Writing Assignment

For your initial post, you should choose one or two (preferably just one) of the following 
prompts from either story/poem (that is, your initial post can deal with just one of the stories).  You are encouraged to participate in discussion of multiple texts by making sure that at least one of your replies to your peers deals with the text/s you did not address in your initial post.
 
For your initial post, please create your own thread.  For your response posts due later in the week, please “reply” to your peers (that is, don’t create your own thread for that part). 
 
NOTE:  You will not be able to read or reply to posts UNTIL you have posted your initial post.
The Way to Rainy Mountain

The author gives physical description of each place where the Kiowa lived or journeyed through.  What description does he give of each?  What dominant impression (a primary mood or feeling) does he seem to express or feel about each place?  Refer to specific words, phrases, and sentences and discuss how those illustrate the dominant impression.  (Dont try to do all of the places he mentions in one post.  Pick one or two and give some details on each). 

Momaday develops the concepts of isolation and community throughout his essay.  Where do we see isolation or loneliness in the text?  Where do we see community?  Does he seem to prefer one to the other?    Does one seem to dominate the other?
In paragraph 16, the author spends some time talking about a cricket and the moon.  What does this passage mean?

Once More to the Lake

Whites essay has excellent use of diction (word choice).  In paragraph 5, White uses the word illusion to describe the feeling of transposing positions with his son.  What is an illusion?  White uses several other words throughout the essay that have a similar connotation (look up this word if you dont know it) to illusion.  In each of paragraphs 3 and 6-10, White uses at least one word or phrase that seems to have the same kind of suggestion as illusion.  What are those words, and why do you think White has described the lake, its atmosphere, and his reaction using those kind of words?
White mentions roads several times.  Where does he do this, and why do you think he seems to think roads are important?  What might roads represent?  Are there any other similar images or (possibly) symbols which operate in a similar manner to the image of the roads?
Perhaps the most important theme in the essay is that of time.  What conclusions do you think White comes to about the processes of time and change?  To help sharpen your thinking about this, you can think about the following sub-questions (though you dont need to answer all of these).  Is the process of change good or bad?  Is it inevitable or avoidable?  Is the process of change for a human being different from the lake itself?  It could be useful here to look at the words or phrases which White uses to describe the lake and its atmosphere.
Finally, and perhaps fitting similar to the last question, how are we to interpret the last line of the essay?  It seems relatively negative in light of the rest of the essay.  To sharpen this answer a bit, look up the word mutability.  How does this essay deal with the mutability of humans beings, and how has White hinted at that issue throughout the essay before we even get to the last line?

The Poems

Discuss the concept either of change OR of disappointment in one or both of these poems.  If you discuss change, what has changed, why, and how does/do the speaker/s feel about that change?  If you discuss disappointment, what is the source of that disappointment, and how does the speaker react to it?