tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60528061993246812142011-07-06T09:21:29.299-07:00A place for thinking aloud about novels with themes deeply rooted in nature.Danielnoreply@blogger.comBlogger201100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-36926462659120838072009-05-12T17:02:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:56:30.642-07:00

In the words of Porky the Pig, "That's all folks!" I hope you've enjoyed my "Quality Project" for English 2. If you've become a fan, please bookmark this blog, and check back in a year or two, because I do plan on continuing to do this for books I read in college and later in my life. Don't forget to check out my previous posts, if this is the first one you see. And as we go into our summer

Danielnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-48716849730240308962009-05-08T16:54:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:56:20.637-07:00

"I'd seen photographs of lighting frozen in its terrible splendor, rippling like a knife down the curtains of the sky" (Animal 305-6)."But the letters ended, finite as a book or a life" (Animal 300)."The flowers were beaten down, their bent-over heads bejeweled with diamond droplets like earrings on sad, rich widows" (Animal 272)."In the past, the two-week delay of her letters had caused me to

Danielnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-46294423844273206462009-05-07T21:44:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:56:06.278-07:00

"The river won't flow for you no, no, no" wrote Jason Robert Brown in his album, "Songs For A New World." I wonder if Brown knew the significance of his lyrics as he wrote these words. The rivers present in Kingsolver’s mind definitely won’t flow for us, but rather of their own accord….In Animal Dreams, Kingsolver uses a pretty straightforward idea of the pollution of our rivers and rainforests

Danielnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-58579304154582296612009-05-06T16:42:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:57:15.896-07:00

Consider a broken toy left under the bed. Bugs need to crawl around it, even if it's an obstruction too heavy to handle. You feel it every time you reach under the bed, however you force yourself to ignore it.This is exactly how I perceive America to be treating Nicaragua in this story, based on the thoughts of Cosima as she reads the letters written to her by Hallie. However, this isn't the

Danielnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-69314691740569633772009-05-05T13:43:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:54:58.397-07:00

In this novel, Kingsolver pulls out all the stops. Both one-liner philosophical messages and extended philosophical and psychological beauty are portrayed by Kingsolver in this grand finale of a novel for my blog.While one-liner's may seem insignificant, surface-level thoughts like these are what makes most people "ooh" and "ahh" as they think deeper. These moments of "deep thought" lead to the

Danielnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-44381744306645736372009-05-04T16:22:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:54:43.427-07:00

“This dawns on her with the unkindness of a heart attack and she sits up in bed to get a closer look at her thoughts, which have collected above her in the dark” (Pigs 3)."Flapping to stay balanced, he makes the long branch bob and sway like a carnival ride” (Pigs 6).“Aloneness is her inheritance, like the deep heartline that breaks into match sticks across her palm” (Pigs 23)."Jax’s adoration is

Danielnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-66479603320644061582009-05-03T11:17:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:54:28.466-07:00

Is there a difference in depth-possibility when it comes to rain and the weather in general?I have discussed, in a previous post, Kingsolver's metaphor of rain. Storms, hail, snow, mist, drizzle, rain. However, in Pigs In Heaven, Kingsolver is much more of a Mother Nature than before. She takes on the entire weather scheme with this sky-covering metaphor. I've already stated (previous blog,

Danielnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-4060730717432395162009-05-02T11:15:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:54:12.144-07:00

Kingsolver should be given an award or a degree in philosophy, and fast!Her work in this novel regarding underlying philosophy is extraordinary! She definitely surpassed the high bar of standard set by her previous novels, philosophically, with Pigs In Heaven. The events, characters, and emotions she has written for us ties in and leads to an inferred final philosophy. That philosophy will be

Danielnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-6436634900988316742009-05-01T11:15:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:53:58.041-07:00

Being the sequel of The Bean Trees, Kingsolver's Pigs In Heaven features the same principal characters in the same world. The crisis is the same, however with different characters putting the stress on the equilibrium of Taylor and Turtle Greer. As Taylor "grips her daughter's arm ... protectively," she can't help but recall that "this child is the miracle [she] wouldn't have let in the door if

Danielnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-3161720118626166592009-04-30T11:13:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:53:28.457-07:00

“Believe me in those days the girls were dropping by the wayside like seeds off a poppyseed bun” (Bean 3).“The clouds were pink and fat and hilarious-looking, like the hippo ballerinas in a Disney movie” (Bean 35).“She felt like such a sneak, letting on as though her marriage was just fine. It was like presenting her mother and grandmother with a pretty Christmas package to take back with them,

Danielnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-56564955416788680052009-04-29T11:06:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:53:11.616-07:00

Can you truly domesticate a bird? After years of incarceration, would a bird want to stay in its cage, had the owner opened the door for it to fly off? However, is there a proper way of caring for a creature we shouldn't "own" in the first place? Do birds ever need or want our help, even when close to death?Oddly enough, I find that Kingsolver's answer to these questions would be yes, based

Danielnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-130909517104335242009-04-28T11:05:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:52:53.166-07:00

As the sassy and sarcastic narrator, Taylor Greer, goes through some of the most riveting trials of her life in the novel The Bean Trees, the reader hops on a roller coaster ride of emotions and thoughts. The elation, exhilaration, and discombobulation that I felt while reading this book is indescribable. I can only let Taylor Greer lead the way as I journey through her life.Taylor's character

Danielnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-3283293288519860032009-04-27T11:01:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:52:20.285-07:00

This novel, and its sequel, Pigs In Heaven, is set in a world of its own type of chaos. Oklahoma isn't portrayed as a world of war nor one with extreme turmoil, however Kingsolver has created a society that is in a cultural crisis. What does it take to be an American? What does it mean to be Cherokee? To you, what does it mean to be cultural?What is home?For Taylor Greer, a girl quickly

Danielnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-19715500400062725542009-04-26T10:42:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:52:04.952-07:00

Similes are figures of speech that have the potential to add a new perspective, a clearer understanding, and a deeper meaning to a single idea, a sentence, a paragraph, or a full length essay. Kingsolver's similes are so numerous that it seems habitual, however a handful of them are among the best I've read or heard. Here is a list of Kingsolver's finest similes from Prodigal Summer.

Danielnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-20515615450091280422009-04-25T14:21:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:51:50.510-07:00

I think that it's apparent now how much metaphor Kingsolver puts into her novels. Some critics say that metaphors are old fashioned, while others say that modern generations are losing the taste for metaphor that was evident in the Shakespearean era. While this is the final metaphor post for Prodigal Summer, I would just like to add, before I start the analysis, that I think metaphor is one of

Danielnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-90820080949365641632009-04-24T09:16:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:51:39.207-07:00

Ghosts make the embodiment of the next metaphor, as previously mentioned. The ghosts of Kingsolver's mind are not poltergeists, ghastly, or mal-intended. Rather, they represent the lost, forgotten, lifeless souls of extinct animals. Lusa calls herself "as free and disembodied as a ghost" when "she was free" because her husband, now past, wasn't lying with her in the morning (Summer 48). This

Danielnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-77947296812943878142009-04-23T16:56:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:51:24.489-07:00

A particular aspect of Kingsolver's writing that her readers should look out for is the use of nature as metaphor. While recurrent in not only this novel, but all of her novels as a collection, the metaphors continue to grow deeper each time they appear.The most notable one, I believe, is rain. Rain was a one of the metaphors that started this novel off with a third-person view on Deanna,

Danielnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-75162508978820951262009-04-22T22:10:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:51:13.166-07:00

This novel, as all of Kingsolver's works, includes ideas that have the potential to be personally relevant to many people. This ability to connect with the audience is an aspect that is essential for a quality novel to have. This novel contains words of advice, trains of thought, and philosophical ideas that would broaden every one's creative thinking horizons.The striking thing about this

Danielnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-65703980617920001962009-04-21T18:47:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:50:56.028-07:00

Barbara Kingsolver has given Deanna Wolfe, one of the protagonists in Prodigal Summer, the mindset of a devout tree-hugger. Very passionate about wildlife, and therefore very devoted to discovering more about our world, her perspective gives most readers new outlooks on life: that of infinitesimal insects, precocious predators, and mother nature herself. From some of her first few words,

Danielnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6052806199324681214.post-63557625675591406052009-04-20T18:12:00.000-07:002009-05-19T00:50:43.685-07:00

For an English class "Quality Project," I decided to create a reading blog which focuses on Barbara Kingsolver's novels. I think that blogging is the perfect way to compare opinions with others, regarding novels, movies, or something that happened in your day.Just as a preface, I actually read 3 of Kingsolver's novels in the span of one week, and took about 5 more days finishing the fourth novel

Danielnoreply@blogger.com1