The Lonesome Dove Saga, By Larry Mcmurtry

Thesis: In the short stories The Charmer, Love Must Not Be Forgotten, and The Address, one’s past experiences have a profound effect on their development as an individual.

Mary Wilkins Freeman and her writing can be considered the epitome of a lonely spinster. In Freeman’s piece, “A New England Nun,” Freeman tells of a woman by the name of Louisa Ellis. Louisa is a spinster in New England following the Civil War. She is destined to marry a man by the name of Joe Dagget. However, when Joe returns from making his fortune to take Louisa’s hand in marriage, Louisa would now rather have her independence than a husband. Freeman’s character development, use of symbolism, and use of language make for a piece that is enjoyable and easy to understand.

"The Charmer" by Budge Wilson is a short story about a Canadian family that finds misfortune and conflict within their lives. Conflict being the predominant theme which directly affects all the participants in the family. The story is written in third person and narrated from the young girl Winifred's point of view. Budge Wilson uses Zack's smothered childhood, charming personality and irresponsible behaviour to create emotional conflict between members of the family.

McMurtry creates a story about his family, based on their accounts left to him in memoirs and letters throughout the years. McMurtry’s ultimate purpose is to narrate an expressive literary essay that uses humor and drama to attract the attention of the reader. While discussing cowboys and their straightforward wisdom, he concludes that cowboys’ observations turn into aphorisms. One such aphorism he finds particularly appealing is as follows: “A woman’s love is like the morning dew, it’s just as likely to fall on a horseturd as on a rose” (149). McMurtry also includes a great deal of drama and suspense as well. At one point, he recalls his grandfather’s troublesome drinking; one day his grandmother issued an ultimatum, sober up or she would leave him. “The threat was undoubtedly made in earnest, and he took it so immediately to heart that he stopped drinking then and there, with a jug half full of whiskey hanging in the saddle room of the barn” (143).

Animals help humans in our lives for sharing their features. Every new experience can make a person change; sometimes the changes are positive, and other times it is negative. Either way, here is no avoiding change. Animals are kind, helpful, and playful.

At some point in their life, every person has been told to “walk in somebody else’s shoes” because they need to be aware of the struggles that other people face, but it is often tough for people to understand things outside of the scope of their own practical knowledge. In her memoir, Lucky, Alice Sebold suffers from this same problem. Throughout the course of her narrative, Sebold thinks of her experience as something that is accessible to be understood by outsiders; in addition to this, Sebold paints her reactions and experiences as a model that she can apply to other victims of sexual assault. Even though Sebold’s story is one of strength in the face of horrible occurrences, her lack of acknowledgement in regards the ways in which other people’s consciousness and coping mechanisms differ from her own makes it far more difficult to sympathize with her than it should be considering the content of her memoir. Evidence of her closed world understanding can be seen from the beginning of the memoir, when she reports her sexual assault to the police (Sebold, 3), later in the narrative, when other people react to her experiences and related feelings (Sebold 146), and finally, and perhaps most significantly, when her close friend Lila undergoes a sexual assault (Sebold 220).

Through my understanding of the book, Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May explores two traditional depictions of the 1950s, namely suburban domesticity and anticommunism. She intertwines both historical events into a captivating argument. Throughout the book, May aims to discover why “Post-war Americans accepted parenting as well as marriage with so much zeal” unlike their own parents and children. Her findings are that the “cold war ideology and domestic revival” were somewhat linked together. She saw “domestic containment” as an outgrowth of frights and desires that bloomed after the war. However, psychotherapeutic services were as much a boom then as now, and helped offer “private and personal solutions to social problems.” May reflects her views on the origin of domestic containment, and how it affected the lives of people who tried to live by it.

Set against the backdrop of the Californian Gold Rush of the 1850s, The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt follows the lives of two brothers, Eli and Charlie Sisters. The Sisters Brothers tells the story of these infamous assassins who are on a journey to San Francisco to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. Warm appears to be a subtle man, who is accused of stealing from their boss, a formidable figured named the Commodore. As the brothers continue on with their journey, they come across many people from all walks of life: a weeping man, gold-digging prospectors, a young-naïve boy, and a dentist. Although the brothers don’t realize it, these individuals help the brothers perceive the world in a completely different way. Not to mention, they change the way the novel is bestowed. The brothers eventually end up at their final destination in San Francisco from Oregon City, where they realize that their adventure has actually just begun. After several eye-opening incidents, the brothers begin to question their jobs, and the true meaning of their lives.

Literature is defined as written works published on a particular subject. Literature can also be viewed as witness, because it can be a source of proof based on the events it was written on. Literature as witness allows readers to get a deeper understanding of the issues that have happened based off of what the books are about. Those who read literary texts such as historical novels, memoirs and novels are witness to historical events. These texts can be viewed as witness because the events mentioned are based off of true life events. Some may argue historical fiction is not real and therefore could not be viewed as a reliable source. Even though historical fiction is made up of fictional characters, the conflicts that are mentioned are based

Crossroads at Clarksdale by Francoise Hamlin sketches the struggle to freedom for African Americans in Clarksdale, MS. Hamlin shares the stories of two successful African Americans at the forefront and how they work to become leaders in Clarksdale. From the 1950’s to the 1970s, college students, numerous organizations, and campaigns for social transformation fought hard battles for social and economic justice. In an attempt to withstand the social prejudices that were highly advocated in Mississippi African Americans were targeted for violence and degraded by Jim Crow laws that were inhumane and restricted their rights. Despite the poverty and inequality African Americans had to undergo, their slow struggle to freedom in Clarksdale was accompanied by accomplishments and relentless efforts for civil rights. Hamlin articulates in detail the situations that were occurring in the south, how the citizens were affected by the situations, and their responses to these situations.

Within Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, religion is an ever present component to the novel. This is prevalent within Inman, Ada and Monroe, Swimmer, and the mountain town itself. At times, characters will present aspects of religion that do not coincide with the common Christian beliefs within Cold Mountain, such as Monroe’s teachings or Swimmer’s own religion as opposed to Christianity. Each religious person or reference within the story creates a sense of differentiating views as well as an introduction to multiple perspectives of religion, self, and action.

All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy is a coming of age novel centered around the protagonist, John Grady Cole as he ventures to Mexico to pursue his ideal life. The exact moment in which John Grady Cole’s character changes irrevocably, and truly comes of age, is when he stabs another prisoner in the heart while in prison in Mexico. In that moment, his youth and innocence fall away, and he gains the kind of understanding of the world that can only come when one becomes a man. In the beginning of the novel, John Grady Cole is stubborn with the foolish optimism of youth; he thinks he can run a ranch and make enough money to sustain him and his mother, and he runs away to Mexico to pursue his ideal life as a cowboy. By the end of the

Throughout history, it can be seen that the influence of fear far surpasses that of reason in controlling the actions of people, leading to destructive outcomes. In the Scottsboro Boys interracial rape case in Alabama in 1931, several Black teenagers were deemed guilty in every trial, even though during a retrial one of the two white victims admitting to fabricating the rape story. Additionally, in the 1948 case of the “Scottsboro Boys of the North” or the Trenton 6, a jury convicted six Black men who did not even match eyewitness descriptions, sentencing them to death. Such unreasonable decisions were made due to the widespread Jim Crow laws in that era and in fear that society would change in the already unsure future, since it was

Greg Sarris provides a personal narrative based on Mabel McKay, giving her a chance to present her life-long story of enduring the resistance of white dominance. There is also vivid examinations of her calling to her personal spirit, which held onto her soul immensely. This book is incredible, showing the experience of a young girl listening to her spirit as it called out for her to remember her connection to weaving, singing, and healing. She connects to her dreams excessively which provided her with the lessons that was taught by the spirit which connected her back to her traditional native roots. Not only is there a perspective of Mabel McKay, but Sarris also find his own story of self-discovery as he is interacting with Mabel. Clearly

After reading The Liars Club an autobiography by Mary Karr, my interpretation of the reading is that she is telling her story from her point of view as a child and as an adult, utilizing foreshadowing and vivid imagery. For example, the reading states “My sharpest memory is of a single instant surrounded by dark.” “I was seven, and our family doctor knelt before me where I sat on a mattress on the bare floor” (Karr 3). This passage also brought some significance to the story as discussed in class. This helps the reader to understand that a very young age Mary Karr experienced something that was traumatic and it as stuck with her, therefore she labeled is one of her sharpest childhood memories. Usually when things happen to us as children we are not able to remember them exactly in detail, but when they are traumatic events those memories tend to stick with us throughout life. While writing Karr takes the role of two characters, those include the character “Pokey”. In the story this is a representation of Mary Karr a child. Her father Pete calls her Pokey. During this time frame Mary isn’t too aware of what is happening to her, she admires her father, and is also of her sisters. As I continued to read the story the next character that Mary Karr takes on is the narrator or author. This is referenced throughout the story when she looks back on her childhood to try and understand what was happening to her. A good example of this is when the author uses breaking of the fourth