Post 4A

Vocabulary:

[181] fastidiously- hard to please
[180] anthracite- a mineral coal containing little of the volatile hydrocarbons (hard carbon)

Logical/Emotional Appeals:

1) "[...] not a pleasant experience with 50 pounds of momentum on your back. Lots of people leave Pennsylvania limping and bruised" (pg. 173). This emotional appeal fills the reader with anxiety, apprehension and even pity for what Bryson is preparing to traverse. (emotional)

2) "A single contour line was interrupted by a printed number in microscopic type. The number said either '1800' or '1200'" (pg. 174). By using numbers to show the poor construction of a map, Bryson uses logical objects to tell us how useless the Appalachian maps can be. (logical)

3) "And did they [glaciers] did start to advance again, what exactly would we do? Blast them with TNT or maybe nuclear warheads? [...] The quake devastated 24,000 square miles of wilderness, much of it glaciated. And what effect did this have on Alaska's glaciers? None" (Pg. 197). By saying this, Bryson makes the reader know how unchangeable and inevitably wilderness changes like glacier movement are. (emotional)

Quote:
"the Appalachians were pushed up (like a rucked carpet, as the analogy nearly always has it)" (Pg. 191) This is one of the many analogies Bryson uses in his memoir. He uses analogies a lot, so I decided to point that out.

Emerging Theme:
A new theme has emerged. As Bryson has stated so many times in his memoir, the maps used on the Appalachian Trail are hard to read, and sometimes not useful at all. This leads to a theme that if someone really wants to accomplish something, they may not be able to rely on "maps" left behind from someone else's "journey." They've got to do it themselves instead of used provided information.