Summary Of E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime

Throughout the early 1930’s, Steinbeck’s characters were in search of a better life. They believed that they would achieve freedom from their nomadic lifestyles in America. Unfortunately, after the Wall Street crash of 1929 many of them lost their dream once the Great Depression began. To make matters worse, the increased farming activity and the 7 year drought which began in 1931 created the Dust Bowl in the Great Plain States. During this time, many people traveled to California in search of jobs and an easier life.

Contrasting images are used between the beginning and end of the poem. At first, the speaker is described as standing on a “wide strip of the Mississippi beach,” (Trethewey l. 2) while her grandmother is standing on a “narrow plot of sand.” It symbolizes the freedom the speaker now compared to the confinement and limited opportunities her grandmother experienced. Natasha Trethewey uses mood, symbolism, and

The setting mainly took place in south of Soledad, California, near the Salinas Valley, during the Great Depression in the 1930’s. Salinas Valley had many substantial farms during the Depression. This was essential because colossal farms employed a massive number of workers, often up to hundreds. Since farm workers with no steady employment, would often head to these communities, it was logical that Salinas Valley was George and Lennie’s destination. Migrant farm workers were perfect examples, to highlight the solitude and loneliness engendered by the Depression. These men had no place to call home, and had only a few belongings to call their own.

The battle for equality has been a problem for many years. Many people have strived for many changes throughout history, which directly and indirectly changed how people treat each other. As people strive towards equality, more struggles with reference to sexism, ableism, and racism awaits. The novel takes place in the 1930s, the Great Depression. The Great Depression is the worst economic downfall in U.S. history.

The Great Depression was a time of economic crisis around the world from the time period 1929 to World War II. To help capture the feeling in this period, John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath. The main plot of of the story is about the Joads, a farming family forced from their home sent to search for work in California. Steinbeck includes a series of intercalary chapters to help paint a picture of migrant workers and the challenges they faced. In chapter 9, Steinbeck explores the emotional trials the tenants forced to endure when they are required to leave their homes and their lives, this chapter is an appeal to pathos.

In “The Most Dangerous Game,” the setting creates a suspenseful mood which often helps the reader to predict what is going to happen next or to better understand a character. Connell writes great details in the exposition of the novel that create a foreboding mood for the upcoming storm. Before Rainsford finds himself stranded on Ship Trap Island, Connell writes, “There was no sound in the night as Rainsford sat there but the muffled throb of the engine that drove the yacht swiftly through the darkness, and the swish and ripple of the wash of the propeller” (20). The lack of sound in the night, the muffled throb of the engine and the ripple and swish of the propeller all work together to create a sense of anticipation or a foreboding mood for

In the novel Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow tells a complex story where historical figures and fictional characters are woven together to make up the narrative. Evident themes include: race, class, and change and transformation. Throughout Ragtime, there are many characters who are influenced by certain people or encounters. Ragtime not only tells the individual struggles of each character throughout the novel but also shows how each character is affected by another. The different characters in Ragtime represent different responses to change - from encouraging change to responding to it, and from resisting change to accepting it.

Details, such as the “wild weather” and “cold sky” (62), form the basis of this foreboding tone. In learning that “[t]he wind warbled wild as it whipped from aloft” (62), the audience’s feelings of uneasiness about what is to come grow. Furthermore, the personification of weather as an antagonistic force allows for the description to have more of a

Heavy themes such as poverty, racism, and violence are all prevalent during this novel. However, there are certain times when lightheartedness and general liveliness can seep into the story, usually attached to scenes concerning water. For instance, when it begins to rain, after raining for six years, Lauren describes how she feels when the rain hits her skin: “It was so wonderful. How can [Cory] not understand that? It was so incredible and wonderful” (48).

Physical journeys often present obstacles that test one 's mental and physical strength. they also, however, provide them with an opportunity to grow and learn from their experiences. In this novel by Cynthia Voigt this is shown in the way that all of the children are maturing on the way that all of the children are maturing on the way of the journey. An example of this is at the start of the novel when Dicey has matured by taking the children on a Journey to Bridgeport then to find out how to get to Aunt Cilla’s form there, Then she made her announcement: “we’re going to walk to Bridgeport. this is shown on Page 31, the technique used is Direct Speech because she is personally saying this to the three children.

When an individual reads something historical they cannot fully comprehend the story because they did not live in that time period nor did they experience the event in the character’s shoes. In this story the writer uses imagery to make the reader feel as if they were present during the event. The entire story takes place on a beach where the author is a young child posing for a picture her grandmother is taking. While narrating this event in her life the writer describes the ocean, she says “The sun cuts the rippling Gulf in flashes with each tidal rush” The way in which she described the sunset on the ocean illustrates the event in a descriptive way in which the reader can imagine it and feel as if they were there. She also uses forms of imagery to create nostalgia, for example she states “ I am four in this photograph…

Whites choice to personify the thunderstorm blowing across the lake exemplifies the all too familiar feeling of an approaching thunderstorm. White vividly describes the thunderstorm by personifying the thunder and the lightning. His decision to personify them places the reader in that exact moment, standing next the the speaker. Both listening to the “crackling of the light against the dark” and watching the “gods grinning and licking their chops in the hills.” This causes the reader to this same experience from their childhood, just as the speaker recalls his own fond memories of August at the lake.

The image that Dorothea Lange captured of a fearful and desperate weather-beaten woman, with her three children, has become the ideal representation of the desperation and hardships that many families have gone through during the Great Depression in America. In the article “ The Harvest Gypsies”, John Steinbeck portrays the desperation when he declares “ The father and mother now feel that paralyzed with numbness with which the mind protects itself against too much sorrow and too much pain” (Steinbeck n. pag.).When no food could be grown and no money could be made, entire families packed up everything they had and began the journey to California. Without even looking back at the past, many families left their hometown farms , only to end

The use of imagery in "Storm Warnings" conveys the literal and metaphorical meanings of the oncoming physical and emotional storms. Rich uses to imagery show the anxiety she is feeling about the storm in the beginning. For example, "The glass has been falling all the afternoon," and, "gray unrest moving across the land. " Both of these images have negative connotations, which show what she is feeling and what she sees.

Intercalary Chapter Literary Analysis During the Great Depression, the nation as a whole was stripped of financial security and forced into a survivalist way of living. This changed the ways that people interacted with one another and the overall mentality of society. In the Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family is torn from their land and find themselves with nothing, a common story for migrant farmers of that time, derogatorily called “Okies” by Californians. But this is not the only group that is struggling, the entire county was in a state of panic and bruteness, no matter how “well off” they seemed to be.