Ron Rash, an American novelist, was born September 25, 1953, in Chester, South Carolina, where both his mother and his father worked in a textile mill. Then they moved to North Carolina where his ancestors lived. Rash returned to South Carolina to attend graduate school, where he met and married his wife, a fellow student. He started writing and most of his poems and stories were being published in journals and magazines. The Ascent, one of Rash’s stories, follows the journey and hardships of a young boy after he stumbles upon a crash site. When he first sees the crashed helicopter he sits in the back seat and begins to imagine. “Jared tried not to move or breathe hard, to make it even quieter, quiet as the man and woman up front.” Looking deeper into this you can see a metaphorical similarity between his parents and the two dead passengers of the plane since he lives with two “dead” people. His parents are suggested to be drug addicts. When they find the ring he takes from the woman’s dead finger, he gives it to his father who then sells it for drug money. This shoves his family into a deeper hole of problems, they’re left sick and broke without a fix or solution. Jared returns to the scene of the helicopter for the man’s watch. After his parents leave the house with the watch, Jared returns to the helicopter with a wrench and hammer. He proceeds to “repair” the helicopter so it may fly him and its occupants away. “He chipped the snow and ice off the windshields with the hammer’s claw. Finished, he said, and dropped the hammer on the ground, he opened the passenger door and got in. “I fixed it so it’ll fly now. Rash evokes the reader’s optimism and positive faith in the good of humanity through his stories.
To begin with, Rash uses the setting, Appalachian Mountain, for the rural desperation of the people who live in poverty and/or who have drugs in the household. In this story, the woods with the snow was a place where the son found adventure, the son escape to find his happiness and imagination. In the mountains, it was white and bright from the snow which presentence the son’s innocence. The son runs across a crashed plane in the woods and he collected their values, a ring and watch, for his own good, but his parents got a hold of it and sold it for drugs. Going back to back to the woods the son found dead flesh to be his friends and he wanted to be like them so bad that he sat with them and act as if he were dead until he was dead. All in all, Appalachian literature is a distraction from the truth because, at the beginning of the story, it seemed as if the son was just having fun, the reader didn’t know what his home looked like or who his parents were.
Furthermore, In Assessing the Effects of Drug Use on Antisocial Behavior, Tinklenberg writes about how drugs affect social behaviors. The higher your doses of drug is the more anti-social you become. This article relates to my story because the parents of Jared were drug users which led to their death. Jared’s parents stayed at home, they did not communicate with people outside of the house. Jared became a victim of anti-social behavior because kids made fun of him because of his poor hygiene; therefore he had no friends, which lead him to become friends with dead flesh. This family was separated from the world due to the drug used in the house. To infer, I believe that Jared was isolated from all the kids at school because of his smell which made him insecure about himself.
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Usually, a normal parent would’ve questioned why the child was by themselves and how they got the valuables. Jared’s parents were praising him because he found the valuable and they are now about to go and sell for drugs. Jared does not live a normal life. For example, once his parents became sick he knew that he had to go back to get that watch so they can have their daily dose. Most kids do not or should not have to worry about their parent’s drug problem. This story did not show a great parent-child structure. For example, “Children may help in household tasks, but eat with parents and play with parents.” This shows that the child is building a bond with their parents. All shared activities involved in human capital development from children. In a household, the parent(s) should be involved in the child(ren) life such as their homework or just a simple imagination.
From another perspective, In Heilman’s book, talks about escapism in literature. Heilman says that escapism and isolation go hand in hand. For example, he says, “modern escapism or isolation from the either inherited attitude that influences the connotation of escape literature.” Although escapism is one of the oldest and simplest functions, it’s still used in modern stories today. This article relates to The Ascent because my character goes on an adventure to the mountains to escape from his reality. Jared who is the main character in the story, imagines the girl that he crushes on in the mountain and fights bears to protect her to get away from his drugged parents.
All in all, Rash evokes the reader’s optimism and positive faith in the good of humanity through his stories. He makes them believe that everything is good then he shows the bad and evil. Things in the story were odd. Jared was not your average ten-year-old boy.
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