The Outcasts Of Poker Flat Summary
“The Outcasts of Poker Flat” was a story that showed the true dangers of not being prepared for the winter. To solve this problem, I decided to give the characters in the story a solar-powered robot that would gather wood and food for them in the cold weather. The robot would gather twigs and logs scattered around on the forest floor and bring them back to the group so that they can dry off. Along with that, the robot would also be able to hunt animals like deer and rabbits. Since the robot is solar-powered, it wouldn’t need to have a source of energy to plug into and would help the group out tremendously.
Charles. W. Chesnutt’s “The Goophered Grapevine” displays regionalism in multiple ways. An obvious example of Chesnutt’s regionalism is through the character of the former slave, Julius McAdoo. Julius is characteristic of the region in his stereotypical mannerisms and dialect. Julius also displays through regionalism through his nostalgic storytelling.
There is always that one person that makes a story so interesting and impossible to get one's eyes off of. The novel, Montana 1948 by Larry Watson was a book that had good, bad and terrible things in it. A family that was well known to the town of Bentrock was involved with multiple incidents that brought negativity to the people. It was a town diversified between Indian and Caucasians. People that were influential to the novel made bad choices, caused and solved problems and also led to serious moments that others couldn’t see meaning and truth behind.
A California town, outcasts, cheaters, a battle against nature and jumping frogs… that might sound like the premise for an epic novel, but these are a mix of elements from two separate short stories, The Outcasts of Poker Flat by Bret Harte and The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain. Harte’s story follows John Oakhurst, a professional gambler, who has become an outcast in the small California town of Poker Flats during the gold rush. His success as a gambler leads to a negative reputation and he is forced to leave the town along with a band of outcasts. A few conflicts arise, but none so severe as the blizzard that strikes them while they’re in the mountains. Oakhurst’s life of gambling success is long gone and all the bad luck he encounters leads him to suicide (Harte 674-684).
The novel, Something Wicked, by Alan Gratz takes place on Birnam Mountain near Knoxville, Tennessee. The author, Alan Gratz, actually grew up in Knoxville Tennessee. During this time, there is a Scottish Highland Fair going on along with the Highland Games. The characters are linked to the setting because they all have Scottish backgrounds. The setting of the story influences the events in the novel with its historic background.
The Wild West brought many great stories to foreign places, with the help of regionalism it made foreign places alive to people who didn’t know of them. In Mark Twain’s “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”, is based out of California during the gold rush, a man named Jim smiley is a great gambler who bets on anything and everything. He will always win the bets, until an unknown man comes along and cheats out Jim smiley out of his money. He cheated Jim out by stuffing his famous jumping frog with a teaspoon of a quill shot (Twain 665). The other story by Bret Harte “The Outcast of Poker Flat”, a gambler, a thief and other outcast are thrown out of their town.
People encounter many obstacles in their lifetimes, obstacles that are too arduous to overcome by themselves. They must find a way to get through these difficulties, and there is always something, or someone, that helps keep them sane through these hard hours. To Saul Indian Horse, the main character of Richard Wagamese’s novel Indian Horse, that obstacle is St. Jerome’s Residential School and the very element that kept him sane was hockey. In the residential school, Saul is abused both mentally and physically, witnessing the continued deaths of his Indian classmates. Fortunately, Saul was able to keep himself sane through hockey.
In “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”, the dialect establishes the tone between the narrator and Wheeler by having Wheeler tell a series of stories about a betting man named Smiley. The narrator makes a point to emphasize that Wheeler is a just average person and that he has little interest in interviewing him about a likely mad up story about a man named Smiley. This results in the tone of the story being nonchalant. For example, “…it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would got to work and bore me to death with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. I that was the design, it succeeded.”
These men worked hard herding, branding, and tending to cattle from sun up until sun down. However, over the years the image of the cowboy has been blurred by media. Often times when someone thinks of cowboys they think of a vicious gunslinger who is always looking for a fight. In reality, many cowboys could not even afford a gun. Regardless, throughout Kelton’s novel, The Day the Cowboys Quit, he was able to effectively portray the correct speech patterns, distinguishing characteristics, and lifestyle of the Texas
The detrimental and unfair categorization of people by race, gender and more, commonly known as discrimination, affects many in society both mentally and emotionally. Many instances of this act of hatred occurred among Aboriginal and Native Canadians in the 20th century. However, for a little Native Indian boy stepping onto the rink, this is the norm that surrounds him. Saul Indian Horse, in Richard Wagamese’s “Indian Horse”, faces discrimination head on, where his strengths for hockey are limited by the racial discrimination from the surrounding white ethnicity. Consequently, this racism draws him into a mentally unstable state, where he suffers heavy consequences.
Instead of having a good paying job on an oil rig in San Angelo, John Grady still wants to search for his own country. Despite the ending of “All the Pretty Horses” is not a happy one, John is finally able to mesh his romanticised ideals with the real world. Even if the Earth does not provide for a place anyone, John decides to make his own place by refusing to back away from his ideals and instead chase after them. He would much rather attempt to live the life he wants, rather than adopt a life made for someone
Writer Sherman Alexie has a knack of intertwining his own problematic biographical experience with his unique stories and no more than “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” demonstrates that. Alexie laced a story about an Indian man living in Spokane who reflects back on his struggles in life from a previous relationship, alcoholism, racism and even the isolation he’s dealt with by living off the reservation. Alexie has the ability to use symbolism throughout his tale by associating the title’s infamy of two different ethnic characters and interlinking it with the narrator experience between trying to fit into a more society apart from his own cultural background. However, within the words themselves, Alexie has created themes that surround despair around his character however he illuminates on resilience and alcoholism throughout this tale.
Bret Harte's "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" is a short story that adheres to the principles of literary realism, a literary movement that emerged in the late 19th century. The story takes place in a small mining town in California during the 1850s and follows the lives of a group of outcasts who are exiled from the town of Poker Flat by a group of moralistic citizens. The story is an excellent example of literary realism because it is a detailed and accurate portrayal of life in a small, isolated mining town during the 1850s. The characters are complex, flawed individuals who are struggling to survive in the harsh conditions of the California frontier.
Intercalary Chapter Literary Analysis During the Great Depression, the nation as a whole was stripped of financial security and forced into a survivalist way of living. This changed the ways that people interacted with one another and the overall mentality of society. In the Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family is torn from their land and find themselves with nothing, a common story for migrant farmers of that time, derogatorily called “Okies” by Californians. But this is not the only group that is struggling, the entire county was in a state of panic and bruteness, no matter how “well off” they seemed to be.
This was frustrating for Todd. Sometimes Indian people and Todd didn’t understand each other because of slangs. Slangs are part of the language. Todd used so much slangs like kitsch, redneck, schmuck, small talk when he spoke no one.
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