A Native Hill: Berry
In the excerpt from A Native Hill, author Wendell Berry explains how everything he knows about himself is related to the place in which he grew up, and that much of who he is has been mostly determined by his ancestors who once lived there. Now that Berry has had the opportunity to go back to Kentucky and reconnect with his home land, he has come to realize that the history behind the land is slowly being erased as each new generation continues to destroy the once untouched land.
Although I have always had a great respect for the environment and I try to do what I can to reduce my carbon footprint, I still find it difficult to fully understand the affect that some of my actions can have on the earth. As I was reading this excerpt, I came to a part that really made me understand that even something as simple as soil has a history and a past life long before I ever existed. Berry describes the topsoil as “Christ-like” and explains that “It increases by experience, by the passage of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and returning to it…It is enriched by all things that die and enter into it…Death is the bridge or the tunnel by which its past enters its future”(25). This line shows just how connected Berry is with his surroundings and that he sees the life and history in something that most of us see as dirt. His passion for nature is certainly reflected in his writing.
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Michael Ondaatje
After reading Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, I was left with many questions. What was most unclear to me was who exactly the narrator was. I was really confused about who was telling the story because the narrator talks about Sallie Chisum as if he were someone who was very close with her. There was a part after the paragraph about Sallie’s clothesless body curled up under the sheets that made me question who exactly the narrator was and what his relationship was with the Chisum family. “Once last year seeing her wrapped I said, Sallie, know what a madman’s skin is? And I showed her, filling the automatic indoor bath…and lifting her and dropping her slow in to bath” (Ondaatje 31). In order for the narrator to do this I would imagine he would have had to have seen her naked.
There were a lot of other parts that were very confusing to me as well, and I am pretty sure that I am not alone on this. Perhaps it is because this is only a small piece from the story, or perhaps it is because I am unfamiliar with the story itself. The only thing I am sure about is that even though I didn’t really understand much of it, I enjoyed reading it and hope to have a better understanding of it soon.
In the excerpt from A Native Hill, author Wendell Berry explains how everything he knows about himself is related to the place in which he grew up, and that much of who he is has been mostly determined by his ancestors who once lived there. Now that Berry has had the opportunity to go back to Kentucky and reconnect with his home land, he has come to realize that the history behind the land is slowly being erased as each new generation continues to destroy the once untouched land.
Although I have always had a great respect for the environment and I try to do what I can to reduce my carbon footprint, I still find it difficult to fully understand the affect that some of my actions can have on the earth. As I was reading this excerpt, I came to a part that really made me understand that even something as simple as soil has a history and a past life long before I ever existed. Berry describes the topsoil as “Christ-like” and explains that “It increases by experience, by the passage of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and returning to it…It is enriched by all things that die and enter into it…Death is the bridge or the tunnel by which its past enters its future”(25). This line shows just how connected Berry is with his surroundings and that he sees the life and history in something that most of us see as dirt. His passion for nature is certainly reflected in his writing.
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Michael Ondaatje
After reading Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, I was left with many questions. What was most unclear to me was who exactly the narrator was. I was really confused about who was telling the story because the narrator talks about Sallie Chisum as if he were someone who was very close with her. There was a part after the paragraph about Sallie’s clothesless body curled up under the sheets that made me question who exactly the narrator was and what his relationship was with the Chisum family. “Once last year seeing her wrapped I said, Sallie, know what a madman’s skin is? And I showed her, filling the automatic indoor bath…and lifting her and dropping her slow in to bath” (Ondaatje 31). In order for the narrator to do this I would imagine he would have had to have seen her naked.
There were a lot of other parts that were very confusing to me as well, and I am pretty sure that I am not alone on this. Perhaps it is because this is only a small piece from the story, or perhaps it is because I am unfamiliar with the story itself. The only thing I am sure about is that even though I didn’t really understand much of it, I enjoyed reading it and hope to have a better understanding of it soon.
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