ipl-logo

Sunset Song By Lewis Grassic Gibbon Sparknotes

1697 Words7 Pages

The following essay is a social analysis of the character of Chris Guthrie in Sunset Song written by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. Chris Guthrie is a character who possesses many other admirable qualities alongside her independent thoughtfulness; including her confidence, resilience, sensitivity and sexuality to name but a few. The main and recurring theme throughout this novel is that of change, and Gibbon cleverly depicts this theme through the eyes of the character Chris Guthrie. Gibbon uses advanced symbolism to portray these qualities to the reader and to explain the character's development process from childhood to adulthood. In Sunset Song, Chris Guthrie is introduced as a fifteen year old Scottish peasant girl living in the small Scottish …show more content…

Like many young girls, Chris was of the opinion that she ought to follow her mother's way of living. However she also felt a duty to listen and obey her father's instructions. Torn between two opposing paths Gibbon uses this to show the reader how Chris had two conflicting sides to her character; an aspect many readers may be able to empathise with. Primarily, Chris had a passion for land and the farm life through her relationship with her mother, Jean Guthrie. In a bid to link Chris's life with the land, Gibbon divides the middle of the novel (The Song) into sections; Ploughing, Drilling, Seedtime and Harvest, each section is symbolically represents of a specific stage in Chris' life. She had developed a close bond to the farming way of living and highly valued the fact that the farm was the most important aspect in their lives: 'The land was forever, it moved and changed below you, but was forever, you were close to it and it to you, not at a bleak remove it held you and hurted you.'1 Chris's close relationship with her mother is representative of her closeness to the land; Gibbon uses this notion to introduce the impact the land has on Chris's character and explains the way she finds safety and solace in it in times of need or

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of Chapter 14-17 By Jon Krakauer

    373 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout Chapters 14-17, Jon Krakauer tends to walk in Chris’s footsteps, trying to mimic Chris’s difficult journey. I think the approach of alternating between Chris’s journey and his is very successful in that the audience is able to better visualize Chris’s journey. For instance, Krakauer writes about his relationship with his father and the striking similarities that this relationship has with Chris’s insufficient relationship with his father, Walt. This instance helps the reader understand that Chris was not the only individual who was deeply afflicted by his father’s action and decided to throw his relationship with his father in the waste bin. Rather, by describing Krakaeur’s own experiences as a youth, he wishes his readers to understand

    Read More

  • Review Of Jon Krakauer's 'Into The Wild'

    1412 Words  | 6 Pages

    In the book Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer, is about a guy name Chris McCandless who graduated from college and gave the rest of his money and gave it to charity. Chris went after college gave up his apartment and his car and stuff and changed the way how he lived and packed up and wanted to travel and live in the wild of Alaska. mcCandless wrote a note to his family telling them that he will be leaving and go on a travel he didn't tell them where he was going. The author wrote this story is to tell the audience really how it was like to just go off on your own and not have enough money or food to live in a very rural area where you are nowhere to be found. The author also wanted to let us know how did he survive 3 months in just bad condition

    Read More

  • Commentary On Night By Ellie Wiesel

    623 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the book “Night” written by Ellie Wiesel, Wiesel explains how regardless of notices about German goals towards Jews, Eliezer's family and alternate Jews in the little Transylvanian town of Sighet neglect to escape the nation when they have a shot. Therefore, the whole Jewish populace is sent to death camps. There, in a camp called Auschwitz, Eliezer is isolated from his mom and more youthful sister, however stays with his dad. As Eliezer battles to get by against starvation and manhandle, he additionally thinks about the confidence in God's equity and fights with the darker sides of himself. Constrained into a frantic circumstance, Eliezer feels a contention between supporting his regularly debilitating father and giving himself the most obvious opportunity with regards to survival.

    Read More

  • How Is Chris Mccandless Selfish

    375 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the movie “Into the wild” I believe Chris McCandless was a very stupid and arrogant character by going into the Alaskan wilderness only to die in an abandoned bus. He was a very likable person. Everyone enjoyed being around him, but sometimes I think he made a very dumb decision. Many people would agree with me by saying he was stupid for what he did. Chris grew up having a rough childhood.

    Read More

  • Transcendentalism In Into The Wild, By Jon Krakauer

    708 Words  | 3 Pages

    Transcendentalism is a philosophy that emphasizes a prior condition of knowledge and experience or the unknowable character of ultimate reality or that emphasizes the transcendent as the fundamental reality (Merriam Webster). Transcendentalism is an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Amos Bronson Alcott, Fredric Henry Hedge, and Theodore Parker. They were critics of their society for its conformity, and urged that each person find “an original relation to the universe.” Chris McCandless, the focus of Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, was a transcendentalist. The author of Into The Wild, Jon Krakauer’s purpose is to spread Chris McCandless’s story while explaining transcendentalist ideas, such as nonconformity.

    Read More

  • How Did Chris Mccandless Lead A Military Rebellion?

    523 Words  | 3 Pages

    Chris McCandless was a man who was unhappy with the society he lived in. He hated when his parents bought him expensive things, like cars, when there were people in the world that can't afford to feed themselves. He also dealt with that fact that his father was having children with his old wife when he was married to another woman, which greatly upset Chris’s opinion of his father. Another person who was upset with the society he lived in was William Wallace.

    Read More

  • Chris Mccandless Life Without Freedom

    189 Words  | 1 Pages

    This shows how Chris not only felt the need for independence from the outside world, but also strived for an adventure and for the unknown. What is unique about this situation is that Chris believed that a life without freedom wasn’t a life worth

    Read More

  • Im A Mad Dog Bite Myself For Sympathy Analysis

    465 Words  | 2 Pages

    “I’m a Mad Dog Biting Myself for Sympathy” by Louise Erdrich is a first-person point of view story, where the narrator talks about this incident of him stealing this stuffed toucan. Through the story, you can see many explains of him feeling the loss in his life, and him struggling with change. The narrator makes bad choice after bad choice; first, he steals a stuffed toucan from a store. Then proceeds to run with this large toucan, and steals a car, which he finds out that has a baby inside, then gets stuck in a ditch and leaves the car and baby behind, and then finally gets caught.

    Read More

  • Horses Of The Night Analysis

    1502 Words  | 7 Pages

    Illusion Versus Reality Illusions tend to drift an individual away from their sanity, causing them to negligently live their lives according to false, misleading and fantasized beliefs. Reality, on the other hand, is the state of the world in which it exists. The theme of reality versus illusion, and how one copes with conflict, is excessively depicted in Margaret Laurence “Horses of the night,” through the protagonist, Chris. He experiences several external and internal conflicts associating with his grandfather and chris’ environment. In relation with external conflicts, Chris encounters internal and external conflicts between society and himself, his need to obtain a rich life to uphold his reputation in society takes over his mind, and the reality becomes a blur of colors which he does not seem to see.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Chris Mccandless In Into The Wild, By Jon Krakauer

    1773 Words  | 8 Pages

    Under the eyes of a young child, the modern society looks so innocent, fills with limelight, but as one grows up, he realized the world that he about to explore is not the same as he once thought. Deep under the layer of that pure, virtuous view is the layer of darkness, corrupted, complicated society in which people changed completely-from a sheep to a wolf-to adapt to the tough environment. Most people will accept the transformation, but there are also others who want to resist the change. Chris McCandless belongs to the resistance group as he decided to leave his society to find a better world, a world in which he could live a simple life, with no money and other materialistic objects. With his tragic death, he was criticized by the public

    Read More

  • Significance Of Farm In Bybanks Kentucky

    942 Words  | 4 Pages

    Certain places and things caused certain things to happen, such as the attacks on 9/11, when 2 planes dove into the world trade center. If the world trade center were not there, then no planes would have crashed into them killing the people that they killed. Possibly the attacks never would have happened or even more people would have died due to the planes crashing into other places. Much like how in the novel Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech the house and farm in Bybanks Kentucky is important to Sal because, that's where the sad death of Sal’s baby sister accord, where Sal’s mother lived and left. The farm also left an imprint in Sal’s heart.

    Read More

  • Symbols In Margaret Laurence's 'Horses The Night'

    436 Words  | 2 Pages

    Through her use of a changing narrative perspective, Margaret Laurence creates a contrast in character development. Laurence shows the reader the male protagonist of the story, Chris, through the eyes of a child first, then of an adolescent, and finally through an adult’s eyes. At the beginning of “Horses of the Night,” the narrator, Vanessa notices that Chris looks completely oblivious towards Vanessa’s Grandfather’s belligerence, as he is displaying “no sign of feeling anything.” This is the first sign Laurence provides about Chris escaping in order to cope with reality. Next, when Vanessa visits Shallow Creek she comes to a realization that most of the stories Chris has shared with her about the farm, only exists “in some other dimension.”

    Read More

  • What Is Chris Mccandless Relationship With His Family

    807 Words  | 4 Pages

    Chris rejected his father at first for being materialistic but the climax of the story is when Chris finds out that his father lived a double life as after the divorce of his first wife he continued seeing her while being together with Chris’s mother. This betrayal crushed Chris and as he saw things so black and white he could not pardon his father’s mistakes. “The deception committed by Walt made his “entire childhood seem like a fiction” (PG. 123). This trouble created a loss of identity and eventually a disconnect between him and his family. This rejection towards his father was centrally important to motivating Chris’s behavior in the next years and in the decision of going to Alaska after college.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Chris Mccandless Journey Into The Wild

    1046 Words  | 5 Pages

    As terrible as it must be to lose a son the way they did, the Mccandless’ know that their behaviors and actions throughout Chris’ childhood is what would lead to the tragic end to a boy with a kind heart, a strong work ethic and just wanted to be a little different

    Read More

  • Symbols In Plainsong By Kent Haruf

    982 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the novel “Plainsong”, Kent Haruf uses the motifs of wounds, losing mothers, and learning to handle hard truths to show how Ike and Bobby move towards the life-affirming embrace of a healthy community in Holt and learning from the lessons that life throws at them. Ike and bobby’s beginning state of moving towards the life firming embrace is demonstrated through the motif of “Losing mothers” in the story. The “losing a mother” motif is a recurring image in the story and especially with Ike and Bobby. Ike and Bobby's experience losing 2 mothers or mother-like figures, their mother Ella and Mrs. Stearns.

    Read More

More about Sunset Song By Lewis Grassic Gibbon Sparknotes

Open Document