A+Mountain+Journey

Short Stories - Literary Devises Title: A Mountain Journey

Point of View: Third Person (Omniscient/Limited?)

Protagonist:Dave Conroy What type of character is the Protagonist?  Flat ,Dynamic

Antagonist: Environment

Describe the setting. Northern Ontario, Canada In the late 1700’s The mood is tense,

Type of Conflict: Man vs. Environment

Describe the main conflict: Dave Conroy struggles against the harsh and freezing environment.

Describe the Climax of the Story: Once he sits down to rest, he is unable to get up again and he thinks about what he was supposed to accomplish.

We think that this is the climax because rising action was at it’s highest point of rising action when he froze his fingers and had to start climbing. After, he decides to sit down and rest, and there is no further action and nothing new is introduced for the rest of the short story.

How does the Protagonist change over the course of the story? At the beginning, he was tired yet confident, and he did not think he needed the rest. By the end, he was disappointed and his morale was crushed once he discovered his burnt down cabin, Dave also had to persevere when his hands and feet were frozen; as he had no other choice.

<span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Describe the relationship between the title and the theme. <span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Title: “A Mountain Journey” <span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Theme: Taking Risks <span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">The title and theme are related as a journey can be greatly altered by the risks you take.

<span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">How does the main conflict help to illustrate the theme? <span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Main conflict: Harsh Environments (What about the internal conflict?) <span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Theme: Taking Risks <span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">He’s up against natural forces which can easily kill him if he does not make the right decisions.

<span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">How does the climax help to illustrate the theme? <span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Climax: Dave taking a rest forced by exhaustion <span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Theme: Taking risks <span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Dave would not be exhausted if he hadn’t been so greedy and hasty in making his decisions. He risked making one trip to MacDonald and MacMoran to deliver the fur.

<span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Give examples of each of the following literary terms in the story (use quotes):

<span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Simile: “Black as ink” -Referring to the moon’s shadows.

<span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Metaphor: “The cold was an old man’s fingers feeling craftily through his clothes.”

<span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Personification: A tree was a strong and lonely women to give him protection.

<span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Symbol: “A strong and lonely woman”- It represented shelter, warmth, and protection. Dave was too greedy and confident, he decided to continued on his journey to find better shelter.

<span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Foreshadowing (give both elements):

<span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">1. “He knew as he stood on the summit he should have made camp two miles back in the timber and crossed the divide in the morning.”

<span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">2. “But no log walls rose to greet him. No closed door waited for his touch to open. He stood in the middle of the clearing where the cabin had been, hemmed about by swaying pine trees.” <span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">This is a piece of foreshadowing as it hints that he regrets his decision of making camp back in time. So it has a small hint that he may not find shelter as easily as he thought. It is ironic that his cabin was burnt down and he had no shelter in sight for him to rest.

<span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Irony:

<span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Situational Irony-“But no log walls rose to greet him. No closed door waited for his touch to open. He stood in the middle of the clearing where the cabin had been, hemmed about by swaying pine trees.” <span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">-He bypassed different shelter opportunities and took huge risks to get to his warm cabin, and when he arrived, he found that it had been burnt down.

<span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Imagery: “He heard streaming river water. He heard a wide brown river running over mossy boulders between low banks of grass and willow. Across the valley he saw a cottage he had never seen before-a white cottage, low-roofed, with green trees.” -This is a great piece of imagery as this paragraph is well-described and gives you different different sense of hearing and sight.

<span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">Describe the relationships between the class theme and the story.

<span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">The class theme is choices and it relates well to the story's theme which is taking risks. Risks are mainly choices that can lead to reward or consequence. Dave Conroy's first risk was to bypass a tree for shelter and keep going towards a cabin instead. His second was to keep traveling when he fell in the river and got his hands and feet wet instead of making a fire right there. His first decision gave him more choices. In the end the risks he took, the choices he made, did not pay off because the cabin has burnt down. He made the wrong choices and that lead to a chain reaction of choices that in the end, got him killed. Completion 5/5 Effort 4.5/5 Content 4/5 total 13.5/15

<span style="display: block; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; letter-spacing: 0px; margin: 0px;">__**Character sketch**__

In "a Mountain Journey" By Howard o'Hagan, Dave Conroy is a trapper that travels far to trap while being affected by his own character traits. Dave's first trait is that he is hasty, if he had not been so hasty then he would have stopped to think and reason about his decisions he could have stopped his hands from getting frozen when he fell in the river and saved himself in the end. His second trait is that he procrastinates, because if he had stopped when he had planned to before the summit then the events that followed wou ldn't have happened. The best example of this is as follows: "As he stood on the summit he knew he should have made camp two miles back in the timber before he crossed the divide in the morning." His most important trait is that he is easily tempted, for he had many chances to stop and save himself but the thought of being nice and warm out of the elements made him keep going. the best example of this last trait is when the narrator says Dave's thoughts of: " He should stop, make a fire, dry his hands and feet, change his socks and mittens. But it was late. It would mean siwashing for another night underneath a tree. A biting wind was driving the mist back up the valley and the sun westering behind the ranges threw long feeble shadows across the snow. He was less than three miles from the cabin, and the promise of its warmth and comfort would not let him stop.". If Dave had taken the chances he was given instead of succumbing to temptation, procrastinating, and acting hastily he would have survived all the way back home.

5.5/6- Matthew made some decent inferences and his response seemed well thought out. He also went into depth for each character trait he had, Matthew used good examples and quotes from the story, which is the reason I gave him a 5.5.

Good topic sentence. Try to integrate your quotes more smoothly into your writing. Good conclusion.

5/6