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Pancake's Manifestation

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The novel Strange as this Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake, displays the destruction caused by mountain top removal of the Appalachian Mountains in a small town in West Virginia, and the struggles it has created for a family that inhabits the mountain. Pancakes description of the land and those who inhabit it displays the relationship between the characters and the mystery behind the coal mining throughout the novel. Throughout the novel, Pancake displays the numerous struggles Lace and Jimmy Makes family face, many of which were directly a result of the coal mining taking place in their back yard. One character that is greatly affected by the results of coal mining, not only on the environment, but on her town as a whole, is Bant, Lace and …show more content…

Bant does this despite that fact that her and her mother always butt heads, but she stays because despite everything that’s happened, she’s still very persistent on helping preserve the mountains and discovering the truth. Just after saying goodbye to Jimmy Make, she discovers something crucial. “The valley fill I’d climbed didn’t come directly off the mine. There was another fill, another top, behind this one. Which meant there was something between the two.” (Pancake 352). Bant goes off exploring and discovers that all there was dead trees, and other components of the once beautiful mountain. Bant lowers her body onto the fill, when she discovers “Was it worse to lose the mountain or the feelings that you had for it?” (Pancake 356).
Throughout the novel Strange as this Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake, Bant makes many sacrifices and takes many risks throughout the novel, which shows how devoted she is to the land even through times of danger. Bant sees the mountains as beauty and her home, so she goes to great lengths to protect and preserve it. She sneaks onto the property several times, posing potential of being arrested, as well as putting herself in harms way, and last minute decides she has to stay behind and can’t move to North Carolina with Jimmy Make. She did all of this for the land, her

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