Personal Narrative: Haunted Hayride

Julie Trip’s short story “The Fall” depicts the story of a young girl who spends her summer exploring the area around her house and collecting some of her findings. One day, Tara’s explorations lead her back to the woods behind her house, where she discovers a darkness to life, which brings an end to her childhood days. Trip’s clever symbolism, and description of the setting reinforce this.

Pockets of wild forest still remained to be explored and the construction sites with half-finished homes provided endless opportunity for curious minds. We slipped like a pair of miniature ghosts in and out of locked gates and fences designed to stop adults and were seldom slowed down by anything. We got a rude surprise one day while traversing a familiar landscape subtly changed by a recent heavy rain. The firm brown earth of the previous day was still brown but not so firm. We ran lightly over the brown surface until its unfamiliar sticky quality brought us to an unwilling stop.

Henry Bailey suffered from bronchial troubles. He would cough and cough until his narrow face turned scarlet, and his light blue, derisive eyes filled up with tears; then he took the lid off the stove, and, standing well back, shot out a great clot of phlegm – hss – straight into the heart of the flames. We admired his for this performance and for his ability to make his stomach growl at will, and for his laughter, which was full of high whistlings and gurglings and involved the whole faulty machinery of his chest. It was sometimes hard to tell what he was laughing at, and always possible that it might be us. After we had sent to be we could still smell fox and still hear Henry's laugh, but these things reminders of the warm, safe, brightly lit downstairs world, seemed lost and diminished, floating on the stale cold air upstairs.

One day my sister Dakota, my uncle Raven, my mom, and I went to a farm the day before Halloween. At first we were just going to get a few pumpkins but then, I saw a corn maze. I asked my mom “ Can we go in it, please,” My mom said,” If it is free.” I told her thanks. We went to a pumpkin patch to get a couple pumpkins.

“A cool breeze came up behind us, sending shivers along the spines of the mesquite trees.” The text contains elements of the unconscious process of shivering and allows Taylor to project her inner feelings onto the landscape. The language mirrors how Taylor’s mind works and shows this by sending “shivers along the spines of the mesquite trees” as well as up her own spine, almost personifying the trees. Kingsolver’s descriptions of the natural landscape, shows her consciousness of the environment.

A Ghostly Spark Introduction (reveal): Native American culture has always been an interest of mine. Since my beginning with the Boy Scouts of America on my path to Eagle Scout, I have come closer to the dense but often forgotten history of the First Nation people of America. Upon joining the Order of the Arrow, the BSA’s honor society centered around Native American virtues and beliefs, I have continued to take it upon myself to learn more about the long forgotten Native history. While I knew about the general struggles the Native Americans faced as “white man” invaded the unharnessed Western frontier, I had not learned about the specific catalyzing incidents that caused such conflict and suffered between these two cultures. While searching through topics like native music and combat, I knew I needed an event that sparked the rift between these two types of people, growing U.S. government and early

As rain seeped from the heavens, the dreary charcoal buildings began to resemble grotesque tombstones. The rain swirled across the concrete road, past the abandoned basketball court haunted by the echoes of childhood and under the park benches where lovers had once met to profess their passion. The rain-soaked wind pushed the corroded swings, their eerie creaking harmonizing with the wind’s soft moans. In its wake, the rain left shallow ebony puddles doomed to virginity, forever untouched by the rubber soles of childrens’ rain boots. Raindrops tapped against dark window-panes, filling the street with a melancholy melody.

Richard Wright operates haunting imagery, vehement symbolism, and tranquil diction in “Between The World And Me” to portray the narrator's absolute horror and disgust toward the scene he has found and to denote the narrator's disdain with the people who can perpetuate such an awful crime. Throughout his poem "Between the World and Me" author Richard Wright combines the switches between melancholy to shock to nostalgia to gruesome and violent imagery along with a shifting point of view to create a vivid and surreal scene. The narrator stumbles on the evidence of deplorable violence, but the evidence that remains is all dormant, reflected by tranquil diction such as slumbering, cushion, vacant, and empty. The “torn tree limbs, tiny veins of burnt leaves, and a scorched coil of greasy hemp,” the items that played a crucial part in the execution that took place are all now dormant.

The approach of autumn was well on its way. “Autumn’s hand was lying heavy on the hillsides. Bracken was yellowing, heather passing from bloom, and the clumps of wild-wood taking the soft russet and purple of decline. Faint odors of wood smoke seemed to fit over the moor, and the sharp lines of the hill fastnesses were drawn as with a graving-tool against the sky.” As Ellie drove down the road she was much more aware of all her surroundings.

The sun began its assent, illuminating the soon to be dreary winter day as well as the few vibrant, resilient leaves still clinging to life upon the trees. I would often refer to these resilient leaves as foolish for wishing to cling to such a life, yet I would continue to admire their beauty despite their condition. The sun’s rays of warmth and comfort swept across my face bringing me to consciousness to appreciate its radiance and everlasting life. I reluctantly swung my feet around and stood on my wooden floor to start my day. The wood felt most coarse in the morning, especially during those cold winter months, which gave me a greater sense of awareness and an easier transition from dream to reality.

Two years ago, a breezy fall night, leaves whipped up and carried away with the wind. A blood moon shining below, emitting an eerie light. On the roadside, every house had been demolished, except for two: her's and mine. Two identical houses, all alone like two ducklings stranded in a lake without a nurturing mother, except for one lone detail: the silver windchime that sat on her porch. She hung the windchime once a year, on Halloween, only to take it down the very next day.

One of the things in my life that have challenged me is my first time on a roller coaster. It all started when one summer we decided we were going to go on vacation to Salt Lake City. We would try and find an amusement park to go to. We found one named Lagoon. We got there and they had a lot of roller coasters.

As I stepped out onto the field, my gaze drifted upward. The sky was speckled with millions of tiny, glittering stars. We were so isolated out here that even the Milky Way was visible. I had never seen it in person before. That’s just one of those things that only happens at camp, the most magical place I know.

The cool, upland air, flooding through the everlasting branches of the lively tree, as it casts a vague shadow onto the grasses ' fine green. Fresh sunlight penetrates through the branches of the tree, illuminating perfect spheres of water upon its green wands. My numb and almost transparent feet are blanketed by the sweetness of the scene, as the sunlight paints my lips red, my hair ebony, and my eyes honey-like. The noon sunlight acts as a HD camera, telling no lies, in the world in which shadows of truth are the harshest, revealing every flaw in the sight, like a toddler carrying his very first camera, taking pictures of whatever he sees. My head looks down at the sight of my cold and lifeless feet, before making its way up to the reaching arms of an infatuating tree, glowing brightly virescent at the edges of the trunk, inviting a soothing, tingling sensation to my soul.

Prompt: Horseback Riding and how it has shaped me to be the person I am today. As I galloped above Uniform, the new horse I had inherited from my father, I was facing a whole new challenge ahead of me. He was way more energetic than the ones I I had ridden before and obviously had a rough past, as he was very spooky while jumping fences. Having people close to the obstacles or unusual things like the big hat of my coach, would bring dark past memories to him, as he most likely was mistreated while being a foal.