The Luck of Roaring Camp
I enjoyed reading both of these very much. The story of roaring camp was very interesting to me and it gave me a different perspective on people during the gold rush, as well as how women were viewed during this time period. The story also gave me a perspective on life and how easily it could change in an instant. Life changing was constant in the story, for instance the death of Cherokee Sal lead to the birth of Tommy Luck, and the death of Tommy Luck also lead to the death of Kentuck. All of this life and death may be a sign of the times when things like medicine and hygiene were not properly watched and solutions to things like infections were solved by amputations. In this story people were killed by natural occurrences, both by Cherokee Sal dying naturally to child birth and both Tommy Luck and Kentuck dying to the deluge. What this story meant to me was that death is natural and will happen to everyone, so enjoy life while you can.
Self-Reliance
The next reading was Self-Reliance. this was different than the others because this was a poem that had no real story or characters, but instead was about the author describing a man that he viewed as ideal. The author James Whitfield was a free black man during the times of slavery and was a big proponent of abolitionism and freedom. Self-Reliance had a lot of ties to God and religion in this story and I think it helped emphasize how strongly he felt about this ideal person he described in his story. To me Whitfield was describing slaves in his poem and how they were still good, godly people even though they were seen to the rest of the nation as less than human. Whitfield had pure aspiration for these slaves and felt their pain even though he himself was a slave. I feel that even though slaves most likely could not read at the time he maybe hoped for his poem to reach them and to inspire them to persevere, and hopefully his dream of abolitionism would come true for them.
Hi Jaylen!
ReplyDeleteI thought you did an excellent job summarizing and analyzing The Luck of Roaring Camp as well as Self Reliance. In your analysis of The Luck of Roaring Camp, I thought it was great that you were able to show the context of the story. For example, towards the end of your analysis you wrote, “..when things like medicine and hygiene were not properly watched and solutions to things like infections were solved by amputations”. This shows that you have a better understanding of the context of the story and you are aware of history at the time. I also got the same message from the story that you got, that life and death can happen so quick and it can change in an instant. What do you think would have happened if the flood never came about? Do you think disease would have taken Tommy’s life away instead?
-Patrick
Jaylen,
ReplyDeleteI like your thoughts on how how easily life can change in an instant. We usually seem to ignore the threat of death, but we can die in an instant every single time we get in our cars. I think that you are absolutely right that The Luck of the Roaring Camp shows us how fleeting life was back in those days, when there was no medicine or hygiene, and people would die all the time. It is a hard world to envision being from where we are now, but I feel like they were much more familiar with death back then.