West With the Night

Vocabulary-
pg 14- exultant- total and final
pg 28- tedious- long and boring; tiresome
pg33- harbor- have. Hold.
Pg35- cartographer- a person who charts the scales on maps.
Pg37- undulating- ever moving.
Pg39- succulence- savoriness, tenderness.
Pg 41- ponderous- wondering
pg 41- enraptured- emotionally captured in.
Pg 42- indignant-annoying, rebellious.
Pg 43- tribute- recognition, praise.
Pg 43- prodigal- highest, praised.
Pg45- incongruous- something that doesn't fit. Out of place.
Pg46- harried- overwrought; tired
pg49- melancholy- boring, sad.
Pg 49- frivolous- superficial, superfluous.
Pg 50- platitudes- statement.
Pg 51- surmounted- topped off by; above.

Similes-

pg 3- A weaver has a long and tedious task ahead of them and sits down with a infinite supply of patience. Markham, in writing her book needed to sit down and recount parts of her life to their greatest detail, which can be a quite patience taking experience.

Pg18- Here, Markham describes the sounds of an ancient automobile, utilizing words and images familiar to the reader to convey her image, the ‘noisy' sound of the car starting.

Pg26- By describing the small hut in detail, Markham brings back the image to herself, and thus brings it back for the readers to understand.

Pg32- Markham uses more imagery to convey the windsock to the readers. Imagery lets the reader get more into the story, and feel as if they are ‘part of the action' and part of the story.

Metaphor-

pg13- The soul of Africa is a part of Markham as well. She breathes it in, and lives off the heart of it. Each small thing interests her, and because it is a part of her, she needed to convey that fact to the reader at the beginning of the story. If she hadn't, statements she made, and ways that she acted may have seemed strange and out of place to the reader.

Personification-

pg16- The plane is her friend, confidant, sister, a part of her. They work together to accomplish a goal. Her muscles strain, the planes ‘muscles' strain. Markham uses the traits of a person to personify the plane.

Imagery-

pg4- The impact of the man staring at the small speck of dust on his shoe until it amassed in his mind and became a large fortune in riches has a great impact on the reader. The reader wonders ‘how could someone think that much of a small speck of gold?' And why would someone want to prospect for gold in a place where no real gold was found.. It is clear that Markham is distasteful of the idea of gold mining in a pure and untouchable Africa.

Pg 25-Obviously Markham was disturbed by this experience in which she attempted to transport a man near death to safety, and instead, she ended up unknowingly with a corpse. This image is slightly disturbing, and morbid. The reader is allowed a peek, albeit a small one to experience Markham's inside feelings.

Narrative Voice-

pg10- Markham states here that anything, even lonliness is better than being bored. Another fleeting chance to see what Markham is like.

West With the Night-Four-

"You can live a lifetime and, at then end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself. You learn to watch other people, but you never watch yourself because you strive against lonliness. If you read a book, or shuffle a deck of cards, or care for a dog, you are avoiding yourself. The abhorrence of lonliness is as natural as wanting to live at all. If it were otherwise, men would have never bothered to make an alphabet, nor to have fashioned words out of what were only animal sounds, nor to have crossed continents--each man to see what the other looked like."(pg 283)

My first reaction to this passage is one of sadness. Through ‘avoiding yourself' as Markham calls it, you learn about other people. Rather than looking at the positive side of things, that people could form relationships through the alphabet, and form relationships through communicating with one another, she looks on the negative side. The side that dictates that people, in avoiding one another, they decided to invent these things, instead of that they wanted to learn about one another, to be able to understand themselves better. Although I understand why Markham harbored this idea, I don't understand why she felt the need to communicate it with others, so that others could feel the same way, and feel depressed about this fact.

This passage illustrates the fact that Markham feels this way, even about her own life, and the lives of those that surround her. She feels that men are insensitive, and feel as if they can not get close to, and communicate with one anohter. These throughts are also pointed out in other parts of the book. She fratenized with, and, essentinaly, acted like a male, because that was the only way she could stay within that society and be accepted, yet, she felt as if she was looking in on it all, and felt detached from it. She didn't know herself, because she was trying so hard to stay with what was her mainstream, she missed herself within it.

The theme of this passage is one of, obviously, lonliness. About the emptiness that settles within a person when they don't even know who they are. When they do everything possible to avoid getting to know and accept who they are. Yet, this is also a theme of wanting to know oneself, even though most people are so afraid of getting to know themselves hat they occuy themselves with anything else possible to not have to face and accept who they are.

This story reveals human nature as to how people go about doing things. If they are afraid, or apprehensive about doing something, they will do everything in their power to avoid doing it for as long as possible. In this case, someone would avoid learning about themselves forever, and go about life, empty and lonely.