Corkscrew College Essay Example

to the writer using long sentences with more than two verbs and so implying that we are being guided as a tourist, explaining his way through step by step.

Secondly, the image we get from both the desert as from the town is that of an isolated area, with no signs of life except those of the main character, the driver and some flora randomly dispersed. Right at the start we are told that the main character “was the only passenger”, and so shows that there’s already a lack of human life in the “automobile stage”.

The same happens when they both get to Corkscrew town as “no person was in sight”, just “dusty automobiles” and “fifteen or eighteen shabby buildings” which again reflects the lifelessness of the passage, as the area appears to be poor and desolated due to the absence of life activity as well as to the dilapidated quality of the buildings. However, the writer creates a contrast to this loneliness within a sentence, by comparing the inside of the building to the outside and so he describes the porch as “unpainted and unpeopled” but soon as he crosses the door “a dozen men and women sat eating”.

Furthermore the people appear to be just like their environment, and so seem to be caveman primitives by the way they behave on the table as they “applauded with thump of knives and forks on tables”, showing that they are not refined, sophisticated people. Also, the description the main character makes about the men physical appearance do also support the theme of harshness present in the extract, as they are either

“weather-beaten horseman” or “clumsy muscled labourers” or “men with the pasty complexions of night workers” which all share the idea of a primitive kind of human.

Finally the search for survival is also present in the extract since once the first signs of life appear the main character immediately searches for those as well as for his way out from the hottest and most extreme weather. His first words refer to survival requirements since he needs a “room” for shelter and protection as well as “a lot of water” for keeping himself alive once out of the suffocating environment.

Besides, he needs to protect himself, not only from the weather, but from the inhabitants of the city as well. Towards the end of the extract he gives hints of this precautious way of behaving as he “holstered” his “gun under” his “left shoulder, where it wouldn’t be a secret”. This suggests that he wants everybody to understand that he is the sheriff and that for these reason everyone should respect him, and if violence needs to be used in order to achieve this he’ll since he is the incarnation of authority at Corkscrew.