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.
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