In this case, it would have been helpful for the separate groups to have been further differentiated and identified. For these reasons, I believe that if the author was trying to convey some sort of complex plot, she did not succeed in this …show more content…
A. Scotti’s book, “Sudden Sea,” it is important to look at the novel in the context of its intended audience. If the novel was intended for an action hungry audience looking for an easy read with just enough historical context to make it seem real, Scotti has succeeded. If the novel was meant for the few looking to acquire new and meaningful knowledge about the 1938 hurricane, I believe it has not delivered in that regard. My goal in reading the book aligned more with the latter of those two options and so I do not believe the novel to have been worthwhile, but others with different tastes might argue otherwise. One thing that is clear is that this book has not made a lasting contribution to its field. That designation should be reserved for pieces with bigger claims and more evidence to support
The 1900 Hurricane in Galveston destroyed a majority of the towns infrastructure and killed a significant amount of the population. One of the main reasons behind the level of devastation was do to the fact that the city was not at all prepared to face a storm as large as the one that hit in 1900, the city had a very low elevation with its highest point being only 9 feet above the sea level, and had very little if any means of protection from Hurricanes(1.). By 1900 Galveston had already been hit with several destructive storms in the past but they were not severe enough for the citizens of Galveston to start making more efforts to curb the potential damage a larger storm could have in the future and thus do to something on a
Soon the good luck of Key West was about to run out. A hurricane arrived
Malmar McKnight’s frightening story, “The Storm”, weaves a violent storm and murder together to heighten the horrific fears that engulf Janet Willsom. “The Storm” is a combination of Mother Nature, Janet’s emotions, and her heartbreaking dilemmas. The eerie mood is revealed throughout the story. Figurative language helps the reader bring the story to life in his/ her mind. The author’s use of irony is devolved through Janet’s changed perception of the storm.
Danticat, Edwidge. “A Wall of Fire Rising.” The Norton Introduction to Literature: Portable Tenth Edition. Ed. Alison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011. 232-244. Print.
Adding a picture or a graph to an essay or story can dramatically change how the reader views the writing, it also may change how your reader understands the idea behind your writing. In the Newsela article written by PBS Newshour called “Wild Hurricane Season for Atlantic Seaboard: Irma to come Calling” there is one picture of a hurricane, however the picture doesn’t explain anything about it. If I were to add a diagram to help the readers better comprehend I would add it in the section called Major Hurricanes could form in Atlantic. In the first paragraph of that section it states that “Hurricanes lose power when winds near the ocean surface blow at one speed and direction while winds in the upper atmosphere blow another. This difference
One of the events that stood out was the incident of the last train to leave Houston at 9:45 a.m. The train contained 95 passengers. When the train left, the tracks were completely washed out. Passengers were then forced to transfer to a relief train in order to complete their journey. Unfortunately, since there was a lot of debris on the track, the progress at which the train was moving at was at the pace of a crawl. When the train tried to return, the rising water blocked its path preventing it from moving. 10 travelers decided to leave the train and go to a lighthouse where 200 people were already at. The 85 travelers that remained on the train were killed by a storm surge. Another big story that was known among the deaths of people was about the 90 orphan children and the 10 sisters from St. Mary’s Orphans Asylum that died. Orphans were found tied together with a cloth line to a nun. This was because the nuns had promised to the orphan children they would never let go no matter what and to keep them close. A witness with the name of Smith Austin said, “Tress began to fall state shingles, planks sand debris of every imaginable kind were being hurled through the air…” Anna Delz was one of the survivors of the storm. Anna Delz was thrown into the water and found 18 miles away from her
This passage is an extract from Joseph O’ Connor’s Star of the sea which was penned in the year 2002. The passage makes use of a third person narrative view point as a result of which the readers are provided with a vivid image of passengers aboard a stormy sea ship. The passage talks about a ship afloat a stormy sea and how the passengers on the deck are caught unaware due to this storm. The author uses a descriptive style of writing with short crisp sentences that heighten the pace of the story. In the last two paragraphs however, the author uses longer sentences that signal a slower pace and show the readers that the storm has died down for the time being. The author has interspersed the action with 2 dialogues. It is interesting to
When many think of the worst hurricanes in the united states they think of hurricane katrina and that's what many believe but that sadly is incorrect .On September 8th in 1900 a casual saturday morning one of the most horrific hurricanes struck its way into galveston texas in which is referred to as “The Great Hurricane Galveston”. The great Hurricane Galveston is one of the most deadliest natural disasters in american history. It happened to kill between 6 and 12,000 people. It was a category 4 storm with winds up to 145 mph . The storm arose about 15 feet high within hours. This severe storm was situated about 9 feet above sea level ,numerous amounts of homes were desto about 3,600 buildings were destroyed.
The author presents the the reader numerous times things that are directly happening, including but not limited to the migration of animals and Native Americans out of town to escape the flood, the flood barrier of Lake Okechobee bursting open, and the burial of the bodies after the storm had passed. All of the preceding examples were directly stated by the author and represent real actions that occurred in the novel. Although the migration of animals and the natives might have been used as a symbol and to foreshadow an ominous future ahead, which is the hurricane, the description of the animals and Native Americans migrating represented what was actually happening. To represent realism, there does not have to be a greater meaning to what is going on, there only has to be hard aspects of life
death experiences. The narrator of the novel at one point during the hurricane says "They seemed
This article is about the Newfoundland hurricane of 1175, and the affects it had on the environment. The hurricane killed about 4,000 people, and a large amount of those people were seamen from Ireland and Britain. The article goes on to explain how the hurricane is still not, and may never be fully understood, and how some of the questions about the hurricane, such as whether it came up on the east or west side of the Bermuda, have been left unanswered.
It was, in a sense, Isaac Cline's storm—the man stationed in Galveston for the new U.S. Weather Bureau. Author Erik Larson, who researched survivors' accounts, tells of the hurricane in his new book, Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time,
Human error played a major role in this disaster, because the people at the weather station were not very concerned about this storm. In fact, they didn’t even figure it was a hurricane. Until a young meteorologist did the math and found that the storm was a hurricane and it was coming to New England. But the further experienced meteorologists didn’t believe him and it never got out to the public, so no one evacuated the area or made any safety precautions. Once they found out it was actually a hurricane, they had no time to
The Great Hurricane of 1938, or known to many as the Long Island Express, was known as one of the most disastrous hurricanes to hit New England. It wasn’t the high winds, heavy rain, and high waves/storm surge that gave this hurricane its title in history. The Great Hurricane had a fourth deadly weapon; the element of surprise. It was the beginning of September, a time where many packed up their summer clothes, boarded up their houses, and left to return back to the real world leaving their summer homes behind. When symptoms of a storm approached New England, many locals convinced themselves and others that it was just the normal “line storm” which occasionally comes in September. It wasn’t until Sept 21 that people realized the so-called
“The Open Boat” is short tale of endurance, suffering, and redemption. The story focuses on four interesting sailors on a journey towards survival. They try their best to overcome the adversities of the water and raging storm. Crane focuses on the constant struggle of man’s immobility to control his own life. “The Open Boat” is a nonfictional fiction some call it. It typically is argued as only fiction, but many lean toward its nonfictional quality. Crane wrote the story based off his real life experience of a shipwreck he tragically endured. The Commodore, the name of the ship, was the victim of the waves and Crane just so happened to be one of its friends. He wrote 2 articles based on this tragedy, but “The Open Boat” became the best