At+the+Other+End+of+No+Where

Make sure to include plenty of details from the story to fully explain each element of literature. Additionally, make sure not to delete others' work!! There are 2 tables, one for 2nd block and one for 3rd block.
 * At The Other End of No Where**


 * 2nd & 3rd Block**
 * Themes ||
 * Coming-of-Age:** the young girl is faced with a life changing experience in this story. She is dealing with the loss of her mother due to a flood. Not only does she lose her mother, she also has to go and retrieve the body with her Aunt Bebe in a small boat. Even though she has blocked out the memory of finding her mother’s dead body she is still changed by the event and has been forced to deal with a major adult situation.


 * Life/Death:** Instead of becoming sad and upset, the young girl chooses to celebrate her mother’s life. She deals with death in her only way. She looks back at her mother’s life as a wonderfully, magical time. In addition, she knows that, in death, her mother has found true happiness.

There has been a flood at the Posey’s Oyster Bar where the Wakulla River meets the St. Marks River. The narrator, a young girl, is in a boat with her Aunt Bebe looking for her mother. As they drift down the river the young girl experiences flashbacks of her time in Posey’s Oyster Bar watching her mother work. As they continue to drift they see a lot of disturbing things including dead bodies and a bunch of bugs. Even though the young girl does not remember it, they find her mother’s body in the water, dead. They retrieve the body. The young girl and Aunt Bebe meet up with the coast guard and they take the mother’s body adding it to the pile of other dead bodies. The search for the mother is over and the young girl is forever changed by this event, however she is not sad. She believes that her mother is in a better place, as a mermaid at the other of no where. || Even though her story is to be believed she is an unreliable narrator for two reasons. 1) She has blocked out certain events from her memory and she is relying on her Aunt Bebe’s account when telling her story. This is the reason the narrator repeats the phrase “I do not know because I do not remember.” 2) She has made up “magical” elements about her mother and the bar. For example, in one of her flashbacks she discusses the skinny men turning into seahorses and her mom becoming a mermaid. Her tendency to look back on the past with her “silver eye” makes one weary of her account of the events surrounding her mother.
 * Loneliness / Abandonment:** Even though the young girl handles her mother’s death well there is still a sense of loneliness and abandonment in this story on a couple of levels. First there is the coming-of-age angle, the young girl is now without a mother and must experience the world on her own. However, even before her mother’s passing, the young girl was on her own as seen in the flashbacks of the story. The second example of loneliness and abandonment is more of a general theme. The story is called “At the Other End of No Where” implying that everyone in this region are the forgotten, the inhabitants of “No Where.” Not only do they live in “No Where” but they live on the other end of “No Where.” In the end, one has the worry and feel for all of the forgotten people that were killed and washed away by the storm. ||
 * Plot || Even though the story contains a few flashbacks, the plot is fairly straight forward:
 * Exposition**
 * Rising Action**
 * Climax**
 * Falling Action**
 * Dénouement / Resolution**
 * Point of View || 1st person and told through the eyes of a young girl.

The narrator is also naïve and is seeing the events with an innocent eye. Since she is so young she has not experienced enough of life to accurately reflect, process, and retell the events of the story. || (include historical, geographical, physical context) || North Florida. The River - where the Wakulla River meets the St. Marks River Posey's Oyster Bar
 * Setting

There is little historical context in this story unless you research the impact hurricanes have had on this region in Florida. It is interesting to reveal that years after this story was written the real Posey’s Oyster Bar in St. Marks, Fl was destroyed by a hurricane.
 * Historical Context**

Without the river there would be no story. This story could only take place in north Florida on its rivers and in its swamps. One can’t help but compare the events in this story to those of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Regardless, geography is the driving force behind this story, without the rivers, there is no story.
 * Geographical**[[image:poseys.jpg align="right"]] **Context**

All of the flashbacks in this story are set in the bar. The bar was like a magically time in the young girl’s life. Even though the place was filled with a tough crowd, it is a place that will always be special to her. Everything was perfect in that bar. The bar is a place she can retreat to and think back fondly about her childhood and her mother, the mermaid. ||
 * Physical Context**
 * Style || The author, Mary Jane Ryals, uses a very casual style in her writing. The dialogue and narration is very conservational and informal. Both the characters and narrator use slang and Southern dialect in their speaking.

Mary Jane Ryals also using a lot of repetition of phrases in this story. For example, “broil and growl,” “I do not know because I do not remember,” and “Mama’s sea apple green shoes” are phrases that are repeated a lot through the story. The reason for this repetition is to communicate ideas about the themes in the story and impact of the events on the main characters to the reader.

Since the narrator is a young girl with a limited vocabulary Ryals using a lot of describtive adjectives/verb combinations to describe certain details in the story. For example: “my toss-and-roll stomach” and “men thick from eating big” are two of these phrases. || The songs || (in addtion to character traits, label as dynamic, static, flat, or round) || The Narrator/Young Girl (nameless) - round/dynamic character Aunt Bebe - flat/static character Mama - harder to answer.... (more later...) ||
 * Tone || add your thoughts here ||
 * Language || The language of the characters is informal. The characters use simple language and slang when speaking to each other. For example: “Where’s this we’re at?” or “I tell my…Aunt Bebe it’s just a plastic flipper with a strap for a heel, the kind that goes with fins and snorkel.” The choice of informal language is an appropriate one by the author since this story is set in the rural South. ||
 * Symbolism || The river
 * Characters