Sunday, March 13, 2011

Bierce/ Harte

The first story I read was, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, by Bierce. This was a fascinating story, and kept me on the edge of my seat. When he falls from the bridge, and starts to head down the stream, I thought to myself, this was just what he was thinking of. When he was standing there and thought, “I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home (361).” As he makes his way down the stream, fighting for his life, Bierce does a wonderful job in describing his surroundings. You can actually feel the confusion and desperation going through Peyton’s mind as he thrashes around in the creek. You can feel his primal urge to survive kicked in as “a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was trying free his hands (363).” As he continues to evade the soldiers and escape their bullets, you begin to cheer for his survival. Once he reaches shore and begins his journey through the forest, I started to have my doubts. It wasn’t until “he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great garden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations [,]” that I started to question if he had really escaped the noose(366). When he reached his home and his wife was just standing on the porch, I knew for sure he had not really made it out. It seems to me that if he was so badly beat up from the escape, that she would show more concern and run out to him. The ending was not a surprise, but it was a good story anyway.

The second story was “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” by Harte. I did not like this story as much as the first one. I think it is because it was so hard for me to follow the reading, it was distracting. I prefer to read straight forward text, which is easy to follow. With that said, I think Harte did a great job showing how this group of outcasts, in the end, turned out to be very noble people. They were sent out of their town because they were thought to be “objectionable characters (2).” Yet, when they find themselves in a position of life and death, they show their true nature. When Mother Shipton tells Oakhurst to take her rations and “[g]ive 'em to the child,” it really showed what a caring person she was. That just because she had an occupation that the town didn’t agree with, it did not make her a bad person. Throughout the whole story I am reminded how in real life, those who are easily looked down upon because of their economic status, are often the most caring people you will meet. I did like the ending, when the towns people find Oakhurst. The last line, “beneath the snow lay he who was at once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat(7)[,] is heart breaking. Here was a man who tried everything he could to keep them all alive, and in the end could not face the prospect of watching them die, or himself freezing to death, so he took his own life. By doing this, making him weaker than the others, who never gave up.

Works Cited

Bierce, Ambrose. "An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge." Reesman, Jeanne Campbell and Arnold Krupat. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007. 360-365.

Harte, Francis Bret. "The Outcasts of Poker Flat." Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. Vols. X, Part 4. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1917. 1-7, bartleby.com, 2000, www.bartleby.com/310/4/02132011.

Whitman/Twain


The first reading was by Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” It is a narrative of Whitman riding the ferry between Manhattan and Brooklyn. He does a great job of describing his surroundings, and making you feel like you are on the ferry with him. He describes the “Twelfth-month sea gulls” flying in the sky, and the “white wake left by the passage,” giving you a perfect picture of what he is seeing (22). He is talking to all who have, are, or will ride the ferry when he says, “I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence (22)[.] I think he is amazed that at any point in time, people will be able to view the same beautiful things he is viewing. That even though we are separated by time, we are all connected by the things around us, “[t]hese and all else were to me the same as they are to you (23)[.]

This was not a favorite of mine, I don’t really care for poetry, I prefer stories. It was a beautiful poem, I just have an easier time reading and comprehending straight forward texts.

The second reading was Mark Twain’s ‘The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” This was more my style of writing, and I have always enjoyed Twain’s writing. I think he has a wonderful way of pointing out the not so good things in society, in a funny, non-threatening manner. In this particular story, he is actually telling a story within a story. The story begins with the narrator seeking out Simon Wheeler, to ask about a friend of a friend. You can tell right away by the language, that the narrator is an educated man. I know from my previous experience with Twain, that usually the educated represent people from the East, and uneducated people are from the West. That fits with this story, because Simon Wheeler is from a mining town, which would be in the West. As soon as the narrator finds Wheeler, the tone of the story changes. The dialog is rough, and you really get a feel of the uneducated story teller. For instance, he begins to tell him when Jim Smiley was there and says, “I remember the big flume warn’t finished (104 emphasis mine). Educated people did not speak like this.

Wheeler proceeds to tell the narrator a story not about the man he is asking for, but instead about Jim Smiley. Almost immediately, the narrator figures out that Wheeler does not know the man he is looking for, and “that he [his friend] only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim
Smiley (104)[.] I believe his friend did this to play a joke on him. I like the way Wheeler tells the story with such seriousness, which can only be to convince the narrator that this is not a joke, when in reality, it is. My favorite part about the story is how Wheeler goes from one story about Jim to the next, without a breath in between. When someone finally calls him and he leaves for a second, the narrator sees his chance to leave, but on his way out, “[he] met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he button-holed [him] and recommenced[,]” like he had never stopped telling his story. This was really funny, his escape almost gone without notice, but he decides to walk away and not listen to the rest of the story.


Works Cited

Twain, Mark. "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Reesman, Jeanne Campbell and Arnold Krupat. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. , 2007. 104-108.

Whitman, Walt. "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry." Reesman, Jeanne Campbell and Arnold Krupat. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007. 21-24.