![]() ![]() I figured I'd catch at least a couple of mink each week, and that would be for me - money, money, money. It was one of my schemes to make money, and I was going to clean up by catching mink. I'd read all of the Jack London books, and other books about mountain men who were trappers, and I was determined to have a trap line in Flat Creek Swamp.Īfter Santa brought me six steel traps, and I managed to scrounge up enough money from my paper route, doing odd jobs and turning in coke bottles for deposit to buy another six, I set my trap line down in and near Flat Creek. The year before I asked Santa to bring me some animal steel traps. I knew my parents couldn't afford that pricey of a Christmas gift, and I was overwhelmed. That special Christmas morning, I walked into our living room, and there was a Sweet 16 Shotgun. When I was 13, we lived a mile south of Norphlet near Flat Creek Swamp, where I spent countless hours hunting in the woods and fishing in Flat Creek. Most of my earliest Christmas memories are around special Christmas gifts. But sometimes sad ones keep coming back to haunt us, and we try to push them into the back corners of our mind. Even though times have changed since his journal entry was written, there are a few things he has written that are the epitome of what it’s like to be a child.We all have Christmas memories, but I think we have an inner filter that amplifies the good memories, as we try to forget the bad ones. Tomas has written a story about a dreamy, and exciting childhood. It is easy to remember something when the reader reads something similar, or different to what the reader has experienced. The importance of this essay is to show how someone’s writing style can provide an escape to the readers own memories. The emphasis he puts on alliteration creates a sense of wonder, as well as adding more description. For example, while describing a particular Christmas afternoon, Thomas writes of his “bright new boots” in “the white world” and “silent snowscape of town” (Thomas 65). He also uses alliteration to create a dreamy picture in the reader’s mind. That is the epitome of childhood, and his writing style gives an idea of what children value. He starts the journal entry with “quote page 62 about jelly” and then at the end he uses jelly one more time after the ghost encounter, to show that when you are a kid and you have an unpleasant experience you can easily be distracted with something you enjoy. Through alliteration and repetition, Thomas creates a childlike energy. Thomas’ writing style suggests that he is remembering things so fast he is trying to write it all down before he forgets. “…and I plunge my hands into the snow… holly or robins or pudding, squabbles and carols and oranges and tin whistles…” (Thomas 62) when you read this, you feel a blurred sense of time passing and things changing. In the first two paragraphs, he basically is writing two very long sentences. ![]() ![]() The structure in this essay conveys the chaotic and exciting feeling of being a child. He uses commas more often than periods in the faster passages, and that builds this feeling of excitement which snowballs throughout the entire story. This passage just shows how kids feel time passes slowly, and even though this part of the story seems slow, he also provides faster paced passages. He writes “… marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows – eternal, ever since Wednesday…” (Thomas 63) and it sounds like his adult self has to correct the child in his memory. For example, he uses em-dashes to further clear up the childhood memory. Thomas’ uses many different forms of punctuation in this essay, to help the reader remember their own childhood. When he writes about his own memories, it helps the reader see what was the same for them, and what was different. Thomas’ writing style makes it easy to remember what the readers childhood was like. The punctuation, structure, and alliteration in Thomas’ essay work to create a childlike tone. In his journal entry, published in 1954, “Memories of Christmas” Dylan Thomas conveys the feeling of childhood. ![]()
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