Topic
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Ali Dozier Top
No Paper Submitted
Amy Robertson Top
Perhaps one of the most attractive things about early western settlements was that everyone had opportunity.
"Here the poorest man had his own dwelling in town and salmon and deer and berries were free and abundant, the poor man and the rich man drank together and worked together…" Dillard, Annie pp110, The Living
The community was dependent on the success of each of its members. The
more the individual prospered the more opportunities were available and
the more attractive the settlement was to prospective newcomers. Goshen
prospered because its rich soil made farmers successful. Whatcom struggled
because its residents hadn’t figured out how to make a good living. Hence,
people left Whatcom in drives, further degrading its prospect, for the
bustling town of Goshen.
Furthermore, the newcomers were humbled by their ignorance of the "wild"
world they found in the Washington. The older settlers remembered this
feeling and loved to show how much they had learned by teaching their new
friends. No matter how much money you came to the settlement with, your
success depended on how much you threw yourself into learning your new
world.
Another neutralizing factor was that the extreme difficulty of reaching
the Puget Sound settlements proved the stoutness of everyone who arrived.
Therefore, community members had a mutual respect for each other. The strength
they each had shown in making the journey outweighed their status in their
old worlds and created a bond, similar to that of veterans from the same
war.
These stories of the old west are juxtaposed to the modern world of
the Pacific Northwest and the rest of the industrial world. These days
the success of the community is dependent on corporations and employment
opportunities. People still strive to get ahead but the method is different.
Individual success is often achieved by competing with ones neighbor rather
than supporting them. Hence, our society has evolved into one where people
are suspicious and fearful of one another. Economic gaps have become so
huge that the wealthy and the poor rarely even know each other much less
interact. Respect, therefore, is limited to ones social rank, because there
is little chance to see the nobility of those one doesn’t know.
To clarify, I realize these are blanket statements and are therefore
inherently arguable. A local woman befriended Minta before her wealth was
known and then hated her for being rich. No time is perfect and I don’t
propose to romanticize the settlements. I simply want to look at how and
why societies tend toward social equality or away from it.
Does a system driven by competition drive people apart? Initially, yes
but what I am beginning to see is people are starved for community. They
are striving to create communities through community organizing, and establishing
homesteads with friends. They are reaching for the feeling of community
through creating their own "families" of friends, and communicating more
clearly and from their hearts. We as a society are longing for that "something"
we are missing that sense of belonging and the mutual respect needed to
sustain healthy relationships and communities.
Andrew Marr Top
No Paper Submitted
Anna Constance Top
In reading The Living by Annie Dillard I was struck by the stark
reality of frontier living. Until now I had no concept of what life was
really like before there was running water and electricity. However, my
ignorance did not stop me from romanticizing that way of life, and cursing
our greedy, destructive, consumer culture. And while I still curse our
greedy, destructive, consumer culture, I understand how we got here. In
The
Living most of the men "who had exhausted their youths and manhoods,
crippled their backs, and sacrificed flesh, digits, and limbs at the task
of clearing trees marveled" (401) when women started planting trees in
the school yard. Reading about the death, disease, and starvation that
people endured over and over again, made financial stability and ease of
life look really appealing. I can empathize with people wanting to "conquer"
their harsh, unpredictable environment. And I can’t believe I am saying
that.
Although I can understand how our society came to the point in which
it is at today I in no way think it is justifiable to continue our current
rate of destruction. It is important to understand the past so we don’t
make mistakes in forming the future. Today I am much more likely to agree
that our society has made some helpful advances, and coupled with a reduction
in consumption and a shift from an anthropocentric ideology to a more ecocentric
one, I can see things like electric tools as being helpful. I no longer
think it is necessary to abandon the industrialized world in its entirety,
but to mesh the comforts of our lifestyles with an environmental consciousness
and ethic.
Ben Shryock
Top
The final portion of the novel, concerning Hugh Horner’s future, featured the grandest use of symbolism in the whole story. In fact, it is one of the only clear uses of symbolism through the whole tale.
Hugh has rapidly become the most educated man in Whatcom. The fact that his mother owns the largest hop farm in the state and that he, "Apparently found the study of medicine adsorbing, but could not say why"(Dillard 438), led him to study at Johns Hopkins University. Perhaps he unknowingly felt the pressure to become a professional and finally move out of the hard times that the West was suffering. Vinnie and his family would surely admire a man trained in the art of medicine, for he could succeed wherever he went. Graduate school, however, is unkown teritorry for any of them, even John Ireland’s rope ended at Oberlin College. Far back in Washington they are telling him to, "Push from the platform, and when you’re all the way out, let go."(445) Of course, none of them could tell him how to do it, but, "The heavy rope pulled at him."(445) After this summer back on his familiar platform, he will swing back into his fast life at Johns Hopkins. Hugh was always a quite lad; he silently knew what had to be done, and he did it. No one told him what needed to be done, but this time he needs help, some helpful guidance from those he loves and respects. He took their desires and hopes and internalized them, but the tricky part was completely his to handle. "He judged the instant to let go [from their support]; he flung himself loose into the stars."(445)
Growing up Hugh learned that he hard to work hard at all his chores
just to survive, living off the land instills a work ethic that lasts long
after one has moved on in his life
Beth Belanger Top
The Puget Sound region of today can hardly compare to the one Annie Dillard depicts in her novel The Living, circa 1855-1897. Comparatively, we live a life of relative ease. We use four wheel-drive vehicles on paved roads to climb mountainsides. If we get stuck, we can always count on our wire-less phones to call for help. What happened to the wild in wilderness? Annie Dillard vividly portrays a Puget Sound far removed from the technology driven society that exits here today. The author brings us back to a time when neighbors depended on each other and the land, to solidify their communities. While these early settlers experienced the Puget Sound in its most raw nature, they set the pace for sculpting this area into what it has become today.
Annie Dillard competently portrays the magnitude of the late 19th century northwest woods. Her eloquent descriptions brought about complete images of the forest at that time. An example of this takes place in book 3 (Eustace and Minta), "A forest straddled the river on top of the jam. Fifteen or twenty feet above the waterline, Douglas firs and silver firs with trunks four feet thick were growing a hundred feet high from soil trapped in the smashed mess of logs." (p.115). This beautiful description turns into the tragic scene where Eustace Honer slips on a log and drowns in the river below. Dillard makes it evident that the forest had opposing forces, which either provided for or punished the people of that era.
Triumph and strife were constant conflicting factors in the wilderness of those days. Dillard does not sugar-coat the hardships that these settlers endured, nor does she brush over the feats that were conquered. With ease she brings both sides to light in The Living. At times, the story gets depressing because both the young and old lose their lives at an alarming rate. On the same hand, these lives are not in vain because all that they have done to that point remains. In some way each pioneer contributed something to the establishment of Whatcom, even if that something is as minute as influencing another person with insight.
While The Living is classified as fiction, it has roots in fact. The historical and cultural information throughout the novel has usefulness. Some personal favorites include the native definitions for the words Tillicum and Tyee. After reading this novel, I now know that Tillicum translates to friend and Tyee stands for chief or leader. While we often come across these words throughout the Puget Sound, many of us are unaware of their definitions.
The Living stimulates ideas of the vast difference
between the late 19th century and modern day Puget Sound. While we
may blame these early settlers for carelessly destroying the virgin forests
that predominated that time, we also must admit that they paved the way
for future generations to have an easier existence here. Their endurance
resulted in a pride that deserves admiration.
Blake Kownacki Top
Anne Dillard is silent in the background; this patient genius unfolds
her tale at the pace of a blossoming flower. Her ability allows her to
not only create the moment, but to be passive and in the background. Her
observant eye creates an environment for the reader that is unparalleled.
The rugged and sublime environment of Western Washington creates the subject
matter that she deals with in The Living.
Ambition, hopefulness, and courage, were among the many attributes that
would help these pioneers to settle in this wild land. The moment in time
in which this story deals with is one that is a reminder of how rough life
was and how rough it could be if we had not all of our modern conveniences.
Survival is the key, and anyone who was in the least bit fragile had a
slim chance at making it. You had to work hard and be active, day in and
day out, sun up to sundown. Eventually some comforts of a city were established
so that generations to come would not have to work as hard as the one before.
The Native Americans in the region were of great help and played a key
role in the survival of many original pioneers. They not only opened their
land but they also opened their arms. Providing food and goods for trade
and at times for free, not only helped the settlers adapt to the area but
also create relationships that proved to be helpful for some in the long
run, and detrimental to others. However, customs only at times intermingled
and never a convergence.
I have found within the pages of this novel, a hint to enriching my
life. The crisp reminder that Dillard presents of how life was creates
a good contrast to my crisp reality of the present. Our ancestors worked
damn hard to ensure progress for their future generations, yet we squander
our days away running on the great gerbil wheel of life never truly understanding
how hard things really were. I have a better grasp on that hard work now,
and will strive to be thankful for how easy I really have it, and when
overloaded, to remind myself of the competence of these righteous people.
Brian Mc Elfresh Top
This book was particularly good in describing the setting of Western
Washington during the years 1855-1900. It’s not so much the story, as a
whole, was fascinating to me rather the content of the stories told. Dillard’s
descriptions of the smallest of details (although at times a little too
much!) helped raise an awareness of the time and experience the book sought
to capture. Without the descriptions, the book would certainly not show
the much-needed evidence of life as it was then. I appreciate the book
for the stories told and the characters that unfolded throughout the novel.
The Living provides a wonderful reflection for me to look back
on and realize that it was people just like me who broke the trail, so
to speak, for me and my generation. The stories told and action taken by
the characters proves an invaluable resource from which to base my beliefs
and actions today. Some times things are better left the way they were
and as always, there are times when change is necessary to adapt and understand.
I think of my ancestors and the struggles they had to endure in comparison
to mine and realize I must remain strong in life.
At times the book did "drag." I was expecting a full-blown story to
emerge and never really found it. By the end of the book I began to realize
that it was not so much about a single story, but a collection of very
hard and valuable stories which were at the core of the authors intentions.
I respect her for this; in the way it is up to the individual readers to
determine the outcome of most of the situations.
The title to the book fits accordingly to the story although death was
a prominent theme throughout. The fact that every single thing was living,
had life, and was capable of consuming the life of another was the basis
for the title. Is it so much that the characters were dieing or were essentially
contributing to the greater cause of life by letting life continue as it
may? The trees consumed life, so did the water, sickness, fire, nearly
everything around them was a fine and distinct balance of life and death.
Mostly, the people themselves were alive. Their spirits were full and each
day they reacted to the fact that death looms all around.
Brooke Smith Top
I enjoyed the book but it was a slow read for me. It was hard keeping
track of all the generations but yet interesting getting to know the whole
history. I was really surprised the way it ended. I was expecting the boat
to crash and see everyone die. Man a lot of death involved in this story.
People really had to be strong back then to survive. There was so much
hardship. Reality was so harsh. This book was a nice reminder to me to
appreciate how easy my life is and how blessed I am. Life today is a walk
in the park compared to then. I’m not sure if I could have survived then.
There were many things that struck me throughout the book but one passage
in particular. "Nothing would be the same again, Vinnie thought; she tried
to lean her head on Hugh’s sharp shoulder as they walked, which proved
impossible. It was true that her long hope of further schooling was dashed.
It was true that she and Hugh would likely never again walk this abandoned
tramway. Their courtship would transfer to Seattle and Whatcom itself-
the scene of all their first happiness, who’s dark, plunging shores and
bright waters were all that Vinnie knew- would drop from their lives. How
was it possible to endure the losses one accumulated just by living? Sentiment
based on fact was the most grievous sort, she thought, for the only escape
from it was to shrug off the fact- that babies died, say, or that people
lost lands they loved, that youth aged, love faded, everybody ended in
graves, and nothing would ever again be the same. She pounded herself to
tears with these melancholy truths, as if to ensure that she would not
betray herself by forgetting them- which, however, she knew full well she
would, as all other grown persons have done, to their manifestly improved
mental balance." This to me summed up the whole book. Just the fact that
this teenage girl can have the strength and mentality to reach those realities
just moved me. That paragraph is so intense as the book nears the end and
my heart ached for her because she was so young but completely in touch
of how terrible her reality was. The way she knew or accepted what her
life was and what it was to be. Wow. Very admirable but completely sad
to have to grow up that fast but that was what the times called for.
It was hard to find much laughter in the book due to the depression
tone that was set but I had a little laugh when the women planted a tree.
So ironic that they would choose to do that when their family and every
settler there had been cutting and burning the trees since the moment someone
step foot on the land. The fact that the men hated the trees and rarely
left one standing, yet their wives added one to the town to make the area
more pleasurable. How great is that!!
Again, to me, I felt like the paragraph shared really gave the visual
of what the whole book was about and what the reality was of the time.
Bubba Rush Top
I found Dillard’s casual attitude towards death in this book very interesting.
Every other page another person dies, and yet the book carries on without
even really pausing. It seems to me that this way of thinking about dying
reflects settler’s own views.
Sometimes when a person dies, individuals are devastated, and life becomes
hard for them. All of the other characters, however, simply get on with
their lives, and the story continues. It seems that death was an expected
event in the lives of these people, and its occurrence is nothing to get
too upset about. The characters with more ties to others get more notice
upon their cessation of being, but the world keeps on turning.
Birth is also not given any particular notice. It is simply assumed
that women have babies regularly, fulfilling their main purpose in life.
There is no nine-month lead-in to a baby, simply "so-and-so was born."
Since the children have so few ties with others their deaths are often
given the least notice of all.
Life and death often seem to earth shattering when they occur to us,
but viewed through the larger window of time and objectivity, a life is
just another life, and a death is just one more character you don’t read
about anymore.
David Bell Top
No Paper Submitted
David Jacobson Top
No Paper Submitted
Dawn Curran Top
erspective on the difference in the quality
of life between the two regions is similar to that of my view on the northwest
when she writes, ôHere the poorest man had his own dwelling even
in town, and salmon, deer, and berries were free and abundant; the poor
man and the rich man drank together and worked together, peeling back the
forest like a cover, and opening the soil to the sun.ö (110) My view
on the west has always been that it is a more accepting place of peopleÆs
diverse opinions and it is not as much of an economic based society. The
social standards and family etiquette were not at the same high standard
as in the east. Dillard explains the sense of æfamilyÆ among
the civilians in the northwest as a result of the rugged trip that must
be taken in order to reach the region, resulting in people sharing in the
same difficult experiences. Dillard portrays the social standard of not
accepting the Chinese throughout the novel. I was unaware that the white
supremacy towards the Chinese was so strong at such an early time in the
northwest. Dillard pointed out many times in the novel of times when the
Chinese were driven away or killed. Whenever the economy was low the white
men would layoff and not hire the Chinaman. One example of this is when
everyone was allowed to log the forests except for the Chinaman. In the
same distasteful manner, the townsÆ people also passed the Chinese
Exclusion Act, and they tried to ship out all of the current china civilians.
In the law system, a white man could kill a Chinaman and never be charged
for the crime. At the moment I do not feel much more enlightened after
reading the 445-page novel. I am sure that the work we continue to do in
class will make the subject matter in the novel more relevant and intriguing
to me.
Elise Sanders Top
I did not like this novel. I have read two other novels by Annie Dillard,
Pilgrim
At Tinker Creek and Teaching Stones To Talk. I did not feel
that this novel was very relevant to the material that we have learned
thus far in class, however, there may be potential connections later in
the course. I do not feel that Annie Dillard wrote this in the best style,
many details were mundane and not needed, large sections of this book could
have been crossed out and we would still get the same idea of the purpose
of her writing this novel.
Most of the deaths of people that Dillard wrote about were quickly breezed
over as if it was not a big deal that these people had died. She may have
done this to emphasize the fact that many people died when first moving
to the Washington territory and that for the most part it was not a surprise
and many people had to plug along after deaths to keep alive. For example,
whenever the husbands died, this applies to both Ada and Minta, the wives
had to learn how to take care of the land and survive on their own. Luckily
for both women they had sons that helped them in their tasks.
I did find that the discussion of how the trees were felled, by fire,
ax, and saw, was interesting and relevant because we got to see the progression
of timber techniques. I also liked how Annie Dillard included the flora
and fauna of Washington before too much degradation occurred. However,
I do not find that these two points justify why we had to read a three
hundred page book that for the most part did not pertain, in my opinion,
to out subject matter in class.
In all I did not find this novel very useful, some interesting points
were made however over discussed they were. I hope that in seminar someone
will be able to explain to me the purpose behind us reading this for class
and how it applies to anything we have learned.
Elliott Ridgway
Top
What struck me early on in reading Annie Dillard’s novel
The Living is the influence the settlers and the natives had on each other.
Although Dillard barely mentions it, the reader can get a sense of how
much an impact missionaries and trappers had on the Lummi and Nooksack
peoples. The Lummis had already entered the cash\barter economy with
the settlers, crossed themselves as any good Catholic would, and some adorned
some of the clothes and used tools of the "Bostoners", juxtaposed with
their primitive methods. What I found fascinating is the conflict
between the Lummis and the Nooksacks, when one tribe was displaced to make
room for the other, however, both tribes and the new settlers feared the
invading tribes from the north, brandishing rifles provided by Russian
traders. The graphic description of the plunder and killing of the
local indigenous people by the Johnson Indians was well written, however
I wonder how historically accurate it is. Here is where I wish Dillard
wrote about real people in history through a creative non-fiction style.
I found the raw and tenacious spirit of the new
settlers to be admirable and at times outright humbling. The constant
working of the land in order to convert a dense coastal forest into productive
cropland, and the variety of hardships suffered at the hands of nature
and fate puts the livelihood of the people in this region in a different
world than today. It seemed that if one was lucky enough to make
a living felling trees, coal mining, or working at a mill, one was at constant
risk of losing a finger, hand, arm, or life. However, fishing, trading,
farming, real estate speculation, or selling equipment to the gold-rushers
was based on the boom and bust nature of coastal northwest towns.
And everybody was susceptible to disease and accidents. A familiar
theme threading through the entire novel was the frequency of death.
Husbands getting gassed, children drowning, natives getting wiped out by
smallpox, dead sharks washing up on the beach… all leaving an looming atmosphere
that we are all finite, and could go at any time, and those that go on
living must carry on the burden and duty of this world.
Geoff MacIntyre Top
While reading this book I mistakenly tried to draw consistent, relevant meaning from the storyline and the characters in order to make them fit into some kind framework for the context of our seminar. I was sorely dissappointed most of the time. I read page after page, paragraph after paragraph, searching for these gems that would tie the plot of The Living fast to the concepts outlined in our other assigned readings, mainly textbooks about Ecology and Economics.
This book doesn’t do that. While I skimmed, tweaked, jittered
and all but hopped up and down in impatience, beautiful prose was floating
past. Moving pictures and events transpired under my scientific
magnifying glass unbeknownst to me. I was forced to slow down, and
take the story for what it is, and find the bits of relevance as they came
. When I did this I found a greater meaning in the storyline,
I found a marriage of facts and pastime that began to resemble more
than history, more than fact: it began to resemble life.
Centuries from now, our children’s children may be struggling to understand
the world we left them, why their environment is or isn’t healthy,
why our social institutions are what they are, or how to solve problems
that only seem to be getting worse. If we had a voice, if we had
a historical novelist like Annie Dillard, we might get to explain
why we did the things we did and why we lived how we lived. We might then
appreciate the luxury of telling our story the way we lived it, the way
our parents lived it, and how our children lived it.
What The Living does for us modern scholars looking back is to refute
textbooks and classroom lectures as our only access to truth and
understanding of our own modern problems. In this book, we get to
see how a near pristine part of our world underwent changes that
would make it the way we see it today, from the first felling of ancient
trees for farmland, to dwindling wildlife stocks, to urbanization.
We see this story told though generations of individuals, each doing what
they needed to do to survive in the ways they knew. They made choices
every step of the way, and we, by reading this book, are allowed into their
world to try to understand why. Those who preceded us in this world,
those who left us what social institutions, what culture, what naturall
resources we have today are made into people, making decisions for their
families. They refuse to be antagonists. Instead, these characters
insist upon being human. If we argue that our current economic and
ecological problems are to be blamed upon the selfish actions of past generations,
what Annie Dillard has done is this: She has given them a voice,
a story to tell, their own day in court. What she has done is to
make these character’s lives so rich, so lyrical, so real, that we the
readers can live as a part of the story as well. In turn, we also have
the chance to wonder, "what would we have done?" We have a chance
to look to our own lives and ask ourselves how much of what we do now may
be selfish, what may damned by future generations, and what we may say
when we have our own day in court.
Glenn Burkhart Top
he Living by Annie Dillard was a dry, boring novel, which lacked
any real dialog between the characters. I found this to be very frustrating
when reading the book because even though the author describes her characters
well, I couldn’t really grasp the mannerisms and tones that they may have
had without dialog. I must say though that the characters and the events
described in the book were very intriguing. The diligence and ingenuity
exercised by these early settlers was astounding. Through reading this
book I rediscovered my fascination with the simplicities of survival, but
at the same time all of its complications. It really doesn’t take much
just to survive, if you have the knowledge and the tenacity. I don’t believe
that the way the settlers lived was easy, for "the grave diggers spade
turned more soil than the plow", but in fact that the life style they chose
was to simplify there lives that they were escaping from back east.
Towards the middle of the book though simplicity is consumed by the
status quo and hard work takes a back burner to making a deal. Land is
bought and sold for profit ahead of the railroad for a stab at the easy
money. Clare Fishburn reflects on the path that he took that lead him to
his current status as townsmen, land dealer, and possible senator. Perhaps
it was his path that provoked Beal Obenchain to threaten his life.
John Ireland also became unhappy with the way his life had turned out
and so desperately wished to escape to Madrone Island and live the rest
of his days in simple harmony with his surroundings. He began to think
of his wife and children as repulsive and became thoroughly disgusted with
their behavior.
I find this train of thought to occur in my mind of today. I just wish
that we could go back 150 years with what we know now and perhaps change
some of the decisions that were made. I also find myself utterly disgusted
with the ways of the world sort to speak. But we all know that we cannot
go back in time and change the world, for if we could we would have a lot
to do. What we can do though is try and reverse the effects of poor decisions.
We can strive to live harmoniously with our surroundings as they occur
in today’s world. We can use the knowledge and science that we do have
to make better decisions that will affect future generations.
Hannah Snyder Top
I find it ironic that title of this novel is The Living when somebody dies every chapter or so. It seems that death was a pretty acceptable part of life back in the 1800s which has made me think that people were better able to cope with death than they are today. Parents may have been almost used to their children dying in those days and in one part of the book, Hugh explained that when someone asked a woman how many children she had, she usually replied with "five children, three living" or something to that degree. Children lost their lives frequently for they were fragile and susceptible to disease. "A child’s death was a heartbreak — but it was no outrage, no freak, nothing not in the contract, and not really early, just soon" (pg. 136). Many babies died at birth as did women who were giving birth. Men died in accidents with falling trees, rivers, horses, fires or by sickness among other things.
People seemed to be dying everyday. It is my theory that parents could
handle the death of their children much better than they could today. For
one thing, since many women had lost children of their own, they could
comfort and relate to one another. It was Ada, who lost two of her children
and eventually two of her husbands, who reminded Minta right after she
had lost her own two children in a house fire that she "still had a child
living" who needed attention. If a child dies at birth today, it would
be considered a tragedy. The parents might never get over it. But in the
time period of this novel, very few people actually died of old age. Ada
was one character who did die of old age and she was only in her sixties.
The
Living, though it was an account of how the Puget Sound, particularly
Bellingham was settled, logged and turned into a town, was also a story
about family life and death. In my opinion, death was just easier to bare
in a time when so many people were dying.
Ian Kirouac Top
Living: having life, active functioning, exhibiting the life or motion
of nature, the condition of being alive- M Webster. It becomes difficult,
if not impossible, to explain and define living with out referring to,
and coming to grips with, the inevitable death we all face.
Excelling at this latter topic, inevitable death, Dillard paints a grim
picture in "The Living." Death finds most of the Whatcom settlers and natives
during the late 1800’s: under the wheel of a wagon, at the bottom of a
well- poisoned by gas, infected by typhoid or smallpox, melemoosed, staked
to the ground, burned up in a house fire, tied to a dock piling and left
to drown in the approaching tide, shot in the back through a bolted door,
attacked by a halibut, pushed off a cliff, cut in half by a tree, weighted
and sunk in the ocean, tried in front of judge lynch, and finally, ever
so rarely, of old age like Ada Fishburn Tawnes. The giant virgin timbers
are not exempt; chopped, burned, milled, and generally wished away- their
fate sealed by the ominous meeting between Frederick Weyerhauser and James
J. Hill.
Whatcom and Bellingham Bay area went through huge economic booms that
came with the gold rushes and population spikes and enormous depressions
following the failure of the gold standard and the assignment of the railroad
to Tacoma. Each time folks would start back from zero, splitting shakes,
picking hops, or if they we lucky enough, milking their cow, but life would
go on.
When Beal Obenchain finally tells Clare Fishburn, "I’m going to kill
you," after drawing his name at random from a hat, Clare and the reader
are forced to reflect on the greater meaning of life. Had it all been a
waste for Clare; the land company, his wife June, was he, " Just a man
among men?" How different would his life have been had he chosen the fork
in the road? Indeed how would anyone’s life be affected had we made different
decisions? Let he who waits until their deathbed to ask themselves the
meaning of life beware, "Death has opened up its mouth and consumed (us)
end to end as a cat eats a mouse."
Jacob Wilson Top
Annie Dillard’s the Living surprised me. Everyone I talked to who’d read it said it should be called the dying and was really depressing. A lot of people die, horrible things happen, but to me often the most beautiful things in life spring out of the most horrible. It could be because the simple beauties in the world are magnified, surrounded by ugliness. It’s could also be because of the heartbreakingly selfless acts that are performed in the face of tragedy. There were so many examples of both in the book. I was blown away by the humanity and accomplishment of many of the characters.
One great concept in the book was the universal struggle between the drive for progress and the longing for the simpler ways of the past. The most moving point in the book was when all the old-timers were huddled in the dark on the beach, staring into a campfire. Clare was playing his fiddle and someone started up singing, "Long Ago, Sweet Long Ago." Annie Dillard described it like this, "Each man and woman had seen the old ways lost in half a lifetime, and knew there never was a generation so pushed, spun, and accelerated by change as their own, and so nostalgic for a more innocent past, however fanciful" (358).
I know that nostalgia for a more innocent past. John Ireland chasing a fish out of an otter’s jaws, the simple beauty of a white horse rolling in a patch of wild strawberries, rowing in the black of night through the aqua-green fireworks of phosphorescence, and the confident self-reliance of those times. They lived those lives under constant awareness of death. The few who survived know that their lives and experiences are that much more valuable, in their scarcity.
In the end, when Hugh took the rope on the platform in pure darkness,
somehow shook off the nagging fear that wanted him idle, and rode it to
the hole in the forest filled with stars, I didn’t know what it meant.
But I could feel that experience, letting go of everything, flying into
the sky, but it’s the pond. It felt like life summed up, or the living.
Keegan Murphy
Top
This novel painted a very historically accurate picture in my mind
of how volatile life was towards the end of the nineteenth century. Children,
men and women died, families struggled and times changed. The characters
in this novel watched the beginning stages of the industrial revolution
invade the last frontier. Towns like Whatcom and Goshen at times prospered
and during other times utterly failed. Just as many of the families like
that of John Ireland Sharp, Clare Fishburn, Minta Honer and Glee Fishburn
rode the wave of economic instability along with the towns, up and down,
up and down. These families dealt with death, which seemed to be around
every corner. Children died in fires, grown men died at work, and some
died of old age, while others were murdered.
One part of this novel that I liked was how the author left Beal Obenchain’s death up in the air. Beal was found in the water on the mud flats, were the author last left him thinking to himself how his life was a failure. Which might lead you to believe that he took his own life. On the other hand, Johnny Lee was out in the woods with Walter and managed to stumble upon Beal’s home in the stump. Inside this stump Walter found a small tiger with coin in its mouth. Beal had taken the tiger from Johnny Lee’s brother when he tied him up to the wharf and left him die. Now this might lead you to believe that Johnny Lee killed Beal seeking revenge for the death of his brother. But the author never reveals how Beal actually died. I felt no sorrow when Beal died only happiness, because after his death Clare and June could relax after months of hanging in suspense after Beal threatened to kill Clare. Even though Beal had no actual intention of doing so.
I also liked how the author introduced the reader to each of the families one at a time. Then slowly interwove all of the families together into one story. This is when the novel began to pick up speed and become more complex and interesting. I particularly liked parts of this novel when the towns all came together to celebrate. Like the water fight between the two fire stations when the railroad first opened and when everyone picked up the Cleopatra and threw it into the water. Or when all the families got together and sat around a fire singing songs and Ada came galloping by on the horse and later said it seemed like a good night for ride.
I feel Annie Dillard did an outstanding job of connecting the reader
emotionally with the characters. I believe she was so successful in doing
so because throughout this book you would start to like a character then
he/she would die on you. So the reader then becomes even more attached
to the remaining characters and the reader feels sorrow for the families
who lost people.
Kelly Cannon Top
Annie Dillard’s descriptive writing style allows my imagination to take flight and I feel as if I am part of the scene in Whatcom County nearing the turn of the century. The events which take place form beginning to end of the book provide a feeling of progression from a small settlement struggling to break ground to a town with multiplying opportunities. While reading the book, I felt as if I was there, on my own piece of land, removing trees to build a house, tiling the soil with the hopes of growing vegetables.
I found a progression of the times coinciding with Dillard’s descriptions of the place and the people. In the start of the book, the people as well as the places seemed cold, hard and forbidding where toward the end of the book, there was more description of color, humor and light. As times got easier, or more resources became available, the descriptions turned away from the struggles of hardship to the struggles of morality. People had more time to think about what they were trying to do with their life in the present and for the future instead of just living day-to-day trying to stay alive.
Some questions the book brings up to me are
As far as conveying a message to pioneer settlers about ecology, I ma sure I would be shunned out of town as a crazy person. It seems like thinking outside the daily grind of getting by and how to possibly have a future for a family is the most forward thinking the majority of the people of that time have. To try to talk of saving trees when there is so many seems like arguing for more rocks in the vegetable garden.
Times have changed and today we take so much for granted. It is so easy
to romanticize about living off the land and having few material possessions.
However, we are all accustomed to having and getting almost anything we
want or need. The biggest thing I take form this book is to look around
and to be thankful that I get to live in the NW and that there are still
trees, salmon, sounds, rivers… and to take note of what these things look
like and to find beauty in my surroundings.
Kelly Stoddard Top
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Kevin Long Top
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Kevin Reis Top
As I began The Living, by Annie Dillard, I couldn’t help but want to
be living in the time of true frontier. As I kept reading and getting to
know the people in the book, Clare Fishburn, John Ireland Sharp, Ada, Clare’s
mother, I felt as though I was living in the 1800’s. Annie Dillard wrote
a good book on the settling of the Pacific Northwest. She blended the families
of these strong folks well. She made clear that life in that era wasn’t
exactly the paradise everyone thought it would be. Death seemed to be around
every corner, especially for Clare Fishburn.
A lot of research went into the book, it seems. It’s soaked in detail
on every page. The shark that Glee Fishburn caught, page 168, seemed to
be right in front of me. The way she described the weathering of the shark
on the beach had me smelling the salt water. I do feel, however, that there
weren’t enough pertinent historical facts. There could have been more about
the timber industry and railroads teaming up to buy land. She could have
talked about the politics of the area, what little there was anyhow.
The last half of the book got a little "soap opera" like. There was
a great focus on the way the town interacted socially. I felt that the
book was going to more on the lumber industry and not the lives of a few
folks. That’s when I started getting less interested.
The most striking parts of the novel were those of death. So many died
but families kept going on. On page 136, second paragraph, Annie Dillard
wrote, "All deaths were accidental, or none was, for disease was just as
random an accident as injury, and all die. None died prematurely, for death
battened on the living, and all those at any age." This holds true for
everyone, everywhere, anytime. With that quote I say that I would still
like to have been around back then.
Kevin Smith Top
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Lara Boyd Top
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Laura Garber Top
While reading The Living, by Annie Dillard, a few questions and
observations came to mind. When the first settlers of the Puget Sound area
were logging and clearing land to make their homes and farmlands, did they
realize the impact that they were creating on the land. I think that they
felt that they were improving the land by making it more civilized and
useful to them in what at the time they felt land was useful for, farming.
I found that the local Indians, the Lummis and the Nooksacks enjoyed helping
the settlers out and that the settlers and the Indians could live in harmony
with each other. They in fact befriended each other. I found this interesting
because most of the eastern states had driven the Indians off of their
lands and also many wagon trains used to get ambushed by local Indians.
So for people to come mostly from eastern states and to befriend the Indians
and to have both parts help and support each other was a really interesting
point for Dillard to make. It is also interesting that the first settlers
had to purchase the land from the local Indians and that the white settlers
did not just come in and claim land as their own. "It was Felix Rush who
had bought the land and obtained Chowitzit’s permission to build the mill
the settlement grew up around" (6).
One thing that I thought Dillard did well throughout the book was to
show the civilization of the Puget Sound region. The book starts off in
the region very forested, only a few settlers in Whatcom, 1855. "It was
the rough edge of the world, where the trees came smack down to the stones"
(1). She continues to show slowly how these first settlements became populated
and slowly turned into towns and cities. I really didn’t notice this until
halfway through the book when Whatcom had more citizens than Clare Fishburn
personally knew and there were houses and buildings all over and real estate
on the mud flats and the railroad form British Columbia coming in. In 36
years I assume most of the forested area in Whatcom was basically come
or at least a large amount of it diminished extremely. It’s amazing how
fast a city can grow in around 36 years.
Leif Wywadis
Top
Whenever I read a book like this it seems at no matter what point I
pick it up the story remains the same. Some of the first chapters are really
harsh and depict a time when someone over thirty years old is considered
an elder. I really enjoy reading about the schooners and different occupations
that came and went with time. Although the theme of death is consistent
throughout the story, I feel that it was accepted as a part of life. There
never seems to be a separation from the people to the Earth. What one may
consider adventurous now was a facet of life then.
The overall reading was very descriptive and I could really picture
the characters and settings. It sort of reminded me of books that I have
read by Mark Twain . While the characters seemed to drop like flies, other
characters were formed to keep things interesting. I thought the relations
between the Native Americans and the settlers were interesting also the
relations between different tribes. Plus the ways people lived according
to their geographic location.
Modes of transportation or lack of it really controls the development
of communities throughout this book. While boats and ships are used everyday
the pursuit to persuade the railroad is a strong push for the future. Without
these ways of transportation the communities or tribes or communication
in these areas could never have been established.
In this book seasons dictate the way people live or die in a really
raw form. The responsibility to prepare for different elements was a life
or death situation. Not one member of a tribe lacked responsibility, although
some of the tasks or chores may have varied the workload was shared by
all. A lot of faith was put into god or gods in hope for the health of
all. Many remedies and cures were based more on faith then on science.
Being a resident of Washington state for over twenty years I really enjoyed this story.
To read about the history (although fictional) was not only interesting
but gave me an idea of how things once were. Even though the story is based
one hundred years ago a lot of the realities they faced are still very
much present here today.
Linda Gibson Top
I enjoyed The Living author, Annie Dillard’s knowledge of Pacific Northwest forest, as well as the events occurring during this time period. But especially interesting, I thought, were the many tidbits of intriguing and sometimes, astounding, information. This paper is intended to be a freeform of comments and/or questions that I pondered while reading the book.
The book’s title seems to be in contrast with what many of the main characters did, which was die. These people, while being vital to the book and to the lives of the other characters, seem to die without warning or ceremony. This is intentional, I’m sure, to illustrate that living was hard and it was not uncommon, nor surprising, to die young or from accidental means.
Early in the book, the character Rooney’s mindset toward the forest is conveyed as his goal was "to crack the dome of shade and help the sunlight down" (pg 21). He and his neighbors worked hard at clearing the land for crops but not for timber sales since the trees were so plentiful and demand was quite low.
Interestingly, the brothel, "The Mad House" was built in Seattle on sawdust that had been dumped on tidelands in order to create a building site. I wonder if this was actually done and for how long the building would last. Sawdust would certainly decompose after a decade or so, leaving the building precariously roosting on the tidelands.
Did Rooney and George die, while in the newly dug well, of carbon dioxide or arsenic poisoning or another type of gas? Was this common?
Why were the Obenchain children so different? Was the author alluding to some genetic disease they may have possessed? Beal seemed to be a misshapen sociopath, but without any pointed cause from his upbringing. Nan, too, was strange although not in a murderous way. Beal’s plot to kill Clare, or not kill as it were, was a distraction and several times I caught myself wishing that his character had been omitted from the book.
In 1893, Frederick Weyerhaeuser and railroad baron, Jim Hill, were forming a business deal in which Weyerhaeuser was to purchase 900,000 acres of timber at $6 per acre from Hill, with low freight rates for the lumber heading east. Hill’s eastbound trains had been running empty and he was anxious to remedy the situation. Hill calculated that one acre of timber produced 40,000 feet of lumber and I wonder what an acre of timber produces now, on the average. Hill notes, on page 327, that its value compares with an acre of wheat but that the timber can only be harvested once while wheat can be harvested forever.
I found the ending to aptly represent life. Hugh Honer, while he doesn’t
like bathing, joins the other characters at midnight to rope swing into
the pond. He pushes himself out trembling into the unknown, unable to see
what’s ahead of him, and lets go to find himself falling into stars that
are reflected on the pond.
Lisa Fredrickson Top
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Mary Warner Top
Wow, this was a pretty incredible book. I really enjoyed the multiple
view approach that it took on many issues and I wish I had more time to
look at them more in depth. Although I really didn’t like Annie Dillard’s
writing style all that much, I did like how she covered a wide variety
of thoughts, styles, and cultures in a way that gave the reader a lot of
space to form their own opinions on the subjects covered.
Ok, so the first thing I notice in this book is obviously the number
of deaths that take place in this relatively short amount of time. I would
like to go through the book and count how many there are total. If you
look at the deaths in sort of a chronological order, you really can se
the influence of the times reflected. The first deaths are mostly due to
illness, injury, and hardship. As the book progresses, you get more normal
and freak accident deaths. You also start to see more deaths due to social
change and the effect of a lot of people coming together, obviously including
the hatred toward and therefore deaths of the Chinese. Another era of deaths
come as all the original colonial old-timers begin to die and the towns
get taken over by new settlers from other parts of the world. I thought
at one point Annie Dillard was going to kill of Clare too, just because
she could.
One thing about this book is it gave good insight into the lives of
the pioneers, how they thought about timber, how their lives depended on
it, and in turn, how all of our lives depend on it. It was interesting
to watch as the town went form two little shacks in an overwhelming forest
to lots of very substantial size towns that are more than still present
today. It also gave good history on the lives and characters of the people
and how they affected this area. The trees were not only looked at as a
nuisance, like in the beginning, but they began to also be looked at as
an investment; something that you could turn to when all of the rest of
your money was gone.
I’m still not sure how I feel about timber or agriculture and this book,
although entertaining, didn’t really help me move towards any points on
those subjects.
Matt Crawford Top
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Meagan Robison Top
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Patrick Coleman Top
The Living a novel by Annie Dillard seems to me to be a fair representation of how and why our region was settled in the latter part of the 19th century. People came here to start new lives in a place that was wild and distant from where they had come. They cleared the land for farms where crops would grow and the areas where they couldn’t farm they logged. Exploiting what they thought to be an endless supply of natural resources, namely timber. This thought that the early settlers had of "it will always be there" has always intrigued me. I realize that they no way of knowing the scale in which the timber would be harvested in the future, but I can’t help but wonder what we would have left if they hadn’t wasted so much timber back then. In the book when Dillard was describing how Eustace Honer would burn down the trees then section them up and pull them into the field with oxen and burn them just amazed me. What is more amazing to me is that it is very likely that this really did happen. Big trees like what were described as being more or less nuisances or in the way are now coveted and are just plain and simple a rarity. I just can’t fathom looking at a stand of old-growth Douglas-fir tree and thinking that I wished it wasn’t there.
On a lighter note, I felt Dillard did an excellent job describing the
people, their trials and tribulations, and the way they tamed our region
in the name of progress.
Ray Gleason
Top
This book covered the years from 1855-1897; it made me
very interested in the beginning, as I hoped for a historical epilogue
of the timber industry. In the end it was disappointing to find this novel
being mostly a drama between characters and less historical than I’d hoped.
The first part of the story when there was no roads/railways in the Washington
Territory and almost all newcomers arrived by boat was an interesting concept
that had never crossed my mind; it must have been a muddy mess trying to
unload the people/cargo in this undeveloped land. The wet clay soils would
have deteriorated quickly with much use in wet conditions, and the story
sounded like wet was consistent. The description of trying to clear land
for farming seemed an intense challenge with fire being their best and
or only tool to use, especially the idea of drilling holes in the lower
bole of the tree and dropping in hot embers from a fire to burn the trees
so that they would fall over, then started the real work of trying to burn
the logs and brush. I cannot fathom the time and energy that this must
have taken.
The characters seemed to die a lot and the plot
focused on different characters back and forth at the beginning of the
story this caused me to have a difficult time getting very interested in
the overall character scene until they killed each other a bit (the Indian
tension and The Clare and Beal Obenchain conflict).
I was surprised at the amount of travel that was
done between the eastern states and the Washington Territory the travel
seemed difficult and expensive, it seemed to me it would be likely that
a person would go one way or the other and stay there.
The short section dealing with Frederick Weyerhaeuser
and James Hill made me think that a section on logging history was soon
to come but the section seemed too short and never amounted too much of
the total story.
Over all I am not impressed with this book it may
entice the romantics or dialogue lovers, but I enjoy more of a factual
or scientific subject to read and keep my interest. I even believe that
the photo on the cover could not have been from the era during which this
book is to have covered, since the four-peg and raker saws really weren’t
available until the early 1900’s (this is in conclusion to my studies of
saw history).
Rebecca Leach Top
really enjoyed reading this novel. I was very surprised to hear in seminar that the majority of the people thought that the book ‘dragged.’ I found myself wanting to read every word. It only took a few words in the book to find a lot of depth and insight.
A question that was in my mind throughout the reading was Where did Annie Dillard get her information and history? The book is so full of details that I cant imagine that she made it all up. Which parts are fiction and which parts based on facts?
Some ideas that I thought related to our class and topics we have discussed: toward the end of ChapterXI, there was a mention of Miss Arilla Pulver’s family dying of typhoid fever from the public reservoir. "The city fathers, who possessed private wells, would not raise taxes to filter the common water, lest they inhibit industrial growth, so typhoid fever ran from the tap in the yard." This problem was addressed in last week’s reading by Sagoff, the problem of self interest vs the public interest, and who makes the decisions.
Then, toward the end of Chapter XVII, where Clare is showing Eustace how to burn down trees- "It was purely worthless, all this tonnage of tree...there was four houses’worth of knot-free lumber in each tree, but buying milled lumber was cheaper- if you had more money than time- than getting the trunks to the mill." Could this be an example of weighing the marginal social cost vs the marginal social benefit?
I thought that the story of deporting Chinese immigrants in Chapter XIV was a good example of how much control the media has over the overall mentality of the public. This control is something I have been especially pondering lately, with all the War talk going on. In the same chapter a description is also given that demonstrates the way that rich and/or city folk define laws that apply to the poor and non-cityers. This is the way it worked then and now, and throughout the world, in so-called democratic societies. Only certain voices are heard (usually).
As I read this book, I wondered what the native people
there thought about the clearing of the land. I wonder about trees
that grow so close together that you need to turn sideways to pass by.
I was thinking about the way our culture is that we adapt the land
to us instead of adapting ourselves to the land. They wanted to farm
so they move the trees. There had been people living there for a
long long time that never had to do that to survive. Maybe agriculture
worked where they came from, but obviously isnt the best method in thick
forest land. Now there are cities in Arizona desert land that get
their water from California. I took away from this book the idea
that a lot of things happen in basically the same context now as
did then, just different on the surface.
Richard Dunn Top
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Sarah Lowry
Top
This is a beautiful book! The most glorious quote from it, one that
will stick with me for years to come, is on page 76:
"Overhead the hard stars uttered their gibberish from horizon to horizon. How loose he seemed to himself, under the stars! The spaces between the stars were pores, out of which human meaning evaporated."
Other than falling in love with the language and the lilt of the storytelling in this book, I appreciated the roundabout and subtle way that feeling of the historical time, the ideologies, and the mindset of the settlers is conveyed through the personal narratives. For me, this book compared favorably to a history textbook because I usually forget the specifics and details in the former and only end up remembering the broad patterns and general flow of the historical trends. The Living powerfully conveyed the feeling of the times through which it took place.
When the first white settlers arrived at Whatcom, and for several decades after, the struggle for survival was primal and all consuming. The white settlers felt themselves tiny, frail, and horribly humbled before the raw natural power of the place that they were trying to make their home. Ada recalls this feeling with the scripture: "The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low…" (p 25). Minta reads another scripture that reflects human frailty on this planet (p 135):
"Is it he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants therof are as grasshoppers…Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown; yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble"
Death is everpresent and not at all out of the ordinary for these new
settlers. Dillard describes "the linds of thrift that life’s tight conditions
imposed, its high interest payments" (p 150) Living means enduring. The
prevailing mentality amongst the settlers is that they must struggle against
nature to make their living. Being able to understand this perspective,
upon which the white settlement of this part of the country was founded,
is very useful in making sense of how things got to be the way they are
today. In the beginning of whites’ habitation here, the forests were simply
too large and powerful and adversarial to be seen as places of inherent
beauty, worth, and sacredness.
Another wise and tasty tidbit from this book is on page 147: "…a man
could be any sort at all, if he could carry it off. Men would measure him,
at bottom, not by his qualities, but by this one quality alone, the degree
to which he carried it off."
Si Bussmann Top
Good Sense
From The Living one can extract a good sense of the attitudes toward nature during the latter half of the 19th century. It can be said that many of the attitudes toward nature and the development of the practice of Ecology have been highly influenced by these early interactions.
The text is a very helpful model in understanding United States policies toward forested areas. If we assume that the point of view taken by many of the early settlers described in The Living persisted into the early part of the 20th century, it doesn’t bewilder why we might still, as a country, treat forests largely as untapped resources for economic growth.
It is a compliment to the author that the book, riddled with the influences of many types of decay and death, is not a tragedy. It is almost comical to find that at the end of the book, the characters, although little better their worst times find solace in simply enjoying the place they have lived and strove their entire lives to make as human as possible. Of the first two generations it seems as many die as survive among the pioneers. Several characters who become obsessed with death can trace many of the deaths they witness to the struggle against nature. The chance of death at the hands of nature vilifies it in the eyes of the settlers. Often in the pursuit of property and money, the characters are negligent to the contradictions they create. For it is not nature that causes their death, it often their choice, a personal challenge they have undertaken, in attempting to survive as near a autonomous community in the Pacific Northwest. They fail to acknowledge their oversights veiled by zeal. A good specific example of one contradiction is the regions views toward the Chinese. This ethnic group was treated much like the forests- as a resource. As the country large supplies of inexpensive labor, as the demand for that labor decreased the communities and corporations who employed the Chinese refused to tolerate their presence. Whatcom, as a community, went so far as to pay for their removal. Later, in Seattle, a Japanese steamboat company receives a celebrated welcome.
Although I did not share the same attitudes as the characters in the
book, I found it an excellent resource in understanding a point of view.
It should also be said that the way we live our lives has changed more
drastically then have our views of nature. More relevantly, our ability
to exploit available natural resources has increased exponentially while,
collectively, our desire to do so has changed little in the past hundred
years
Stacey Godin Top
When first reading Anne Dillard’s, The Living, the writing
style was a bit confusing. However, as the story progressed, I found her
choice for words vivid and even motivating to keep reading forward.
Her character portrayal was well thought out, with each character having
a specific role in the documented progression of the Puget Sound region.
It seemed that she found a place for every type of person that may have
helped mold Bellingham into what it is today. From Ada and Clare
Fishburn, the new Eastern settlers inhibiting the deep forests of Whatcom,
to the Lummi and Nooksack Indians who befriended the white settlers and
fought for their land rights among others, to Hugh and Minta Honer, the
wealthy Baltimore settlers with their flourishing hop fields. Each
person told a story of significance for the living and the dead.
Dillard’s ruthless impacts on death were also interesting.
She could describe in one moment a women’s dress to be delicate, soft,
and flowing, then in the next paragraph describe poor Beal Oberchain’s
young disturbing behavior of pulling on a deer’s intestines while still
alive. Death in this novel seemed to be very real, not in a dramatic
sense. For me, it reminded me of the perspective on why we have such
an overpopulation density in our country today. Granted family sizes
in the 1800’s were a lot larger, but the surviving young and old were few
in between. Today, we have modern machinery or medicine to help ensure
a long and plentiful human life. Back then it seemed likely that
you would loose a family member to the harsh forests by the time you were
an adult at 16 years of age.
Another impact of the novel for me was the rate
at which Whatcom grew. It seemed like the society of a few hard working
people who wanted to live sustain ably off of the resources the Pacific
Northwest had to offer them, turned into money driven communities raping
the future of the forest. I am not sure if Dillard’s writing is accurate
to how things really did develop in Whatcom, but I get the sense that although
the specifics of her story was fictional, the overall gist was accurate.
I could see why and how people who moved here wanted to make it rich, and
what better way to do so then off of lumber or fishing. At the time
it must have seemed like such a replenish able resource. However,
what they did not realize is that they set the mark for future generations
with the same taste for easy money off of the land, but who now have the
intelligence and machinery to do so quicker and easier. I wonder
what Ada and Rooney Fishburn would say about Whatcom today if they could
travel in time to 2001.
T. J. Merrell Top
I found the use of death by Dillard to be an important to the development in the story. This seemed to come from the affects it had on the characters as well as being a reminder to the reader that death loomed heavily over the settlers that lived in the Pacific Northwest. The first major reference to death comes from the Fishburns and can be found on the first page of the book. This example sets the mood of the entire book as one of struggle to overcome hardship in order to prosper and grow. Even with this tragedy in the beginning of the book the author uses it to depict the type of people that the Fishburns are.
The other reason for the large number of deaths in the book is that settlers faced death on an every day basis that would make most people now living in Bellingham think twice before leaving there homes. The constant reminder of death in the book is used to put you in to the same state that the settlers would face. This can be seen from a modern standpoint that even in our own lives we face death constantly but we see it as a calculated risk that must be taken to accomplish anything.
Along with death Annie Dillard uses beautiful
descriptions of nature to point out how the landscape has changed over
the hundred fifty odd years since when the stories took place. Dillard
adds a number of descriptions of the process of nature that seem to mimic
either the story or the history of the events. One such description is
the one on page 91 that tells how the Nooksack River starts this particular
description is interesting because it mirrors the way the west was colonized.
A single person set out west and along the way they passed the idea on
as they moved. More people stared migrating and by the time they reached
the west coast they had started an irreversible flow that hooked people
and pulled both their hopes and fears west with the setting sun into the
last great American wilderness.
Thomas Kolb Top
Pihos, has been dead all these long years, of two. Trevor almost six."
As if reading off a text within own head,
My eyes look to scan the road ahead.
Book speaks of death. Death present, past, and all around.
Death has again been allowed to sink back into the distance.
Happiness regained and memories of a loved one, in a far off western place, not gone but in the back recesses of healing minds.
Death present, past and all around; Death Future.
Scared lovers cry for lost memories and lost friends,
Holding on in parking lot Spanish nights.
Don’t die drowning this year, okay?
Pleading eyes peer up from silence and my heart is ripped thru mouth and onto chest, lays dripping bloody, and needs to be cried clean near a church.
Cried clean on memories of death.
Death present, past and all around, but not now.
In the future, okay, if I have too, but now.
For right now this life is to live,
And memories of past slip again into the past, present, and all around.
This poem came from reading passages from the novel by Annie Dillard
in the selection of pages ranging from 120-138. And this poem came from
experiencing the death of two close friends (Trevor Aurand and Michael
Pihos) in the past six years. Michael Pihos, in a tractor accident while
we worked at a farm near the Nevada/California border. It also comes from
experiences of good times, that I feel show healing in my self.
Travis Loucks Top
No Paper Submitted
Tyler Knapp Top
I found Dillard’s writing to be very descriptive and beautiful, conveying the faces of the characters, and the sounds of the rain dripping through the trees. It is interesting and compelling how she wrote a story that covered a broad time period, and showed the expansion of a small frontier town, and the intricate lives of the people who came and went, or stayed and died, all based on a small amount of historical facts. This style of writing seems to allow the reader to become entrenched in what the people were thinking, their motivations, and their surroundings, much more so than a regular history book, and possibly even personal journal, which would only give one perspective.
I wonder though, if Dillard is assuming too much of what pioneers thought and did, or if that is inherent in the fictitiousness of the story? Does this type of writing allow for more personal history and insight (although false) than a true biography, history, or journal, or does it give us a false picture of the lives and thoughts of the people in Whatcom, and could they have been completely different? Is this a relevant question?
Did the settlers slowly become more and more disconnected with the land
and the natives as they built up civilization in the wilderness, or were
they distant and closed off to begin with?
V.J. Gomez Top
A Treacherous History
This novel was a treacherous one, and although I
had a tough time getting through pages I felt it had an important significance.
Being new to this area, it was good for me to learn about how Puget Sound
was settled and what the early settlers went through and in turn began
to shape the area to what it is today.
A recurring theme in the novel was death, and how nearly
every character seemed to either lose a limb or die, save a few.
It’s hard to imagine seeing your son being trampled by your own wagon wheel,
or your husband dying from some mysterious gas deep in a well. What
those people went through back then really made me realize how easy most
of us have it today.
Most of the early settlers came here with nothing more
than what they could carry in a wagon, and were then faced with having
to make a living and stay alive, and to even prosper somewhere along the
way. Many of the settlers became friends with the Natives and learned
most of what they knew from them. The difference was that the
Native tribes knew how to live in their surroundings as a part of their
surroundings, not as a superior to their surroundings. They lived
off the land, conformed to the land, as opposed to shaping the land to
suit their needs. The white people were the ones who truly saw the
land as a means for achieving economic prosperity, and this was shown throughout
the book repeatedly. If the white settlers saw a tree, they wanted
to cut it down, to "conquer" their natural surroundings. They saw
the forest as a sort of enemy, and I understand why after reading this
book. They saw so many of their family members and friends die or
become wounded as a result of logging or building etc. and came to see
the forest as something that had to go, that was a sort of evil superpower.
It was in the way. To them trees meant wood and money, cleared forests
meant good soil to grow crops, and rivers meant drinking water, fish, and
transportation. They had no idea that it would lead to the
levels of destruction that is has today.
I was also surprised to learn about the "removal" of
the Chinese, as well as the fact that most settlers seemed to be peaceful
with the Natives and in many cases good friends with them. It was
odd to see that one of the only savage groups mentioned in the novel was
the Thompson tribe. In most history books (don’t worry I don’t believe
a word of them anyway), the Natives are the white man’s natural enemy,
and all of them are portrayed as savages.
This book was definitely a difficult read, and I felt
that Annie Dillard used a bit more imagery and detail than was necessary.
The whole thing could have been condensed into about 200 pages and I probably
would have gotten the same things out of it. I also would have
liked more dialogue and central characters, but she did a good job of portraying
the trials the early settlers in this area went through and definitely
made me understand a little more about why the Puget Sound area is this
way today.
Will Dezan Top
Overall I found The Living, by Annie Dillard, difficult to read.
I appreciated the descriptions of the Puget Sound prior to extensive development
and population. They were interesting and helpful in understanding some
of the history behind how the sound has come to its present state, physically,
economically, and socially. Other then the historical fiction aspect of
the novel, Dillard’s extensive ramblings, which often seemed out of place
and interrupting to the story’s flow, frustrated me and tried my patience
as a reader.
I found one connection early in the story that did catch my attention.
On page 55 Dillard writes, "Blood continued to flow thick over the ground…John
Ireland’s father took a step back when it reached his boot, then after
a pause stepped forward again, John Ireland saw the blood run under the
boot’s toe." Then after the surveying party returned from the mountains
the effect was reiterated in a passage on page 59 while John Ireland stood
at the water’s edge. "He looked at the toe of his boot. All that would
start up again, like a riptide, and sweep him away. He did not know if
he wanted to step back from it, or, step into it." These descriptions animated
the uncertainty surrounding the settlers’ lives, particularly in aspects
of death and failure. Both of which seemed to constantly sweep over the
settlements.
I would have liked to hear more historical descriptions in the story.
Those that were provided caught my interest but were quickly buried in
the fictitious drama of the settlers’ lives. Somewhere after page 200 I
had to force myself to continue reading and felt the book lost much of
its relevance to our class’s content.