Sunday, February 18, 2018
Week 4 Project Planning
"The Luck of The Roaring camp" is in my opinion a tale that encompasses the time period very well. During this point in time, California's gold rush was at its peak. I read more in to the time period and many camps were very superstitious. Many would do lucky rituals and would pray to God constantly for good luck in their mining endeavors. This was most likely because if they did not come home with any gold they would not be able to eat, so they needed to do whatever they could to give themselves an edge in the gold panning market. Also, the gold era was very volatile and had it's ups and downs. Sometimes panners would go out and come home rich with gold, and other times they would come home empty handed. This cycle of fortune was also apparent in the story, where the people of Roaring Camp were initially treated with fortune after the birth of Tommy Luck, and subsequently hit with a dirge that destroyed their camp and killed many of their people. Lastly, The woman's role in life during this time, as well as the treatment of the Native Americans in this story depicts what it was like to be one of these people on a camp in California. Cherokee Sal happens to be both Native American and a woman, and she is treated unfairly on the camp. People call her a witch and a bad omen, thus furthering their hatred of her. This is how people lose respect for someone else, much like many early settlers would call Native Americans "savages" and give others cause to kill them. When Cherokee Sal is killed during childbirth, the men want to take the child to a nearby camp that has women on it so that they can care for the child. Although they do decide to keep it, their readiness to hand over the child so quickly is indicative of men not having the instinct to raise a child, and to give it to a woman, because a woman is motherly and can care for a child way better than any man on the camp could. These hardened men who will do anything for gold quickly become infatuated with the child and begin to clean up their act and become more civilized people with the child around. In all I believe that "The Luck of the Roaring Camp" has a lot of insight into Californians and their motives during this time. This story tells us a lot about the superstitions of the time period, the way people who were perceived to be different were treated, and the way of life that gold panners on a camp lived.
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Hello again Jaylen!
ReplyDeleteI like how you already know exactly what story you’re doing your project about as well as the significant parts of the story. However, since it’s the plan, I’d like to see what topic you have chosen and your other possible ideas to supplement this story. It would be good also to add the devices the author uses that gets the points across about how the times were in California during the gold rush, as well as setting up characters, scenery, and possible moral lessons learned in the story. Right now it feels like a rough draft for your project that you’ll be completeing this week, so it’s a bit confusing to me as I expected a plan to what you’re going to do. Don’t forget to in your final project do your argument and counter argument to dissenters.
Hi Jaylen! I am so glad that I was able to read your Project Planning blog! I absolutely loved how you connected the setting and time period so well with what was happening in the story. The insight about how superstitious people truly were was eye opening for me. We don't have a ton of superstitious people in our area, but I do know there are many other places in the United States, as well as specific careers where it is more heavily prevalent.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that the distasteful men would have possibly sold this child to gain money, but they ended up doing the opposite. Why do you think that is so? And how and why did the child change them so? You make a lot of good points, what would you say your main point is, and how can you incorporate that into all of your paragraphs? I can’t wait to see the final project!
Hi Jaylen,
ReplyDeleteI really liked the way you summarized the story and how you focused on the superstitious nature of the people who lived in that time. The first time I read the story, I didn’t think of the superstitions the men of the camp may have had, until reading that they felt that the baby was bringing them luck. I assumed that when Cherokee Sal had died, they were just unsure of how to care for the baby and that was the reason some were anxious to hand him off to another town. I wasn’t sure what your topic of focus was so I went back to read your Topic Research from Week 3 and see that you will be diving in to see how this can be considered an artifact of history and what it teaches about history. Do you think that superstition played an important role as to people’s actions and how they treated others? I look forward to reading your final project!
Hi Jaylen, thank you for sharing your project action plan! I enjoyed reading this piece and I think you have hit the themes and topics right on the spot, so I look forward to see what you will publish for your final project. I wasn't quite sure what your project topic actually was, but through reading the comments that some of our peers have left I gathered that your topic is to see how this story can be considered an artifact of history. I can imagine many ways you will link this to history, but it stood out to me when you mentioned that you did some research and found out that mining camps often had lucky rituals. What specifically were these superstitions and rituals that they would perform? I think that would be really cool to elaborate on in your project. I wonder if the failure to complete a ritual, or some kind of jinx occurred that lead to the ending of the story?
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