Joe Morgan Ten Nights In A Bar Room

Painting a Picture For our group activity we decided to take a closer look at the changes in appearance the characters and places go through. To do this we drew before and after pictures of key places and characters that changed dramatically during the story, and we discussed changes in appearance and what they could mean. Helping us focuses on details, a quick glance over to show general features of the picture and a concept map to revel relationships of key details were used. For our drawing, we used Joe Morgan’s before (pages 659-660) and after (pages 746-747, 748) descriptions. Personally, I found the activity helpful because it taught me to appreciate the smaller details in Ten Nights in a Bar Room. It taught me that Joe Morgan added another dimension to the story. In his first description, Joe is described as nothing more than a “class seen in all bar-rooms; a poor, broken-down inebriate” making him closer to a presence or generalization rather than an individual (Shay 659). This is true even when Morgan fails to meet the expectations of this description by giving intelligent remarks and showing a host

An example is the lack of natural plant life near or in the bar when Joe Morgan is there being highlighted by the cottage he has at the end which is sprinkled with greenery. This could be a sign of the slow renewal of a natural life for Joe Morgan amongst all the decay in the neighborhood. Similarly, the wrinkles that Joe Morgan has at the end seem to represent accumulated wisdom. From this, if the rest of the evidence in the book matches, I can see that Shay did not see drinking as totally bad. Drinking can be a struggle one goes though and comes out wiser as an individual. He is saying that the losses are not worth the benefit. I learned all of these through drawing as it highlighted these smaller details I normally read