Help Me Please! I Beg Of You! (1 Viewer)

[ryan011086]

this is an assessment essay i have that is due wed, it took me about 3 hours to get what i have so far and i cant get n e more, its like trying to get blood from a stone, my mind has finally overloaded, crashed and burned. any help at all would be much apreciated PLZ!!!!!!!!!!!

here is the question

Consider the issues of “Retreat from the Global” suggested by the following extract from The Shipping News:

“Quoyle lay in the heather and stared after her, watching the folds of her blue skirt erased by the gathering distance. The aunt, the children, Wavey. He pressed his groin against the barrens as if he were in union with the earth. His aroused sense imbued the far scene with enormous importance. The small figures against the vast rock with the sea beyond. All the complex wires of life were stripped out and he could see the structure of life. Nothing but rock and sea, the tiny figures of human and animals against them for a brief time.
The sharpness of his gaze pierced the past. He saw generations like migrating birds, the bay flecked with ghost sails, the deserted settlements vigorous again, and in the abyss nets spangled with scales. Saw the Quoyles rinsed of evil by the passage of time. He imagined the aunt buried and gone, himself old, Wavey stooped with age, his daughters in faraway lives, Herry still delighted by wooden dogs and coloured threads, a grizzled Herry who would sleep an a north room at the top of the house or in the little room under the stairs.
A sense of purity renewed, a sense of events in trembling balance flooded him.
Everything, everything seemed encrusted with portent.”

Discuss in what ways Quoyle’s thoughts contained here are a reflection of your knowledge and understanding of how the broad range of aspects of a retreat from the global are represented in the novel as a whole as well as material of your own choosing.



and this is what i have got as an answer so far


Through the realisation of ones own awareness of the smallness of one human being set against the great vastness of humankind, social change, earth, sea, and time. Seeing himself as such a small entity in part of a grander, greater system of life Quoyle reflects what I believe to be some the more beneficial aspects of the retreat in ‘The Shipping News’. However this realisation of ones place in the greater scheme of things is a universal theme and can be identified in such texts as the song ‘Imaginary’ by Evanescence as well as the poem ‘The Domesticity of Giraffes’ by Judith Beveridge.

Up until this moment in the novel Quoyle had faced some of the greatest hardships imaginable, the death of his parents, the loss of his only friends, loosing his job the death of his wife, a near drowning and finding a severed head in a floating suitcase. In a book, which often seems somewhat bleak, this is a moment of pure joy in the miracle of life. It is in this moment of existentialism that we see all of the aspects of the retreat in the novel accumulate and be expressed in such a ways as to be truly appreciated. Not just by Quoyle, but by the reader as well.

 

[glitterfairy]

I'm sorry if this is a little late, but here are some other things you can try (sorry for vagueness, I don't really know Shipping News that well! lol)

-somewhere in the book someone says something about four women in everyone's life- the fiery one, the maternal one, the quiet one, the loud one- it's pretty easy to draw links to characters in the book. I think it's important to see Wavey, the kids and the aunt together because they represent three of the women in his life.

-there also seems to be a lot of emphasis on how small the people are, and how vast the ocean is. This re-emphasises the greatness etc etc of the local values. Family, nature. Un-materialistic values.

-It also talks about the quoyle house being cleansed. Remember how the house "shackled onto the rock" fell into the ocean? It didn't belong there. The elements and the land got rid of it. Here you can talk about the power of the elements, the ruggedness of the terrain. And in this passage, it looks at the beauty of the land as well. How beautiful it is before it is contaminated by globalisation.

-And then finally, after having this little epiphany, Quoyle sees the light at the end of a tunnel. He sees himself and Wavey growing old together, still in little Killick-Claw. For someone like Quoyle, this is a big thing. He's seeing the future, he's seeing a happy future. none of this would have been possible if he was still living and working in the city. It's only here that Quoyle's able to realise himself as a human being, able to develop some self-confidence in his own abilities. All this when he has retreated from the global.

Your essay is on the right track, but you need to give some examples. I think the second paragraph is great for an overview, you just need to break it down. Probably each sentence or two could be the inspiration for an entire paragraph. I would watch your first sentence though- "Through the realisation of ones own awareness of the smallness of one human being set against the great vastness of humankind, social change, earth, sea, and time." should probably by extended to "Through the realisation of ones own awareness of the smallness of one human being set against the great vastness of humankind, social change, earth, sea, and time, __________________________________".

Best wishes!