a+mountain+journey



===** Short Stories ** === ===** Literary Devises ** === ===** Title: A Mountain Journey ** === ===** By Rory Christopher, September 21st, 2010 ** === Point of View: 3rd Person and Omniscient Protagonist: Dave Conroy What type of character is the Protagonist? The Protagonist is a dynamic and round character. Antagonist: Nature/Environment Describe the setting: Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada Snowing and cold. 3:00-6:00 P.M. 1970-1995. Grim, bitter, and suspenseful is the atmosphere.


Type of Conflict: Man v. Nature and Man v. himself Describe the main conflict: The main conflict is man v. himself because Dave is always making bad decisions that affect his chance of survival.


Describe the Climax of the Story: The climax of the story is when he decides to sleep on his way to MacMorans cabin (his friends cabin), which ended his life when he froze in the snow.


How does the Protagonist change over the course of the story? Dave Conroy became less cocky and less confident the farther down the mountain river he skied.


Describe the relationship between the title and the theme: The relationship between the title and the theme, is that a mountain journey and the theme survival can be connected on many different levels because a mountain journey can end in disaster, in many ways. 1.) Avalanche. 2.) Freezing to death. 3.) You never find a way home and die from no food/water or exhaustion. What is the metaphor in the title? How does the main conflict help to illustrate the theme? The main conflict helps to illustrate the theme by showing that, survival can only happen if you make the right choices, Dave chose to keep going down the mountain instead of setting up camp at the base of a huge tree.


How does the climax help to illustrate the theme? The climax helps to illustrate the theme by showing that surviving only matters if you make the right choices and that if you make the wrong choices you may end up not surviving. Give examples of each of the following literary terms in the story (use quotes):

Simile:“...smooth and thin, like the tracing of a pen upon the snow.”

Metaphor:“...old was an old man’s fingers feeling craftily through his clothes.”

Personification:“...that tree like a strong and lonely woman.”


Symbol: Horse bells and the open cabin door represent Heaven.

Foreshadowing (give both elements): “A man when he was a lone would travel too far. He would travel until he could travel no more, for the mere sake of traveling” “He had been a fool. He should have made a fire when he fell through the ice, he should have spent the night three miles up the river”

Irony:” As he stood there, stamping on his skis, his arms flapping at his sides, he remembered Duncan MacDonald, who trapped in the Beaver River country and who had walked thirty miles to the railroad on frozen feet to have them amputated by the doctor. Because he could trap no more, MacDonald had opened a cobbler’s shop in jasper to make boots he could no longer wear himself.” Why is this ironic?

Imagery: “Mist, like the shadow of universal darkness on the treeless summit, moved about him, searched every crevice of the mountain land, roamed in great billows, formed in the blindness and suffering of eternal homelessness.”


Describe the relationships between the class theme and the story: The class theme for this semester is mystery. Mystery connects to this story because Dave Conroy is making all these different decisions, which can keep him alive or drive him to death, without thinking about the consequences and the mystery behind this is, that with all the decisions that he makes there is a mystery behind what may or may not have happened if he hadn‘t made the decisions he made, say if he didn’t keep going down the mountain when his hands froze in the lake, he might have lived if he had stayed at the tree.

WELL DONE RORY! It mashed up your text because you selected "Heading 3". This creates a BOLD look but messes with the tabs.

Completion: 5/5 Effort: 4.5/5 Content: 4/5 total 13.5/15