ipl-logo

The Environment In Louise Erdrich's The Beet Queen

578 Words3 Pages

The excerpt from Louise Erdrich’s novel, The Beet Queen, tells the story of two siblings arriving in an unfamiliar town. The excerpt depicts the different reactions of the siblings to their situation. The imagery of the excerpt conveys the state of the unfamiliar environment. The selection of detail in the excerpt reveals the impact that the environment has on the children. In the excerpt from Louise Erdrich’s novel, The Beet Queen, Erdrich uses imagery and selection of detail to depict the impact of the environment on the two children.
The imagery of the excerpt focuses on the town the children arrive in and the weather they endure. Although only mentioned in the first half of the excerpt, the weather has a considerable effect on the children …show more content…

These reactions and the impact of the environment on the children are revealed through selection of detail. First, Erdrich characterizes the children through details given in the second paragraph. Mary Adare is described as “short and ordinary” and “square and practical”. Karl Adare is described as having a “sweetly curved” mouth and “fine and girlish” skin. This information coincides with the children’s reactions to the tree. In paragraph four, when the children encounter the tree, Mary “trudged solidly forward, hardly glancing at it”. Her reaction to the tree proves that she does not need or seek the comfort the tree may provide. Alternately, the details of Karl’s reaction, how “his cheeks went pink, he stretched out his arms like a sleepwalker” and “floated to the tree”, prove that he needs the comfort the tree provided. The environment’s impact on the children causes them to react in this way. Erdrich effectively uses selection of detail to reveal these reactions.
The excerpt from Louise Erdrich’s novel, The Beet Queen, explores the effect of an unwelcoming environment on two children. Imagery contributes to the formation of the environment’s qualities through descriptions of weather and the town. Selection of detail develops the children’s reactions to the impact of the environment by including important details about the children and their actions. Through her

Show More
Related

Essay Comparing The Painted Drum And The Bingo Palace

792 Words | 4 Pages

Many readers were eager to read the tone in The Painted Drum and The Bingo Palace. The Bingo Palace was published in 1995 giving Louise Erdrich enough time to perfect the tones in her novels. Between both novels Louise Erdrich changed tone in both novels because in The Painted Drum it was about Faye Travers finding an ancient drum, The Bingo Palace is about Lipsha Morrissey falling in love for the first time. In comparing the tones in both novels, there will be an examination of the tone in two different novels by Louise Erdrich.

Read More

A Rhetorical Analysis Of Beach Lessons By Zan Smith

914 Words | 4 Pages

This is used to compare the visual from before, in which the children looked as if they weren’t human and detached from one another. Dominating the image are two young children who are laughing and entertaining themselves with a spade and shovel, portraying the immediate shift in behaviour once they are initiating in proper social activities. Thus, readers are enlightened and encouraged to stand up and be apart of the solution. Smith also provides the audience with a range of advantages in taking the kids outsides, from no more “arguments and demands” to “a child’s first ecstatic experience of buoyancy”; they are positioned to prevent further interactions with screens by allowing them to experience the outside world and enhance their “world of senses” and “childhood

Read More

Examples Of Foreshadowing In The Veldt By Ray Bradbury

500 Words | 2 Pages

(Bradbury, 9). The use of personification is applied through the use of weather and emotion. The weather cannot portray real human emotions but it can symbolize anger and fury. The parallels between the children and the house are no mistake. The children’s raw emotions echo through the house, the environments in their lives only cater to them and their feelings.

Read More

The Beet Queen By Louise Erdrich Summary

382 Words | 2 Pages

By describing this, Edrich reveals how weather has an impact on the children. As the passage continues, Karl seems to connect more with nature within the environment while Mary

Read More

A Soldier's Fugue Analysis

810 Words | 4 Pages

In a simile, she compares gardening to “boxing… The wins versus the losses” (Hudes 16). Through this comparison, Hudes conveys Ginny’s deep desire for a sense of control and success in her life. This desire is fed by the memory of her father, who was only bearable when he was gardening. Specifically, the assertion of this desire for control is evident as she recalls that her father “was a mean bastard…” but “became a saint if you put a flower in his hand” (Hudes 15). From those experiences of dealing with her father, a psychological analogy between nature and peace was instilled in Ginny’s mind at a young age, and is what she relies on as an adult to handle her emotional trauma.

Read More

Unpolished Gem Analysis

935 Words | 4 Pages

Unpolished Gem is a thought provoking tale that explores the journey of Alice Pung from girl to woman. The memoir fluidly transitions between a series of themes and ideas, but through these a constant concept is explored; the cultural divide. Alice’s culture and background are the foundation of every decision she makes and thus, throughout the entire autobiography, the reader observes the implications of this, and often, the divide this creates. The reader perceives the social division Alice’s culture generates and the impact this has on relationships in and out of the home, and also in Alice’s ability to assimilate. Cultural divide is also apparent to the reader when comparing the expectations of Alice’s family to those of her classmates.

Read More

Robert Mccloskey Time Of Wonder Analysis

742 Words | 3 Pages

In the story “Time of Wonder” the writer and illustrator Robert McCloskey creates a mesmerizing picture book. Throughout the book he relates his message to the reader of taking time to enjoy the weather and nature. Likewise, the reader is able to experience these events directly with phrases such as “IT’S RAINING ON YOU” (McCloskey 10). One event the reader is able to conjure up is the ocean in Maine with the taste of salt on their tongue. Moreover, the reader visualizes the calm sea on a sunny day and fears the roaring wind before a hurricane.

Read More

Dust Bowl Visual Analysis

566 Words | 3 Pages

The children are the focus of the image and set in the center of the photo. They have sunken dirt covered faces, messy hair and tattered clothes providing the assumption that the two boys have had a hard time in life. The boys are not happy and cheery, playing outside in the dirt and grass like any child should be. Instead they are forced to be living in the mud and grass because they could not go anywhere else. The boys wear

Read More

Stereotypes In Yellow Wallpaper And The Fall Of The House Of Usway

1258 Words | 6 Pages

In Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl, a mother simultaneously berates her daughter with instructions and teaches her what society expects from her. Kincaid uses repetitive details frequently throughout the story. For example, the mother tells her daughter “how to hem a dress” and “behave in the presence of men” so that the daughter can avoid “looking” and being “recognize[d]” as the “slut” she is “bent on becoming” (437-8). Her mother’s message of avoiding acting ‘slutty’ exposes modern gender stereotypes. The repetitive details suggest that a girl must dress and behave a certain way to avoid being branded a slut.

Read More

We Came Upon The Prairie

816 Words | 4 Pages

“We came upon the Prairie at sunset. It would be difficult to say why, or how.. but the effect on me was disappointment.” The author of passage one decides to open his essay with a tone of discouragement. Later in the passage, the reader can see that the writer uses his choice of language, and specifics to detail, to show his dull interest in the prairie.

Read More

Popular Mechanics By Raymond Carver Essay

675 Words | 3 Pages

Carver’s opens his story with a brief, yet detailed imagery describing the weather and comparing it to what’s going on with the family inside. “Early that day the

Read More

The Flowers By Alice Walker Literary Devices

455 Words | 2 Pages

In the short story “The Flowers”, Alice Walker sufficiently prepares the reader for the texts surprise ending while also displaying the gradual loss of Myop’s innocence. The author uses literary devices like imagery, setting, and diction to convey her overall theme of coming of age because of the awareness of society's behavior.     At the beguining of the story the author makes use of proper and necessary diction to create a euphoric and blissful aura. The character Myop “skipped lightly” while walker describes the harvests and how is causes “excited little tremors to run up her jaws.”. This is an introduction of the childlike innocence present in the main character.

Read More

Imagery And Diction In Alice Walker's 'The Flowers'

524 Words | 3 Pages

Alice Walker uses imagery and diction throughout her short story to tell the reader the meaning of “The Flowers”. The meaning of innocence lost and people growing up being changed by the harshness of reality. The author is able to use the imagery to show the difference between innocence and the loss of it. The setting is also used to show this as well.

Read More

The Effects Of Rape And Sexual Assault In Beloved By Toni Morrison

1970 Words | 8 Pages

“Schoolteacher’s nephew represents a dismissal by whites of the dehumanizing qualities of slavery”. When Sethe is raped, schoolteacher observed how her body is exploited. The scars on Sethe’s back are so many that they resemble the trunk of a tree with its branches. Sethe bear scars on her back because she was whipped due to her try of escape. Amy Denver, a white girl that helped Sethe when she was running away from Sweet Home, calls the tree a chokecherry tree.

Read More

Analysis Of Owls Do Cry

2217 Words | 9 Pages

These sections set themselves apart from others by their use of imagery: “... and I planted carrot seed that never came up, for the wind breathed a blow-away spell; the wind is warm, was warm, and the days above burst unheeded, explode their atoms of snow-black beanflower and white rose, mock the last intuitive who-dunnit, who-dunnit of the summer thrush...” (Frame 3). These passages serve to highlight how Daphne 's mind deviates from the norm. She has an unusually vivid imagination that seems almost childlike at times. The use of personification puts further emphasis on her childishness, but her overactive imagination is not always harmless and sometimes takes a darker turn, revealing fears that appear to be deeply

Read More

More about The Environment In Louise Erdrich's The Beet Queen

Related Topics

Open Document