Narrative techniques

Narrative techniques function as the art of storytelling. In Into the Wild, Jon uses a unique technique to describe events, specifically transporting through time, and uses it to introduce or connect multiple ideas or thoughts. However, I discovered that at the very beginning when I was reading the first four chapters. He starts to speak about MacCandless and how he started his off-land life. Then he moves and starts to speak about the history of Alaskan terrain. After going through more chapters, I realized that Jon is using this method to create meaning through language and make it more comprehensive for the reader.


In addition, it makes you feel that in some occasions, the story precedes the events to add meaning to the current circumstances, which enabled him to provide us with a narrative summary about historical events in a couple of paragraphs, in this way, the reader does not get bored by reading long history lesson! But at the same time, making sure that all the important details are included in that couple of paragraphs.

THEMES

In the book into the wild, there is more then one theme, for example character development, companionship, the wanderer, freedom and loneliness.

I am going to write about some of these themes. One significant theme in into the wild is the deep and secret alienation that Chris felt for his parents. He was very angry at him, although his complaints are clear.

FREEDOM

McCandless was looking for a place that he wanted to live in it completely alone, in a world where the only law he felt the need to follow are those of nature, is to him ultmate freedome and he wanted to be away and freedom from other people's rules.

The allure of danger and high-risk activities is central to Into the Wild. Krakauer does not believe that this allure is significant to everyone, but it certainly is to a specific kind of young man -- one who is intense, passionate, driven and ambitious, but not satisfied with the opportunities or challenges society presents to him. These young men also always seem to have some kind of demon driving them, whether it is a troubled relationship with their fathers, as with McCandless, Krakauer, and John Waterman, or something else.

ACTION

Some information that advanced the plot in into the wild.

Throughout the many years he spends on the road, McCandless meets and affects many people, though never long enough have a lasting impact or be lured away from his wandering. Citing classic hermits and renouncers of society such as Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, McCandless decides to live in the wild, without the advents of human society. Living in a bus in the midst of the Alaskan wilderness with nothing more than some basic supplies, McCandless keeps a careful diary of his time, his thoughts, and his reasons for fleeing from society.

Eventually, he makes the decision to return to society, but is unfortunately forced to return to his bus by a swollen river. In his final days, McCandless is weakened by hunger and the cold. He spends a little more than 100 days in the wild, all the while being suspected of causing damage on local cabin owners’ land, and finding himself stuck in his situation. He writes often of his reasons, but eventually decides that nature is only a refuge for a short while, that true happiness can only be shared with others. In 1992, moose hunters in the Alaskan wild found McCandless’s body partially decomposed in his bus, the diaries and meager supplies still nearby. Initially, many thought he died from confusing potato seeds with a poison type of pea.

Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb

Peter Robb, who lived in southern Italy for fifteen years, tells the story of Sicily, its opulent coasts, its stark interior, its extraordinary art and rich food, and its layers of culture from east and west. Sicily is also the home of the mafia and Midnight in Sicily shows the grip of organized crime on daily life in Italy’s south and the mafia’s ties to government in Rome, following the career of Giulio Andreotti - seven times prime minister of Italy and now appealing a conviction for conspiracy to murder. The book moves from art to crime to food with tremendous narrative verve and a mass of surprizing detail. Since its first publication in Australia in 1996, Midnight in Sicily has been published in many countries and languages.

CHARACTERIZATION

Information about Christopher McCandless

The purpose of Jon Krakauer’s book is to address the matter of young Christopher McCandless and his odd seclusion from society and a lifestyle that was all most people could ask for. Coming from a well-to-do background in the Washington D.C. area, McCandless always had privileges that few can claim. McCandless was just entering society, having graduated from Emory University, with more than $25,000 in savings and a family that loved him. The question of why he would completely break contact with all that he knew, give away everything he owned, and disappear to the Alaskan wilderness as a homeless man for two years drives Krakauer’s work.

Throughout the many years he spends on the road, McCandless meets and affects many people, though never long enough have a lasting impact or be lured away from his wandering. Citing classic hermits and renouncers of society such as Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, McCandless decides to live in the wild, without the advents of human society. Living in a bus in the midst of the Alaskan wilderness with nothing more than some basic supplies, McCandless keeps a careful diary of his time, his thoughts, and his reasons for fleeing from society.

MY OWN RESPONSE

According to the story that is talking about a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name wasChristopher Johnson ... Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter, that mean we should to ask our self why he did that?

I think Alex went to Alaska to challenge him self against an unforgiving wilderness, to be away from people and to live alone. He wanted to adventure and his life was taking risks, experiencing nature and discovering freedom.

I think Alex was searching for the true self. Also, in my opinion he was even particularly, just stupid, tragic and inconsiderate.

Do you think it was worth it for McCandless to drive himself to this position?

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn consists of 43 chapters and is told in the first person with Huck Finn telling the story. The book divides into three sections. The first sections has Huck living his Miss Watson and her sister in civilization. During the second section, Huck travels down the river with Jim. In the last section, Huck returns to civilization and lives with Tom in Uncle Silas’ farm. An organizational object in the book is the river which serves as a timeline for the book. (summarycentral.tripod.com)

The first section introduces Huck and his current life living with Miss Watson and Later with his father. This section ends were Huck fakes his death and flees to Jackson Island.
In the second section, Huck meets Jim at the island and starts down the river when they find out that Jim is being searched for. Huck runs from civilization and Jim runs from slavery. This section ends when both Jim and Huck make it to Uncle Silas’ farm.
The third sections takes place at the farm and continues to the end of the book.
Although the book divides itself into three sections, it does not divide itself to neatly into rising action, climax and conclusion since the book consists of several adventures with its own rising action, climax, and conclusion. It is difficult to label a single point as the climax.
The book clearly starts with the exposition where Huck introduced himself as a character from Tom Sawyer and the son of a town drunk. He lived with Widow Douglas and her sister, Miss Watson. However, Huck did not like the civilized life and would rather live an easy going life. Huck’s father finds out that Huck has some money and kidnaps him into a shack by the river. Pap beats Huck and Huck decides that he must escape. Huck fakes his death and flees to Jackson Island. On the island, he meets Jim, Miss Watson’s runaway slave. This is the rising action.

When the find that there are men on the island searching for Jim, they decide to travel down the Mississippi river and up the Ohio river into the free states. On the river, they live an easy life as they travel during the night and hide during the day. Traveling down the river, the have many adventures, but they miss the turnoff into the Ohio River in the climax. Some of the adventures include the family feud between the Grangerford and Shephersons. Later they meet two con artists who call themselves the Duke and the King. They have several adventures with the Duke and the King. However, since they are low on money, the Duke and King sell Jim as a runaway slave to the Phelps. Huck goes to the Phelps and pretends he is Sid Sawyer, their nephew. Tom later comes and pretends he is Huck Finn. There, they try to rescue Jim but fails, only to have Tom tell them that Jim was already free. At the conclusion of the book, Huck decides to head off into new territory since he does not like the civilized society.

War and Peace, a Russian novel by Leo Tolstoy

War and Peace is famously long for a novel (though not the longest by any means). It is subdivided into four books or volumes, each with subparts containing many chapters.(

Tolstoy got the title, and some of his themes, from an 1861 work of Proudhon: La Guerre et la Paix. Tolstoy had served in the Crimean War and written a series of short stories and novellas featuring scenes of war. He began writing War and Peace in the year that he finally married and settled down at his country estate. During the writing of the second half of the book, after the first half had already been written under the name "1805", he read widely, acknowledging Schopenhauer as one of his main inspirations, although he developed his own views of history and the role of the individual within it.

The novel can be generally classified as historical fiction. It contains elements present in many types of popular 18th and 19th century literature, especially the romance novel. War and Peace attains its literary status by transcending genres. Tolstoy was instrumental in bringing a new kind of consciousness to the novel. His narrative structure is noted for its "god-like" ability to hover over and within events, but also swiftly and seamlessly to take a particular character's point of view.^[6] His use of visual detail is often cinematic in its scope, using the literary equivalents of panning, wide shots and close-ups, to give dramatic interest to battles and ballrooms alike. These devices, while not exclusive to Tolstoy, are part of the new novel that arose in the mid-19th century and of which Tolstoy proves himself a master.

The novel tells the story of five aristocratic families — the Bezukhovs, the Bolkonskys, the Rostovs, the Kuragins and the Drubetskoys—and the entanglements of their personal lives with the history of 1805–1813, principally Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. The Bezukhovs, while very rich, are a fragmented family as the old Count, Kirill Vladimirovich, has fathered dozens of illegitimate sons. The Bolkonskys are an old established and wealthy family based at Bald Hills. Old Prince Bolkonsky, Nikolai Andreevich, served as a general under Catherine the Great, in earlier wars. The Moscow Rostovs have many estates, but never enough cash. They are a closely knit, loving family who live for the moment regardless of their financial situation. The Kuragin family has three children, who are all of questionable character. The Drubetskoy family is of impoverished nobility, and consists of an elderly mother and her only son, Boris, whom she wishes to push up the career ladder.

Walden was published in 1854, seven years after Henry David Thoreau ended his stay in a small cabin near Walden Pond. During those years, Thoreau painstakingly revised and polished his manuscript, based on journals he kept while living at the pond. He hoped his book would establish him as the foremost spokesman for the American transcendentalist movement.(www.enotes.com)

In Walden, Thoreau condensed events of his twenty-six-month sojourn into one year, for literary purposes. He began and ended his narrative in spring. The eighteen chapters celebrate the unity of nature, humanity, and divinity—a central idea of transcendentalism—and portray Thoreau’s life at Walden Pond as an ideal model for enjoying that unity. In solitude, simplicity, and living close to nature, Thoreau had found what he believed to be a better life. In Walden, he enthusiastically shares his discoveries so that others, too, may abandon conventional ways and live more sanely and happily.

Thoreau begins by telling readers that he is writing to answer why he chose to live alone for more than two years in a small, simple cabin near Walden Pond. Much of the chapter is devoted to explaining that the way most people live, spending all their time and energy working to acquire luxuries, does not lead to human happiness and wellbeing. Thoreau writes that he prefers having time to walk in nature and to think much more than working long hours to pay for big houses, large tracts of land, herds of animals, or other property. He goes so far as to say that the ownership of such things is actually a disadvantage, as one who owns them must take care of them, while one who owns little has more freedom to do as he or she pleases. This is why Thoreau chose to live simply and cheaply in a house he built for himself: in simplicity and economy he found freedom. Finally, Thoreau describes how he built his house. He includes exact figures showing how much he spent on materials (twenty-eight dollars and twelve and one-half cents).

A short summary of Jack London's White Fang from www.sparknotes.com

Two men are out in the wild of the north. Their dogs disappear as they are lured by a she-wolf and eaten by the pack. They only have three bullets left and Bill, one of the men, uses them to try to save one of their dogs; he misses and is eaten with the dog. Only Henry and two dogs are left; he makes a fire, trying to drive away the wolves. They draw in close, and he is almost eaten, saved only by a company of men who were traveling nearby.

The wolves are in the midst of a famine. They continue on, lead by several wolves alongside the she-wolf, and when they finally find food the pack starts to split up. The she-wolf mates with one of the wolves and has a litter of pups. Only one survives after several more famines, and he grows strong and is a feisty pup.

They come to an Indian village where the she-wolf's (who is actually half-wolf, half-dog) master is. He catches her again and White Fang, her pup, stays nearby. Soon, she is sold to another Indian, while White Fang stays with Gray Beaver, her master. The other dogs of the village terrorize White Fang, especially one named Lip-lip.

White Fang becomes more and more vicious, encouraged by his master. He kills other dogs. Gray Beaver goes to Fort Yukon to trade and discovers whiskey. White Fang is passed into the hands of Beauty Smith, a monster of a man. He fights other dogs until he meets his match in a bulldog and is saved only by a man named Scott.

Scott tames White Fang and takes him back to California with him. There White Fang learns to love his master and his master's family and even saves Scott's father from a criminal that escaped from the nearby prison. White Fang has puppies with Collie, one of the master's dogs, and lives a happy life.

Into the Wild

In April 1992, a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhikes to Alaska and walks alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. Four months later, his decomposed body is found by a moose hunter. How Chris McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of "Into the Wild." 224 pages.

The book 'Into the Wild' is based on a true story of Christopher J McCandless, a well educated and able young man from a good family who chased after his dreams and ambitions.

The book tells the story from perfect strangers he met, his adolecence, his adventures and failures leading to his untimely passing. The book also gives you examples of other adventures that have similarities to Chris as well as the author who can relate to Chris's passion for life.

Krakauer went to great lengths to write Into The Wild as accurately as possible visiting places that McCandless had been, interviewing family members, friends, colleagues and others somehow involved in the story. He has said that he was obsessed by the story and researched it for 3 years before it was finished. At one stage he said he had a 'lead' from someone in Arizona, so he got into his pickup and drove from Alaska to Arizona to meet this person.

Krakauer also visited the 142 Magic Bus where Chris was found with Bille and Walt McCandless (Chris's parents) 10 months after they had been informed of his death.

It is a great book and a great story that will inspire.

Ramadan

Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic Calendar, is considered as one of the holiest months of the year. It was in 610 A.D. when the prophet Muhammad was said to have received revelations from God that later became Islam’s holy book, the Quran (Koran).

The Quran (2:185) states that it was in the month of Ramadan that the Quran was revealed. In fact, Ramadan commemorates that part, of the Muslim year, when "the Qur'an was sent down as a guidance for the people" and also for the " judgment between the right and wrong". Another verse of the Quran (97:1) states that it was revealed "on the night of determination," which Muslims generally observe on the night of 26-27

Ramadan in saudi arabia may have a special spiritual atmosphere does not exist in other parts of the muslim world; in order it is contain the home of the two holy mosques, which are revealed in the hearts of believers.with proven crescent of ramadan joy permeated the hearts of everyone in the kingdom, and proceed from their the mouths words of congratulation.

Ibn Battuta

Known as the greatest traveler of premodern times, Abu Abdallah ibn Battuta was born in Morocco in 1304 and educated in Islamic law. At the age of twenty-one, he left home to make the holy pilgrimage to Mecca. This was only the first of a series of extraordinary journeys that spanned nearly three decades and took him not only eastward to India and China but also north to the Volga River valley and south to Tanzania. The narrative of these travels has been known to specialists in Islamic and medieval history for years. Ross E. Dunn's 1986 retelling of these tales, however, was the first work of scholarship to make the legendary traveler's story accessible to a general audience. Now updated with revisions, a new preface, and an updated bibliography, Dunn's classic interprets Ibn Battuta's adventures and places them within the rich, trans-hemispheric cultural setting of medieval Islam.

Ibn Battuta in Black Africa by Ibn Batuta. Selections from his writings are translated and commented upon by Said Hamdun and Noel Quinton King.

Great Explorers of the World: Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Vasco Da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, Captain Cook, Lewis and Clark, ... Apollo Mission to the Moon (Junior Classics) [Audiobook] [Audio CD]This audio CD book, alongside with other Naxos educational CDs for children, is absolutely fantastic. It contains loads of information, so adults interest is guaranteed as well as children's fascination. It's a must for curious little minds. Presented in an easy listening format, it educates and enterntains at the same time. Boring car journeys became a highly enjoyable and educational experiences in our family since Naxos CDs were purchased. Being non-fiction, they can be listened to over and over again, offering a chance for the child to remember and/or understand more details each time.

Road Trips

In the last lesson we had 4 themes to choose one of them and research it on the Internet. I chose road trips because this kind of travel literature can tell us much about the world and connection to it, for example if any one want to travel with his across any country that he had read about it, his tripe will be easy because he has background about it to make his trip more interesting than if he has not any idea. Also, road trips tell us more details about the place that authors wrote about it. Road trips literature can tell us about the cultures, society, landscape, food and so on. If you want to tray this kind of travel you should to ignore the high way and take the roads in said the city, village or farms to enjoy and to see the truth about the place that you across it during your trip. If you just take highway you will see same view from the beginning the road till the end, for example motels, service station and so on.


The following books according to http://www.squidoo.com/travel-writing-novels
about ROAD TRIPS

1) Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure by Sarah MacDonald. The early reading of this book can be hard, because after the first few chapters there's a lot of the Western perspective, the whining of living conditions and poverty, the type of scorn you don't care to read from travel writing. I'm glad I read the rest, because like "Through Painted Deserts," "Holy Cow" is about the author's journey. Sarah evolves and changes chapter to chapter in front of you as she sheds the scornful nature of an atheist "too smart" to fall for superstition, and she opens up, traveling through India and sampling all the different religious beliefs and practices as she becomes a humble Theist who learns happiness, learns to grow, and learns that alien cultures can have a lot to offer the open traveler.

2) Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown, by Paul Theroux. Paul Theroux is at his best in "Dark Star Safar," where his skills of observation and his dry wit are on full display. Paul takes readers the length of Africa via overcrowded rattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry, and train in a journey that is hard to forget. There are moments of beauty, but there are also many moments of misery and danger. This is a narration of Africa that goes beyond the skin deep to dare to look at the deeper core of what is often referred to as "The Dark Continent".

3) Blue Highways: A Journey Into America, by William Least Heat-Moon. This is an auto-biographical travel journey taken by Heat-Mean in 1978. After separating from his wife and losing his job, Heat-Moon decided to take an extended road trip around the United States, sticking to "Blue Highways," a term to refer to small out of the way roads connecting rural America (which were drawn in blue in the old Rand McNally atlases). So Heat-Moon outfits his van, named "Ghost Dancing" and takes off on a 3-month soul-searching tour of the United States. The book chronicles the 13,000 mile journey and the people he meets along the way, as he steers clear of cities and interstates, avoiding fast food and exploring local American culture on a journey that is just as amazing today as when he first took the journey.

On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957. It is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of the postwar Beat Generation that was inspired by jazz, poetry, and drug experiences. While many of the names and details of Kerouac's experiences are changed for the novel, hundreds of references in On the Road have real-world counterparts.

When the book was originally released, The New York Times hailed it as "the most beautifully executed, the clearest and most important utterance" of Kerouac's generation.[1] The novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.[2]

Traveling to the UK (part2)

Ready to go, said my father. I rode the car reward to jeddah airport, my father and brother were with me. It was 2 p.m and we have to be at the airport at 7 p.m and the distance between my hometown 4 hours, so we did not stop during our trip. We arrived to the airport just in time and I met my friends who will travel to the UK as well.

At 9 p.m, we saw my father and brother off and went up the plane reward to London. The distance between Jeddah and London 7 hours. I was very tired and tried to sleep but I could not because I was thinking about many things such as, how I Can live far away from my family and children, how I can live in a new country that first time I will go to and how my daily life will be between new culture and society. I thought more than one time why I put my self in this position. The minutes were very slow and I tried to sleep again but I could not.

We arrived at Hethrow airport at 6 a.m and the taxi driver was waiting for us. We went to Saudi Cultural Bureau to finish some paper. After that, we reward to Derby because we booked hotel in it. We arrived to Derby at 7 p.m. From Thursday to Friday I did not sleep so I slept 14 hours.

Alone Across the Outback

I have read a story like this (From Alice to Ocean, Alone Across the Outback). It talks about woman who travels across Australia's desert alone, decided to face the dangerous and rigors of a six month, 1700 miles with four camels and a dog.

I do not know why this woman decided to travel alone to new place that she'd never seen it. I think it was crazy journey a cross Australia with camels. She said " Some string somewhere inside me is starting to unravel" that is means when she start this adventure she did not know where she was leading her self.

I admire this woman because her achieved was incredible-traveling alone just with camels and shy did that with out much help. However, I think she is strong and courageous woman and she wanted to send a massage to people who prejudiced against women to tell them women can adventure as men.

I love to travel, but I am not that adventurous.

Traveling to the UK (part1)

After finishing my lecture I went to the main building of my faculty to buy some books. While I was walking inside the faculty building I saw on the notes board announcement of scholarship for English Language student to study in the UK for a year. I went straight to the head of European Languages Department to ask him about that and he told me "if you want to go you have to fill out this form and return it to me, after that we will decide".

I traveled to my family at the weekend because I was living in Jeddah to study and my family lives in other city 3 hours by car I arrived there and I did not tell my mother and my wife about the scholarship because I want to make sure before telling them. The next day, I met my father and told him about that to help me, because I was thinking, should I accept and go far away from my children and my family or I have to cancel that and stay with them. I was realy confuse, but my father told my " you have to finish this form and return it to your boss because this your opportunity do not lost it and I will support you and your family, go ahead".

At last, I decided to fill the form and submit to the department of English Language. After making sure of scholarship, I phoned my mother and my wife to tell them about that, when they heard traveling for a year they start crying and said we do not you to go over there, then I told them this is me first chance I have to go to improve my skills and I told my wife you will be with me after five or six months and you have to be patient and look after my children.

One day before traveling, my mother and my wife were very sad and crying but they still proud of me. In day of traveling I could not be patient and I stared cry because this first time I will leave all my family special my children for a long time. I saw my children off when they were sleeping because I can not see them crying in front of me and I went quickly. REALLY IT WAS HARD MOMENT UPON ME.

One of the best trips

Everyone has a special thing or a new experience in his or her life, such as traveling with a person who has never traveled with you before. I used to travel with my family or my friends every year in the summer holiday, and all our trips were inside Saudi Arabia. 5 years ago, I was not able to travel outside my country because I was a soldier. And one of the conditions to be a soldier in my country is not to go abroad!



I have traveled extensively throughout KSA but the most exciting trip was to ABHA 10 years ago.



Abha is the capital of asir province in Saudi Arabia. It is situated at 2,200 metres (7,200 fit) above sea level in the fertile mountains of south-western Saudi Arabia near the National Park of Asir, its mild climate makes it a popular tourist destination for Saudis.

I got married on the first of April 2000 and my life has changed since that date. My first trip with my wife was to Abah to sbend honeymonth 10 years ago. This is by far the most fantastic and relaxing place you could ever imagine staying in. there are A lot of places that we were planning to go to during our stay in Abha, for example:

1-the old Shadda Palace, thought to have been built around 1820, has been converted to a museum.

2- cable cars have been built, and installed in the city and its surroundings providing a view of the landscape.

3- the village of Rijal Almaa, contains 5 and six story traditional houses dating 400-600 years old built from local stone and quartz.

4- Al Habbalah. Inhabited until the 1970, the traditional stone and thatch perch precariously on narrow terrace edges down the side of an escarpment. Previously only reached by ropees and pullets, a modern cable car now allows visitors access to it.On the way to Al Habbalah there are many young people stoning their cars in strange ways(Stonning), and the pictures below demonstrate it:

5- Jabal Al Sooda (the black mountain) which stand at 3000 meters high and the area is subject to rain, sometime heavy.

6- a Citizen built and granted this museum for visitors of Alnamass, it cost 75 millions riyals and this palace is the first project in the Islamic History and it repreasnts many of the civilizations.

Alqunfodah

Hi, I am Ali and I am 31

I know when you read my first post you will say (this information is not about travel) but I like to write about my city, but the first thing that I thought to write about it was my hometown.

Before talking about the foreign trips I will show the city that I have spent whole my life in. It is called Alqunfoda. It is located on the west coast of the red sea and it has one of the major ports on the west coast of Saudi Arabia. Alqunfoda is under Makkah region administratively since its inception and it is located 350 Km south of Makkah and Jeddah, that is making it one of the most important points between south and north of the Kingdom.

It has disstinguished location, beautiful coasts and wonderful beache, all of these elements made it favorite place for many people. The visitors of this city note the tourist activity through the intensity of human numbers, which aspires to holiday near the beaches. There is a lot of hotels and chalets, which helped a lot of sea and quiet lovers to have memorable time in (Ghada of South)

Wind mail

A building which was used for grinding grain and its dates back to the twelfth century according to Islamic calendar.