ipl-logo

Barbra Kingsolver Knowing Our Place Analysis

826 Words4 Pages

The Peak: Gold Hill In Barbra Kingsolver’s essay “Knowing Our Place”, the author writes, “Our greatest and smallest explanation for ourselves grow from place, as surely as carrots grow in the dirt” (page 40). Everyone grows as people even if we only grow from one place. We should all be able to see where we come from and know what our place is. Places are memories to help shape the journey of who you are and where you come from. They are those building blocks that make us who we are. Each building block teaches you something new and comes with a new experience. Kingsolver tells us that we all have places that tell our stories. Places are important because without them I wouldn’t be who I am today, they are what makes me, me. Gold hill is my place, it’s a symbol of everything I have overcome in my life and lets me overlook it. From the time my most recent pair of unworn shoes, usually laying in the depths of the closet, hits the dirt I feel like everything disappears. Everything in the real world is pushed away like leaves in the wind. Its just me and my mind alone for the couple hours of peace and thought up to come. Making my way up the trail I’m surrounded by a countless number of tree’s towering over me like doctors while …show more content…

It makes what feels like a lifetime worth of a journey is behind you. It gives me that chance to look back, stop, breath and really vision everything I’ve been through. I’m on top of the world above my entire childhood. I can see it all, from the hospital I spent countless hours in, my childhood home, to the home I now live in. The baseball and football fields I dedicated so much of my life toward. Every store, restaurant, and park I have visited a countless number of times. The lake laying their so peaceful. Waves slowly make their way across it being pushed gently by the wind like the moment before your dad lets go of you when learning to ride a

Show More
Related

  • Similarities Between Soldier's Home And Alfred Prufrock '

    323 Words  | 2 Pages

    Adams went out of his way, getting off of a train, to come to this place that is desolate and in complete seclusion. On a very similar note, Prufrock,

    Read More

  • Symbolism In Julie Trip's The Fall

    67 Words  | 1 Pages

    Julie Trip’s short story “The Fall” depicts the story of a young girl who spends her summer exploring the area around her house and collecting some of her findings. One day, Tara’s explorations lead her back to the woods behind her house, where she discovers a darkness to life, which brings an end to her childhood days. Trip’s clever symbolism, and description of the setting reinforce this.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Jeannette Walls By Jeannette Walls

    1124 Words  | 5 Pages

    In order to begin building the story, one must first erect a setting for everything to take place. Jeannette opens up every new memory with in this way with the use of imagery. For instance, “nothing about the town was grand except the big empty sky and, off in the distance, the stony purple Tuscarora Mountain running down the table-flat desert. The main street was wide—with sun bleached cars and pickups parked at an angle to the curb—but only a few blocks long”(51). The elaborate description of the setting allows one to understand how the place may affect the course of the narrative, as well as how each person with in the memoir may respond in relation with the environment.

    Read More

  • Dialectical Journal For Lord Of The Flies

    729 Words  | 3 Pages

    He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life, where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one's waking life was spent watching one's feet. He stopped, facing the strip; and remembering that first enthusiastic exploration as though it were part of a brighter childhood, he smiled

    Read More

  • How To Read Literature Like A Professor Chapter 1 Summary

    585 Words  | 3 Pages

    When I look at mountain peaks, I think of tunnels and dynamite, when I look at planets, I think of airplanes (26-29).” As Foster explains in, How to Read Literature Like a Professor our character development can be influenced by where we are and our elevation levels as well. For example high elevation signifies purity and life. As Gail Wynand mentions that being in places like that ones hes at makes him realize that he couldn’t love women before but now he has fallen in love with Dominique with great power.

    Read More

  • How Does The Valley Of Ashes Symbolize In The Great Gatsby

    991 Words  | 4 Pages

    From the quote, “This is a Valley of Ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight” (23), it can be seen how the Valley of Ashes is a depressing place. It represents the moral and social decay that results from the continued search of wealth and acceptance in society. Seen by how the rich provide themselves with regard for nothing but their own pleasure. The valley of ashes also symbolizes the forcefulness of the poor, like George Wilson, who live among the dirty ashes and lose their vitality as a result.

    Read More

  • Theodore Roosevelt: Never Throughout History

    178 Words  | 1 Pages

    You get to see a point of view that you otherwise would never have. Looking back in other people’s lives also helps you look back into your

    Read More

  • Similarities Between There's Still Gold In Those Hills And Letter From A Gold Miner

    996 Words  | 4 Pages

    The first passage, “There’s Still Gold in Those Hills”, is organized in a chronological and informative style. Firstly, the writer says, “ Gold was discovered in the California mountains in 1848, and thousands of people hurried there. These gold seekers were called forty-niners, named after the year that followed, 1849.” By stating this, the author is giving the reader background behind the process of gold mining. It’s

    Read More

  • Summary Of Kingsolver's Essay 'High Tide In Tucson'

    561 Words  | 3 Pages

    Kingsolver recalls a memory in her past about her backpacking trip in Eagle Tail Mountains, and she compares the trip to her wants vs her needs. Kingsolver said, “Her, exactly, and not one valley over, or two, or twelve, because this place has all a person needs: shelter, food, and permanent water.” (1075) One valley abundant with plant and animal biodiversity, and and water is all a person really needs to cherish in life. She also said, “ want is a thing that unfurls unbidden like fungus, opening large upon itself, stopless, filling the sky, but needs, from one day to the next.”

    Read More

  • 1.07 Personal Narrative

    129 Words  | 1 Pages

    October 14 7:07 am: The raindrops glisten as i walk along the road listening to my walkman. “another day another blunder” i thought to myself. when im a minute away the bus drives right by me. “oh crap” i pull out my phone to call my parents. When I get to my bus stop I like all my parents and they come pick me up but when they before they do that they yell at me like every other day when I get to school I go straight to the band room to drop off my bass clarinet.

    Read More

  • Mammita's Garden Cove Analysis

    708 Words  | 3 Pages

    Despite having an arduous life in Canada, he has in part fulfilled his idea of a personal heaven by living in an urban and developed setting; and primarily escaping the judgments of the apathetic islanders. Yet, this idea of a perfect life is incomplete; it lacks “some sweet island woman with whom he’d share his life, of having children and later buying a house” Many times in life, future gratification in unforeseeable, and occasionally — such as in the instance of Max — sacrifices may result in a sense of disillusioned inaptitude. Within this excerpt of the short story “Mammita’s Garden Cove” by Cyril Dabydeen, the author’s complex attitude towards place is conveyed by Dabydeen’s use of repetition, diction, and

    Read More

  • Examples Of Quotes From In Cold Blood Quotes

    516 Words  | 3 Pages

    In describing the land as extensively beautiful and “out there”, Truman Capote is setting an environment of an isolated small town, where not much ever happens. This sets a contradictory theme for the rest of the book, as a small community of neighbors and friends turn on each other after a series of murders take place. In describing the town of Holcomb, Kansas, Capote uses strong imagery to set the tone for the small town as “calm before the storm.” Furthermore, Capote compares the unique grain fields to that of ancient Greek temples, indicating that the story contained in this novel has a larger significance as an inside look of timeless human themes such as murder and hatred and how these have existed for all of humanity.

    Read More

  • Descriptive Essay On El Salvador

    674 Words  | 3 Pages

    The roads became more broken down. Suddenly the beeping of the cars startled my thoughts and my world unfroze. I felt the droplets accumulating under my eyes. Tears began rolling down my face. It was at that moment that I realized how honored I was to have everything

    Read More

  • How To Describe A Haunted House

    724 Words  | 3 Pages

    I can see my breath when I breathe out. I can hear the snow crunching underneath my thick wool boots and fuzzy socks, and can hear the sound of my own breathing. The faint howling of the wind sounds like ghosts swarming the city on Halloween. I notice an old abandoned, dilapidated house far off in the distance, in desperate need for a new paint job. With it’s rickety old

    Read More

  • Ocean Descriptive Essay

    1298 Words  | 6 Pages

    The ocean… The sound of the waves applauding and hugging the shore. The internal sounds of the body out in the world’s biggest swimming pool. The echo of my sister’s laughter. The salty smell so strong that one can taste it dancing on ones taste buds.

    Read More

More about Barbra Kingsolver Knowing Our Place Analysis

Open Document