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You Read Clearing Paths To The Past 'And To Be Of Use,'

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Clearing Paths to the Past and “To Be of Use” both share the theme of doing things because they need to be done even if they have no relevance to your own life. In the first passage, a man clears his sidewalk of snow every winter for the kids going to school. Though he doesn’t use the snowless path very often, he knows that those kids do and wants to make their lives a bit easier. The second passage discusses the author’s love for people who do things for other people without any hesitation. She talks about how fantastic people who jump head-first into situations that aren’t beneficial to themselves are. From these two stories, the reader can learn many important things. Reading Clearing Paths to the Past gives the reader a chance to look at the other side of the spectrum and see our success from the people who brought it to our lives. The saying “ignorance is bliss” comes to mind as the students walking the path to school every day are completely naive to the man that scraped away all of the snow from the path, and they’re perfectly happy without that knowledge. If they knew …show more content…

While the people doing the helping know that they’re being nice, they don’t know that people like this writer are out there who see them and appreciate them for what they are. Once again, the helper is naive to the person watching them and has no idea that they really are appreciated. From these two passages we can learn that helping people is a good thing and has its benefits, even if the person that you’re helping doesn’t know you’re there. The man who shovelled his sidewalk for the students was unseen by them as they flocked to school, but he didn’t mind as he was content with watching their success from his window. The woman who wrote the second passage talked about her appreciation for people like the man in the first

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During west ottawa’s homecoming dance there was a girl who was dancing by herself so my friend and I had an idea to go dance with her. This shows caring because we wanted the girl to have fun with us instead of being alone half of the night. In the book Recovery Road and “The Bass, The River and Sheila Mant” Madeline and the narrator are both kind because Madeline helps others in need even if it puts her in danger and she puts other people before herself, the narrator in “The Bass, The River and Sheila Mant”

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The passages share the common theme of doing the work that must be done so we can live in perfect harmony and to let nothing stand in your way. The author of “Clearing Paths to the Past” tells about how he used to help his grandfather clear the sidewalk when it snowed, but now since his grandfather is dead he does it himself. He does it for the kids walking to school, so that they won’t have to worry about walking through the snow. Although he says it is tiring and very time consuming, he seems to enjoy doing it. At the end he states that he does it so there will be a place where nothing stopped the children — or anyone else — from wherever they needed to go.

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His friend then explained to him, “You were kind to me and I will make the beating look worse than it is.” (pg 172) If Lale did not help his friend in the past, he would have likely gotten killed. Through Lale’s experience you can see that by helping someone, your actions will often be repaid with the kindness of

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In “Clearing Paths to the Past” the author tells stories of the past how it is his duty to clear the sidewalk, just like his grandfather did. The narrator believes that we should hold dear to us the hard work people before us have done. We should keep working hard to help everyone else out and they’ll do the same. In “To be of use” the author surrounds their self with positive, hard working people. They don’t stand back while everyone else is doing something.

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1987 Words | 8 Pages

They also show the negative and, typically unexpected, effects of perception. The fact that society and family plays the key factor in both short stories shows us how both can help you understand the things that society has defined as wrong. Which goes to show that following a ritual can be a bad thing, to the villagers in “The Lottery” it is normal to sacrifice a person and in “Barn Burning,” Abner think’s it’s okay burn down barns, but we do not see it that way because of that key factor.

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“Ahh that felt good”, I thought to myself after I helped a little kid find his mother because he was lost. Helpful is when you help someone do something that they cannot do on their own. In my two stories, I picked Connie and Arn both show that they are helpful in their own way, but Arn is the most helpful. One reason why Arn is considered helpful is because he said, “This guy Mek, he decided to live because of what I say, now I know it’s my job to keep him living. ”(McCormick page 58).

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In the story “A Worn Path” the author Eudora Welty uses many symbolism that advances the development of the story by going into detail about the harsh conditions she has to travel thru just to get the medicine that her ill grandson needs. While traveling to the medical clinic in Mississippi she encounters unusual situations that “demonstrate great courage and determination when she overcomes every obstacle in her way” (May), even facing a hunter who points a gun at her. When reaching the clinic she was disrespected by the staff and was treated as a “charity case”, but she withstands the humiliation to get her grandson the medication. When heading out on a cold December day she has to walk for about half a day. She demonstrates her fear of the wild animals delaying her travels by talking with them and asking them to keep the wild animals out of her path.

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The Road by Cormac McCarthy tells the story of a man and his son on a journey to find remaining “good guys” in a cold, dark, dismal world full of evil. They are journeying south to the ocean to escape the ferocity of another chilling winter. Their other purpose is to find other good, moral people like themselves who are “carrying the fire.” The man and the boy are both journeying but for slightly varying purposes. For the man, the journey seems to be one of re-establishing the world of the past that he remembers so well, while for the boy, the journey is one of exploration and discovery.

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It shows how such a big heart and person can have different paths to take and it can be hard to know which to take. Walter wanted to do the unexpected sort of, thus referring back to the poem and taking the “road less traveled by”. But even though buying the liquor store wasn't going to happen the road more traveled by was taken. Either way in the situation there were different paths take, and there was trouble finding the right one to take in the

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The common theme of these passages is that the narrators want to contribute to the world or at least their communities. This pattern is recognisable in “Clearing Path’s to the Past” when the narrator thinks “I can’t grow tomatoes anything like my grandfather’s, but my shoveling will suffice.” This shows the narrator’s desire to live up to expectations set for him/her early in their life. An example of a similar desire in the passage “To be of use” is the quote “I want to be with the people who submerge in the task…” The narrator is referring to people who resolve issues with haste and pull their weight in society.

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The man is more concerned about this than the boy. The boy is willing to give what little they have to help others, showing concern for a man they encounter, and suggesting that they give him some food and even a spoon to eat with (McCarthy 173). Goodness is important to the boy. He “constantly seeks to connect with, and be compassionate toward, strangers,” (Gilbert 42). The man does not like it, for him “other concerns are subsumed under the umbrella of survival,” (Graulund 73).

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242 Words | 1 Pages

The common theme that ¨Clearing Paths to the Past¨ and the poem, ¨To be of use¨ by Marge Piercy share is to work hard. The lesson that the reader can learn from the passages is that working hard and accomplishing a certain task can make someone feel joyous. In the passage, ¨Clearing Paths to the Past¨ the narrator constantly shovels the long strip of sidewalk every time that it snows. No matter when it happens, he works hard and makes sure that the job gets done.

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652 Words | 3 Pages

There are times when we experience events where our perspective of life changes and thus make us change how we respond to new circumstances we encounter. In chapter seven, “Chump Change,” of, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, the author Adam Grant describes two people as “failures givers” for caring about others more than their own good when it comes to professional situations. He describes these two situations because these people went from failure givers to successful givers when they experienced feeling in disadvantage for helping others too much. Grant highlights that is good to be a giver, however there has to limits to how much we can help others. These examples remind us of how a change of perspective

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When reading the title of this short story, I thought it would be about someone walking down an old path in nature or walking down memory lane, or path, that is pretty worn down from emotional scarring. At first, I was confused about this story because I thought it was talking about Phoenix Jackson going down a path having hallucinations and speaking to all the animals she comes across. It seems like the path in short story seems to be Phoenix Jackson’s path to the end of her life which is being worn away and the hallucinations could be from her being so old to about to die. I think it is weird that when Phoenix Jackson “steals” that nickel from the hunter she runs into; she then goes to buy her grandson some medicine who appears to be in a

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In “The Road Not Taken” a traveler goes to the woods to find himself and make a decision based on self-reliance. The setting of the poem relays this overall message. Providing the mood of the poem, the setting of nature brings a tense feeling to “The Road Not Taken”. With yellow woods in the midst of the forest, the setting “combines a sense of wonder at the beauty of the natural world with a sense of frustration as the individual tries to find a place for himself within nature’s complexity” (“The Road Not Taken”). The setting is further evidence signifying the tense and meditative mood of the poem as well as in making choices.

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