St Agnes Stand Essay

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Describe an important event that changes the life of a character in the text you studied, and explain why this change is significant. In the Western-themed story “St Agnes’ Stand” by Thomas Eidson, an important event takes place in which one of the main protagonist, rugged outlaw Nat Swanson, makes the decision to sneak the survivors of an Apache ambush out of the site of the standoff and to safety. This event becomes one of the most significant ones in the book, because during that moment and the things that come before and after it, Swanson’s life is turned around as he learns to break away from his cycle of self-isolation and loneliness, thus allowing him and the others to survive and ultimately changing his personality. This makes him a good exemplar of a person who is able to, rather than continuously confining himself to solitude, opens himself up to the rest of human society in order to make it through bad times and to get the most out of life, a crucial quality that people in society today should have. Nat Swanson is an outlaw who is not just self-sufficient in many areas of desert survival, but also prefers to be alone, except with a Indian dog that follows him around; a personality which resulted from the decision he made when he was fourteen to work only for himself, after the slaughter of his entire family when he was only eight. We first learn of his initial tendency to isolate himself from others at the beginning of book, where he happens upon the upturned wagons of the ambush survivors. This is when he sees the face of a woman peering out from beneath the wagons, but chooses not to rescue her and resumes his journey to California on horseback. The following night he has nightmares induced by memories of the face, as indicated in the passage, “Swanson knew he had been dreaming… he knew it had something to do with the woman at the wagons.” As a

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