In the book,
Accounts Settled, there is only one major character named Gordon. Gordon is seventeen, six feet tall, and has
the beginning of a beard. The main
setting is in a forest-filled valley that is a mile from Gordon's home. The story does not give a specific date but
the most logical time this story takes place is in the winter during the early
1900s.
The inciting
incident in the story is when Gordon's dad came down with flu-pneumonia and
Gordon must take his place in taking care of the trapline that he had set up in
the forest. The conflict of the story is
internal and external because Gordon had to face himself and nature. The rising action started when Gordon had a
sense of fear as he went into the valley.
The, the porcupine stole his food and Gordon was going to kill it but
remembered an old woodsman tale that it's bad luck to ill a porcupine. Gordon then goes to bed, hungry and it took
him awhile to fall asleep. He later
wakes up to find a cougar ready to pounce on him. The cougar dose not strike yet because it is
waiting for Gordon to move. Gordon knows
better and stayed in the same position for what seemed like hours. Suddenly, the porcupine returns to look for
more food and this disrupts the cougar.
The climax is when Gordon quickly reaches for his gun and shoots the
cougar. The resolution is when Gordon
"cries the final tears of his boyhood" and he is finally a man.
This writer used
suspense in his story many times. For
instance, "his eyes held the boy unwinkingly as he waited in the fiendish
way of cats for the moment when the man must stir, or make an attempt to
escape, the moment when his ingrained fear of man would be swallowed up by the
rising tide of his blood-lust" and "moments passed, horrible heart-thudding
moments, during which neither man nor animal stirred". Another method that the writer uses is
foreshadowing. For instance, "he
wouldn't have minded tending the old line along the lake shore, but this
haunted place-" and "Gordon had let it go at that, but he knew by the
occasional fuzz of nerves along his back that the secret shadowing still went
on, and that it was more than an inquisitive surveillance."
This author
defiantly used a surprise ending because the porcupine returning to find more
food was a complete surprise.
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