Amber Samsel: Outside Reading (Req. 2) - Blog 10

 Back over spring break I read a book by Darcy Coates called "Hunted." It was an amazing novel about people going missing in the wilderness and presumed to be dead. One character went missing and her friends decided to go out into the wilderness and try to find her, but they had to deal with something other than getting lost in the woods. There was this creature that kept stalking them and trying to pick them off one by one.

 As I was reading the book, I started thinking about our class discussion about what it means to be "wilderness." We determined that to mean "uncharted territory" or "the unknown," and of course we usually take that to mean being somewhere in a giant forest. While this book does take place in a forest that is so grand even the local police department hadn't even scoped out the entire thing, I think the main "wilderness" aspect of this novel may have been the creature itself. What I mean by this is that it is a creature that has never been seen before, all it leaves are these huge claw marks on the trees, there has been no mention of this creature to the police (because most missing hikers ended up dead), and there is no character that is able to accurately describe what it looks like. All of this combined explains exactly what uncharted and unknown are supposed to mean. 

As with every novel, the mystery is solved in the end. (Spoiler alert) It turns out that the sheriff was dressing up as this creature to scare hikers into going off the path so they would get lost and die in the forest. He would then dispose of their bodies. Since we now know the ending to the story, we technically cannot classify the creature as a "wilderness" anymore. Now we know the truth, so that makes me wonder, will there ever be a time in the future in which there is nothing left for humans to learn? Would that mean that we would no longer have a "wilderness"? If we no longer have that wilderness, would we still be human or something greater? 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kip Redick Introduction

Welcome to the Heroes and Mystics blog for 2024. Make sure to start the blog with your name and the subject of the entry (Just as I have done with this post). . Blog entries will be considered informal writing assignments and as such will be graded more in relation to content than style. Blog entries will contain questions and answers to questions, as well as reflections that relate to daily classroom discussions, completion of exercises, and reading assignments. Any questions the student has while reading or completing assignments should be written in their blog. Reflections may relate to connections the student makes between discussions in this class and those in other classes, between arguments raised in the readings in this class and those raised in other classes or from informal conversations. Students are encouraged to apply the ideas learned in this class to activities that take place outside of the class. These applications make great reflections. The student should bring ques...
Read more

The Untethered Soul

Another one of the many books that I am simultaneously reading with other books that I am really excited about is The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael Alan Singer. Although I am not very far in the novel, I think that the first bit that I have read is already so rich and ties in well to Somewhere I Have Never Traveled because of the idea of the sense of self. Both works mention the idea that we as humans are always trying to grapple with our sense of selves. I think that it is a really interesting concept and my philosophy, perhaps it's just the easy out, is that our brains were simply not created to be able to comprehend things outside of our world. I think it's a great thing to try but I believe that there is so much more knowledge that we cannot know.
Read more

Iris Denner: The Iliad (Assigned Readings)

The Iliad is a Greek epic that follows Achilles throughout the Trojan War . Achilles becomes the hero of the epic by killing his enemy, Hector, brutally. This series of poems is rather violent and follows Greek tradition in writi ng style. It is simply titled with Iliad meaning the town in Troy. At the time it acted as a history story for the Greek people and was passed down through spoken word. We now attribute the writings to Homer and interpret them as something that one st rives to accomplish the greatness that Achilles reached. The journey took place during the war, making it connect well to today’s society of veterans who go on journeys throughout their time being deployed.  
Read more