Blood Bay Essay

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Explain how Annie Proulx makes the environment in 'The Blood Bay' sound severe while also making the story humerous. In the 'Blood Bay' by Annie Proulx she used very different language to what we use nowadays to describe how diffucult it would be to survive in harsh, cold conditions. She uses emotive language like 'Early wet snow froze hard' or 'Blizzards of freeze-eye cold' to emphasise the severity of the weather. In the second paragraph Annie describes 'A young Montana cowboy' who only wore light clothing and a good pair of boots, which he had put all his savings into, and he froze to death that same night. In this paragraph she starts to talk about black humour, the Montana cowbot was taking the weather too lightly because he wanted to look good in his new boots instead of wearing heavy clothing. Then she begins to tell us about three cowpunchers who were obviously ready for the weather. 'They wore blanket coats, wooly chaps, grease-wool scarves tied over their hats and under their bristled chins, sheepskin mitts and two of them were fortunate enough to park their feet in good boots and heavy socks.' Only one of them did not have good boots, he had, 'No socks and curl-toe boots cracked and holed.' She wrote in this paragraph,'Blue as a whetstone,' a simile to express how cold the Montana cowboy looked. Throughout paragraphs four and five a lot more black humour is introduced into the story. For example, at the start of paragraph four Sheets ays,''That can of corn beef.' This is a euphemism which is used instead of saying that at the cowboy was dead. It also implies an insensitive view of death as if it's a normal everyday thing. In paragraph five sheets saws off the Montana cowboys feet, from his shins, so that he could have his boots and then they just ride away as if nothing ever happened. In paragraph six Annie continues to talk aboout the

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