"Wild" Chapters 8 and 9

Chapter 8:
  In the last section of this chapter, Strayed discusses the contrasting relationships that she had with her mother and her father. She reveals that he was abusive towards her, her siblings, and especially her mother, during the time that she knew him. But, her mother always came back to him because she had no other place to go. The relationship that Strayed had with her father was very strange and distant. On the other hand, Strayed had a very close relationship with her mother, whom she had known her entire childhood and early adulthood. Her mother had always cared for her and protected her, nourished her and raised her. The relationships that Strayed had with her mother and her father were polar opposites. These relationships impacted Strayed very deeply. She never had one solid father-figure in her life (she had a step-father, but he was not always there), so she was not able to experience father-daughter moments that other children get to have. Her mother was such a big part of her life, that her death rocked Strayed to her very core. On page 134, Strayed remembers something her mother had said to her about her personality: "'You're a seeker,' my mother had said to me when she was in her last week, lying in bed in the hospital, 'like me'" (Strayed, 134). This could be interpreted in many ways, one of which is that Strayed  has always sought answers, and she chose to take this hike on the PCT to get answers about her broken life.

Chapter 9:
   In chapter nine, Strayed uses juxtaposition several times. An example of this is when she sees a fox, and it begins to walk away: "'Come back,' I called lightly, and then suddenly shouted 'MOM! MOM! MOM! MOM!' I didn't know the word was going to come out of my mouth until it did. And then, just as suddenly, I was silent. Spent" (Strayed, 144). This qualifies as juxtaposition because in the first sentence, she describes her random and sudden shouting. In the second sentence, she is suddenly silent again. This helps contribute to her purpose because one of her main reasons for going on this trip in the first place is because her mother had died, and she needed to be alone for a long time. In this quote, it is very clear just how much she misses her mother, and how she wants her mother's company again. Another example of juxtaposition in this chapter is in the last paragraph, where she reflects on the silence and commotion of nature around her: "It had been so silent in the wake of that commotion, a kind of potent silence that contains everything" (Strayed, 145). This counts as juxtaposition because she is comparing silence and commotion simultaneously. This also contributes to her purpose because the whole purpose of her trip was to be alone, and since she is alone, she spends a lot of time in silence. Because of this, she is able to hear the sounds of nature around her contained in said silence. Strayed's use of juxtaposition in this chapter also pertains to her purpose in her novel as a whole.

Part Three in General:
John Muir was a Scottish-American naturalist and author who supported the preservation of the United States wilderness. He succeeded in preserving Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park, and other areas of wilderness, and he also founded the Sierra Club, devoted to nature conservation. He believed in viewing nature as God's work (he was a very religious man), the individual over the group, and viewing nature as his true home. I personally believe that he was a "modern" transcendentalist, because much of his beliefs coincide with the basic principles of transcendentalism. John Muir contributed a lot to the preservation and conservation of nature, and therefore is viewed today as a great transcendentalist,
Source: Wikipedia

"Wild" Blog Entries Chapters 6 and 7

Chapter 6:
   If I had to choose a word that would replace my last name that matches my identity, similar to Cheryl Strayed,  I would choose "Unbroken". As overdramatic as this sounds, I have been through a lot. I have struggled with self-esteem issues, have been bullied for a good portion of my young life, and have struggled with mental health issues. Instead of letting all of these things change me, they have instead helped to shape who I am as a person. I have learned to be more kind and accepting towards others, because one never knows exactly what another person is going through. I have learned just how important mental health truly is, and the stigmas that go along with it. And, I have learned that the words and opinions of others mean nothing to me in the long run. All of these things have made me who I am today. My identity has been shaped by my experiences, because I have grown to understand a lot of things about myself that I would not have known if I hadn't ever had anything bad happen to me. I would have never realized just how strong I actually am. Therefore, I would choose the last name "Unbroken", because the things that I have experienced that would break the average person did not break me in the end; they only made me stronger.

Chapter 7:
   Since the start of high school, I have become a lot of different "people". I have a different version of myself around the different groups of people in my life. I try not to make them too different than who I really am, but sometimes there are significant differences. The person I am in a classroom environment, for example, is normally very quiet and doesn't speak very often unless I am completely comfortable with the teacher and the people around me. The person I am around my family is polite, but cheerier than I am in school and more willing to talk. However, I am still reserved and not really that loud around my family members. The person I am in choir, band, and drama is closer to who I really am; I am louder and more energetic, I crack jokes, and am more of a participant in my environment, I interact more with others, and it allows me to be more creative. The person that I am around my friends and my boyfriend is the closest to my true personality. I'm social, I talk a lot, I'm loud, I dance, but at the same time, if I feel like I'm not involved in the conversation, I can be very quiet. Lastly, the person that I truly am, when I am alone, is loud, creative, reflective, bookish, emotionally attached to fictional characters, and more relaxed.
   I think that it is okay for people to be more than one "person" at this age; we are still trying to find out exactly who we are and where we fit in this world. If I was the same person around my family as I was around my friends, family dinners and holidays would be a lot weirder. If my school persona was the same as my theater and choir and band persona, I wouldn't exactly "fit in", because in order to make music and art you have to have a pretty loud voice. However, I believe that as time passes and I grow older, I will begin to have less and less personalities. I won't be surrounded by as many people as I age. My family and friends personas will remain, and my true personality obviously will, but my other personas may fade away or muddle together. I don't think anyone could ever be just one "person"; we would never get anywhere in life. How hard would it be to get a job if you were always loud and singing showtunes, like I usually am?
   The impact of this passage is to show that, through Strayed's journey, the different versions of her self have faded away, and now, since she is completely alone, only her true self remains. This trip has made her see who she truly is, not who she has constantly pretended to be.

"Silent Spring" Rhetoric and Style Questions

#2: In paragraphs nine and ten, Carson's tone has changed to an informative yet grim one. The purpose of these two paragraphs differ from the ones before; they are leading into the next section, titled "The Obligation to Endure". In the first section, the tone goes from happy to dark, and the story Carson writes is fictional. However, paragraphs nine and ten of that section change the style of the piece by becoming more knowledgeable, informative, and introductory. This difference serves the author's rhetorical purpose by acting as a transition from one style of writing to another, keeping the audience and reader engaged and interested in what she has to say.

#4: Carson appeals to authority to this section by using facts from another credible source. She refers to the British ecologist Charles Elton, and paraphrases his research on the subject of invading insects. This gives her more credibility because she is bringing outside information into a subject that she is also an expert on. By using research from other people about the topic, she proves her point even more. In paragraph 28, she uses statistics to further emphasize her research. By giving statistics to support her claim, her claim becomes more credible and reliable.

#8: Carson's purpose in ending the chapter with someone else's words was to give the passage a very strong ending, and to tie everything she had said together with some outside context. She names one of the sections "The Obligation to Endure", and that phrase appears in the ending quote. This ties the whole passage together. Using another famous person's words also appeals to ethos; famous scientists such as the one who said that quote in a paper such as this would have a lot of credibility.  

"Wild" Blog Entries: Chapters 4, 5, and Part Two

Chapter 4:
   I think that Strayed waited until this specific chapter to reveal the darkest events in her past, such as her terminated pregnancy and heroin addiction, because this is the chapter where she begins her long hike of self-reflection. While struggling to trek through the trail with her absurdly heavy backpack, Strayed remembers her previous struggles and connects them to her time now. She describes the hard trek on the first part of the trail: "I began panting and sweating immediately, dust caking my boots and calves as the trail turned north and began to climb rather than undulate...I tried...to hum as I hiked, though humming proved too difficult to do while also panting and moaning in agony..." (Strayed, 50). Upon reading "Nature" by Ralph Waldo Emerson again, I realized that there was a connection between Strayed's struggles on the trail and one of Emerson's theories about nature: "Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend" (Emerson). This excerpt is comparable to the Strayed quote mentioned above because Strayed is struggling so much while on her hike, she is not truly appreciating the nature and scenery around her. She is too busy focusing on both her physical pain and her demons from her past. Strayed relives her dark past through this chapter, and can be connected to an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Nature".

Chapter 5:
   When Strayed comes across the three men on the side trail during her hike, the tone she uses to describe the encounter is rather nervous. When she first begins to walk towards them, she writes: "My relief at the sight of them was enormous. Yet as I strode toward them my body tingled...I was the sole woman with three men of unknown intent, character, and origin watching me from the shade of a yellow truck" (Strayed, 71). She uses words and phrases such as "tingled", "sole woman", and "men of unknown intent" to emphasize her fear of being the only woman around a group of unfamiliar men. Later, when she is in the truck with one of the men, Frank, she describes how "I felt a creeping anxiety, wishing that Frank would start the truck and drive...he could grab me and change the course of things entirely in an instant...I watched his hands, his every move, each cell in my body on high alert..." (Strayed, 74). In this section, she uses words and phrases such as "creeping anxiety", "he could grab me", "watched his...every move", and "high alert" to prove to the reader how nervous she was, and to further emphasize the tone of the section. In this section, Strayed uses lots of diction to show the nervous tone throughout this event.

Part Two in General:
   In the song "California" by Joni Mitchell, the biggest transcendentalist idea is that of searching for meaning and inspiration- determining the truth for one's self. In the third verse, it says "And I might have stayed on with him there/But my heart cried out for you, California/Oh California, I'm coming home/Oh make me feel good rock'n roll band/I'm your biggest fan/California, I'm coming home". The narrator of the song realizes in her heart that she belongs in California, where her true self lives. The song is rather repetitive, saying the same lines about the narrator wanting to go back to California, because she realizes that living in unfamiliar places and hearing sad news all the time is not the life that she wants to live. She finds her own truth, and it is implied that she will at some point return to the place where she finds the inspiration for this particular song, and the meaning of her life.

"Wild" Blog Entries: Chapters 2 and 3/ Part One

Chapter Two:
   Strayed's main purpose in this chapter is to reveal to the reader why her marriage failed, and how she got to the point where she chose to leave everything behind. She refers to the numerous affairs she has during her marriage with Paul, and the aftermath once he and her friends all left her: "I lay alone on our futon feeling myself almost levitate from pain" (Strayed, 36). The purpose of including this flashback is to make the reader truly feel how much pain she was in at this point in her life. It is not necessarily there to make the reader sympathize with her, but to make the reader understand what she was going through. A few paragraphs later, she describes how "[w]ithin the week, [she] quit [her] waitressing job, loaded up [her] truck, and drove west, traveling the same route [she]'d take exactly one year later on [her] way to hike the Pacific Crest Trail" (Strayed, 36). Strayed includes this to show the reader that all of the flashbacks she had included in this chapter were what led her to begin her journey of self-discovery. The pain she felt and the mistakes she made all led to this final decision to leave behind everything that she knew.

Chapter Three:
   In this chapter, Strayed uses imagery to describe her packing process before actually starting the hike. In pages thirty-nine and forty, she gives an extremely detailed list of every single thing she intended to bring on her hike, from personal items to a tent to a chair and everything in between. It was necessary for her to include this to remind the reader of how big this hike will be. On pages forty-two to forty-four, Strayed gives a detailed retelling of how much she struggled with simply lifting up her backpack, and how heavy it is when she finally is able to get it onto her back. She includes this to foreshadow the struggles she will probably face while on the Pacific Crest Trail, and to foreshadow the progress she will probably make as she gets stronger physically and mentally. The imagery in this chapter is important because it predicts what might happen on the trail in later chapters.

Part One:
   On the first page of the prologue, Strayed includes the Shakespearean quote "The breaking of so great a thing should make /A greater crack", from the play Antony and Cleopatra. In context, this quote is said by Octavius Caesar when he hears the news of Antony's death. He means that the loss of someone so important should have had a bigger impact on the world. Strayed includes this in the prologue before discussing her mother's death because her mother was so important to her, and to her, it doesn't make sense that her death did not cause a huge stir in the world. Her death impacted her so much that it felt as if the whole world was changed, similar to Antony and Cleopatra.

"Wild" Blog Entries: Prologue and Chapter 1

Prologue:
  Cheryl Strayed's main purpose for including the prologue is to prepare the reader for what the rest of the story is going to be about: her hike on the Pacific Crest Trail and her reasons for doing so. She begins the prologue by describing what she saw whilst atop a mountain slope: "The trees were tall, but I was taller, standing above them on a steep mountain slope in northern California" (Strayed, 3). This gives the audience a hint as to what is going to happen in later chapters. The Prologue is also important to read because it tells the reader the reasons behind Strayed's decision to make the hike. She describes how "[i]n the years before I pitched my boot over the edge of that mountain, I'd been pitching myself over the edge too...until at last I found myself, bootless, in the summer of 1995, not so much loose in the world as bound to it" (Strayed, 4). In context, Strayed just described how her father and stepfather had abandoned her, her mother had died, she had lost contact with her siblings, and her marriage was failing. All of these reasons put together, she explains, were why she decided to make this hike. I think this book is going to be a book of self-discovery and healing, while making a very strenuous hike.

Chapter One:
   The section that emotionally affected me the most was the very last section of the chapter, where Strayed dreams of murdering her mother and wishes that she could have been with her when she died. She writes: "Nothing could ever bring my mother back or make it okay that she was gone. Nothing would put me beside her when she died. It broke me up. It cut me off. It tumbled me end over end" (Strayed, 27). This part was extremely emotional, as it shows just how much Strayed is grieving over the loss of her mother. The guilt she feels about not being with her mother when she died is very evident. The horrifying nightmares that she describes add even more to her emotional turmoil, which she shares with the reader through her descriptive words. I could feel the pain and sadness that Strayed was feeling in this moment in time. This section, in my opinion, was the most emotional, due to the memories she shares and the descriptive language she uses.

"Nature" Technique Log

 The purpose of "Nature" by Ralph Waldo Emerson is to convince the audience of nature's benefits and beauty, and to appreciate every aspect of it.

1. Personification
    "Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all of her perfections" (Emerson).
    By adding a gender and actions to nature, Emerson makes it seem more alive, therefore adding to the idea that people should truly love and appreciate nature. In this section of the piece, he speaks of how very few people truly see nature for the beauty that it is. By using personification, Emerson persuades the audience that nature has depth and mystery that makes it worth exploring.

2. Simile
    "In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child" (Emerson).
     Emerson uses this simile to compare a person in the woods to a snake shedding its skin. He believes that nature allows a person to feel younger and like a child again. This is one of the benefits of being one with nature, according to Emerson- to be able to metaphorically, if only for a little while, be young and free.

3. Imagery
   "The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid transformations, the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind" (Emerson).
    In this excerpt, Emerson is describing the morning sky. He paints a picture with his words to show the audience how beautiful and breathtaking nature is. He seems to truly appreciate the splendor that he sees as he writes this, and wants others to see the morning sky in the same wonderful way that he did,