The Rediscovery Of North America Summary

840 Words4 Pages
Gina Bruno English Comparison of Refuge and “The Rediscovery of North America” The hip-hop artist Mos Def once said, “What I take from writers I like is their economy - the ability to use language to very effective ends. The ability to have tomboy read something and see it, or for somebody to paint an entire landscape of visual imagery with just sheets of words - that’s magical.” Imagery is an amazing form of writing where the writer creates a picture in your mind. Refuge, a book by Terry Tempest Williams, shows the relationship between the natural and the unnatural. Nature imagery is used throughout in comparison to human lives and events. Like Refuge, “The Rediscovery of North America” by Barry Lopez also uses ample amount of imagery…show more content…
Lopez first addresses Christopher Columbus and his “discovery” of North America across the Atlantic and defined it as an “engagement” with the new land. Lopez states that our existence here is marked by this first encounter. “Instead of an encounter with ‘the other’ in which we proposed certain ideas, proposals based on assumptions of equality, respectfully tendered, our encounters were distinguished by a stern, relentless imposition of ideas- religious, economic, and social ideas we deemed superior if not unimpeachable.” (17) Lopez’s first form of imagery is during the discovery of North America. He writes, “The seas were rolling.” (1) The imagination is set with the short description, and you can see the waves in the sea. In the second chapter they reach land, and Lopez paints a picture in your head when writing “..sparsely inhabited island with a small village.”(3) After being settled on the land for a while, the Spanish came. The earlier description turns into, “It’s surface…was scraped bare..”(4) This makes you think of an war zone and a barren landscape. Within those short blurbs, Lopez was able to create two different incredible scenes. On top of using great imagery throughout his work, he manages to use many different types of sentences. He uses complex sentences, compound-complex sentences and simple sentences. By doing this, his writing never gets

More about The Rediscovery Of North America Summary

Open Document