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Compare And Contrast Blue Against White And Death By Landscape

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Looking Forward
Someone can never completely let go of their past. In the short stories, “Death by Landscape,” by Margaret Atwood and “Blue Against White,” by Jeannette C. Armstrong, both of the characters struggle to leave behind their pasts to find a future in different ways. One because of past lingering guilt that never received proper closure, and the other for fear of not belonging.
In “Death by Landscape,” the protagonist, Lois, remembers her childhood camp where her closest friend - Lucy - vanished many years ago. The fact that Lois is never found torments Lois even after a great deal of time has passed. Because of this Lois struggles to ever let go and live in the future, when she reflects, “She can hardly remember, now, having her two boys in the hospital, nursing them as babies; she can hardly remember getting married, or what Rob looked like. Even at the time she was paying full attention” (Atwood 7). This describes through her memories of life after …show more content…

Reflecting on her childhood memories as she walks to her childhood home, “She realized she had kept that door in her mind all the years she had been away. It had been there as always, a bright blue against the white” (Armstrong 92). Lena, though she did not like living at her childhood home at the time, has come to miss it after feeling so trapped and lost in the city. Similar to the coyote that she thinks of that accidentally got trapped in a building, jumping to its death instead of going back to the elevator, because Lena knows that coyotes always remember their way back. (Armstrong 95.) Lena feels pity and empathy for the coyote’s trapped situation. While struggling with finding a future, Lena travels back home to reunite with her past in order to find a future. Lena is feeling something many Indigenous people feel; estrangement from both the reserve and the

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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.

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Lena learned to view the door as a sense of home, “Behind that door, warm

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Her mother worked illegally in California and her father in Maryland, both working in low-wage jobs. Both of her parents made a commitment to save enough money to reunite their family. Once they reached the amount of funds to par for both Josseline and he brother, they traveled with trusted friends along with other undocumented migrants. Josseline succumbed to sickness and injury and was left to die alone in the migrant trail by none other than the coyote (travel guide) left her behind. After a few weeks, Josseline’s body was found by a member of No More Deaths, a Tucson group determined to stop deaths of migrants in the Arizona desert.

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When her husband, Walter, ask her to persuade Mama to give the money to Walter, even though she didn’t want to, but because he was her husband, he wanted to do what he had ask. So she said to Mama, “Mama, something is happening between Walter and me. I don’t know what it is – but he needs something – something I can’t give him anymore. He needs this chance, Lena.” She is also a very kind person, even when she was about to give up on life and think that the way she lived was not of her dream, she stills stays with

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The point that Alex compares to Lena to birds shows that she herself is the symbol of freedom. This foreshadows that in the end she will be able to escape into the Wilds, just like the birds, and Alex will

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After she was told no, Ida told her mother that she was leaving to go live with her grandmother and left. As Ida reached a landmark that looked like a mountain, she returned home because she didn’t know her way

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In the Light and the Forest, a story about a white boy, True Son, who lived with the Lenni Lenape tribe for 10 years is forced to go back to his white family due to a treaty. We start off the story with True Son going to meet the white soldiers and head to Pennsylvania while being escorted by Del, who is a soldier and could could speak Delaware. On their way to Pennsylvania, True Son’s Indian cousin Half Arrow walked with him until they got to a river and he had to stay back.

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Both A Lesson Before Dying and Into the Wild use their settings to further their character’s conflicts. A Lesson Before Dying is set in pre-Civil Rights, segregated Southern America where casual Racism ruled everyday life. Exemplified by the existence of plantations and colored maids as well as comparisons drawn between the White and Colored Schools. These examples setup an environment that was hostile towards anyone who wasn’t white and kickstarted the main conflict. Jefferson, a black man, is innocent of the crimes he is convicted of but since the jury he was facing was all white he is found guilty as well as called a hog.

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Our past watches us, creeping behind to seize opportunities away from

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Lena is a caring woman who loves her family. She is understanding of the problems of others, and can look past their mistakes no matter the gravity of what they've done. Even though both of her children are grown adults, she still has the motherly drive to protect them as if they were still young children.

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Since her husband died she has taken charge. In every decision she makes she shows how much she cares about her family and puts them first. After her husband unexpectedly died the dreams he had for his family were placed into her hands and sprouted from there. Lena is very caring supportive, not only of her kids and

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Lena Younger was a religious mother to her family regardless of the anger that her family has towards one another. Lena faith was soon tested when she gave her son the rest of the insurance money to put towards Beneatha college funds and the rest in his name. Instead of doing exactly what his mother told him Walter put the rest of the insurance money towards his liquor store plan only to receive the news from his friend, that the entire plan was a money scheme and Willy Harris ran off with their money. Heart broken by the hard work her husband put towards his life and her son spent the entire money out of selfishness she still loved her son. Lena was a part of faith which is also symbolized through the plant that she carried for the received little sunlight.

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She is clear- headed of what she wants. Although Lena is a woman of the 1950s, she is progressive. With the insurance money she received, she decides to buy a house in a white neighbourhood because she wants a better life for her family. Such a masculine personality in Mama comes from her experience to true oppression – slavery. Mama says that Walter is a “disgrace to [his] father’s memory” as she challenges Walter to fulfil his moral duty to succeed his father.

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From her internal thoughts and observations, the reader is given knowledge of the exact extent to which Ellie’s own mortality affects her thoughts, actions, and enjoyment of her whole life. The impact of the knowledge is best demonstrated when the reader is told, “Yet

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