Chapter 16&17 Wild Blog Entries

Chapter 16:
  In this chapter, Cheryl makes a list of all of the things that her mother did wrong when Cheryl and her siblings were children. She does this when she realizes that her mother would have been fifty years old that day, and she becomes angry at her for not living to that age. This adds a new sense of how Cheryl is recovering to the book; one of the five stages of grief is anger, and Cheryl is just now embracing that stage. Later in the chapter, Cheryl reflects on her previous anger and other feelings she has had: "The truth was, in spite of all that, she'd been a spectacular mom. I knew it as I was growing up. I knew it in the days that she was dying. I knew it now. And I knew that was something" (Strayed, 268). This perfectly juxtaposes the list she previously made because now she is realizing how great of a mother her mother actually was. This can symbolize Cheryl's acceptance of what has happened and how she is truly on the path to completely healing herself. The contrast between the two main emotions Cheryl expresses in this chapter shows how much she has grown from the day her mother died to now.

Chapter 17:
   In this chapter, Cheryl encounters two hunters in the woods, whom she supplies with water and iodine. After she leaves, one of them approaches her alone, and she does not know what his intentions are. She describes the scary encounter: "'You changed your clothes too,' he said suggestively, and his words expanded in my gut like a spray of gunshot. My entire body flushed with the knowledge that when I'd taken off my clothes, he'd been nearby, watching me" (Strayed, 286). This section exemplifies the fear she feels during this moment, as shown through her choice of words. She uses the word "suggestively" to describe the way the man talks to her, to make the reader uncomfortable; she makes the reader understand how what he says makes her feel when she writes "his words expanded in my gut like a spray of gunshot". That section depicts the tone of fear that Cheryl writes with in this scene. Lastly, when she realizes that he had been watching her change, she uses the words "flushed" and "nearby, watching me", to show the creepiness and terror of the situation that she is in.