Compare/Contrast Essay
In the article "The Way to Rainy Mountain," by N. Scott Momaday, there are many interesting techniques and entries that are similar to that of Aldo Leopold's "Sand County Almanac," particularly to the section Marshland Elegy, but there are also many distinct differences. In Momaday's essay he talks about the times in his childhood that he spent out in the plains by his grandmother. Momaday also talks about the Kiowa people, their culture, and the way their land was destroyed. What Leopold talks about in his essay is how a certain portion of swamp land was destroyed to be farmland and how the water was drained out of the swamp. Leopold also talks about how this effects the animal's habitat and their ability to survive in what used to be the swamp. One similarity in these articles is that they both talk about nature and are relatively passionate about it. A passage from Leopold's essay that shows this is when he says, "Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language." An example that shows Momaday talking intensely about nature is when he states "A singe knoll rises out of the plain
in Oklahoma, north and west of the Wichita range. For my people, the Kiowas, and gave it the name Rainy Mountain. Another similarity that the two have is that they both are very intelligent writers and use very precise word choice. One example of this is when Momaday uses the word knoll when he says "A single knoll rises out of the plain in Oklahoma," he could of easily said small hill or something else, and would not of had as much effect on the reader. An example of Leopold using precise word choice is when he states that "They did not include soils, plants, or birds in their idea of mutuality." The reason that this is good word choice is that the word mutuality gets the point across to the reader that soil, plants, and birds are just as, or almost as important as people and should be thought of before destroying a marsh. In Momaday's essay he is more into telling the reader about the Kiowa's heritage and the story of his grandma and how it was when he was a child out in the plains, and Leopold is more into telling the reader how the people in his essay made a mistake and how things were better off the way they started out. An example of Momaday telling the story of his grandmother and how it was out in the plains as a child is in the passage, "Though my grandmother lived out her long life in the shadow of Rainy Mountain, the imm
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Approximate Word count = 909
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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