On Theme of The Loons

The Loons, one of the well-known fictions of Margaret Laurence, portrays the living conditions of the protagonist, Piquette Tonnerre, who is an Indian girl. On the other hand, we can find that the loons are mentioned several times in the story, which echoes the title. As far as I am concerned, the loons and the growth of Piquette serve as two clues from which two branch themes are expressed respectively.

Piquette is a plain-looking girl coming from a humble family. She has to do family chores and cannot attend school regularly. She limps because of tuberculosis of the bone. The father of the narrator Vanessa is the doctor of Piquette. He took Piquette with the families to Diamond Lake for a vacation because of sympathy for her. Piquette was an unsociable and mocking girl and sensitive to the topic of woods and loons mentioned by Vanessa. During the vacation they remained ill at ease with each other. Four years later Vanessa got startled at Piquette’s great change when meeting her occasionally n a café. She became much more beautiful and opener than before but seemed to being living a disordered life. She blew about her approaching marriage with her handsome boy friend. In

the end when Vanessa because a college student Piquette died with her children in a fire.

From the contrast of the different lives of the two girls we can find the huge gap between the minorities and the mainstream of Canadian society. Indians were the aborigines of the Continent of North America before Europeans immigrating here and driving them away to secluded areas. So Indians remain discriminated against by the white-dominated society. They are of humble status and cannot adapt themselves to the mainstream culture. Piquette is just a representative of those present living condtions of them.

In the story the narrator tells us about her two experiences of listening the cry of loons. Once during the vacation Vanessa listened to them with her father. The crying of the loons was described as ululating, plaintive and mocking. She went to the Diamond Lake again after hearing about the death of Piquette. However, the loons disappeared because more cottages were built and more people came in. The habitats of the loons were destroyed by human beings gradually and they might die out sooner and lataer.

The loons are the symbol of nature as well as ecosystem, and the extinction of loons reflects the ecological crisis caused in the process of human civilization as well as the predatory exploitation human beings have exerted to nature.

The author conveys great concern for the harmonious coexistence of human beings with nature and equality between people of different races, sexes or classes by criticizing the relationship of dominating and being dominated between human beings and nature as well as their fellows. What the loons and Piquette have in common is that they represent the culture and civilization of minorities. In the modern society of multiculturalism different kinds of cultures and different races are treated unequally. To reach the goal of harmonious development we human beings have to protect and respect nature and minority groups. This is just what the author wants to convey to us.

第二篇：the Scarlet Letter读后感英文

What I Learned From the Scarlet Letter

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Abstract: this paper is to talk the female character in the scarlet letter. It

describes the whole story at the first section, then the character analysis. And it explains the symbol of the letter “A” which appears all the time. Well it finishes with the standpoint of its author, which refers to me. Wish you be delighted reading my essay. Thank you!

In an eternal semester’s Anglo-American movie classes, I’ve appreciated many classical novels. What impressed me most is the first movie we watch called the scarlet letter.

First, the story begins in seventeenth-century Boston, and that is in a

Puritan settlement. A young woman, Hester Prynne, is led from the town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl in her arms and the scarlet letter “A” on her breast. Hester’s husband, a scholar much older than she is, sent her ahead to America, but he never arrived in Boston. The consensus is that he has been lost at sea. While waiting for her husband, Hester has apparently had an affair, as she has given birth to a child. She will not reveal her lover’s identity. Several years pass. Hester supports herself by working as a seamstress, and Pearl grows into a willful, impish child. When Dimmesdale acknowledge Hester’s child publicly the other day, a meteor marks a dull red “A” in the night sky.

Later Hester removes her scarlet letter and lets down her hair. However, Pearl, playing nearby, does not recognize her mother without the letter.

Frustrated in his revenge, Chillingworth dies a year later. Hester and Pearl leave Boston, and no one knows what has happened to them. Many years later, Hester returns alone, still wearing the scarlet letter, to live in her old cottage and

resume her charitable work. She receives occasional letters from Pearl, who has married a European aristocrat and established a family of her own. When Hester dies, she is buried next to Dimmesdale. The two share a single tombstone, which bears a scarlet “A.”

Go through the whole story, we can see a passionate but also strong

woman, Hester Prynne .she endures years of shame and scorn. She equals both her husband and her lover in her intelligence and thoughtfulness. Her alienation puts her in the position to make acute observations about her community,

particularly about its treatment of women. We have to say that is a great woman. Then her husband Roger Chillingworth is a self-absorbed and both physically and psychologically monstrous. His single-minded pursuit of retribution reveals him to be the most malevolent character in the novel. While Pearl’s biological father Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, is an intelligent and emotional man, and his sermons are thus masterpieces of eloquence and persuasiveness. His commitments to his congregation are in constant conflict with his feelings of sinfulness and need to confess.

The scarlet letter on Hester’s breast is meant to be a symbol of shame, but instead it becomes a powerful symbol of identity to her. Originally it meant adultery; however, at the night when the Governor dies, the letter “A” appearing in the sky is regarded as “Angel” and as Hester gains a strange influence. Some people relate A with “Able”.

I like the woman Hester, especially when she would be admitting that the letter is a mark of shame and something from which she desires to escape, Hester refigured the scarlet letter as a symbol of her own experiences and character. She says that her past sin is a part of whom she is; to pretend that it never happened would mean denying a part of herself. Thus, Hester very determinedly integrates her sin into her life.

Above all, I was extremely absorbed by the heroine of the scarlet letter. We should treat our own life like she did. However awful things happen, what we need to do is absolutely not to be down but keep positive attitude towards what life have given us. Whatever we are suffering is the very meaningful part of ourselves. We should recognize who we really are and be ourselves at anytime, don’t intend to covey any bad thing you have done. That’s why we exist and what we need to prove to the world that we can indeed handle our unique destiny.