Gretel Ehrlich's Story About Men
Reaction Paper-Non-Fiction
Carolyn C. Jolley
ENG/125
July 31, 2013
Dr. Ozichi Alimole
Reaction Paper-Non-Fiction
Having traveled a great deal since birth, partly due to my father being in the Air Force and the rest is blamed on some gypsy spirit residing deep within, much of Gretel Ehrlich’s story, “About Men” resonated with me. I understood her loneliness for places once visited, and the need to find solace in the now places as she did while on the New York Subway searching for posters of Cowboy’s. “What I am aching to see is horseflesh, a glint of spur, a line of distant mountains, brimming creeks, and a reminder of the ranchers and cowboys I’ve ridden with for the last eight years” (Ehrlich, 1985). In contrast, for me personally, is Joan Didion’s memoire of a woman that has a lot of time at “home” and is clearly unhappy with how she must live out her days.
Home can mean many things to people, after all is it a unique and subjective experience that only we can appreciate-good or bad. In these stories I read each woman seems to define “home” as an entirely different existence, though they are both lonely, drifting through life in the places they must now call home. Even though Greta was not born on a ranch, she felt a connection to the ranch …show more content…
Gretel was more involved with the plight of the Cowboy, and Joan was consumed with her place in this world away from her parents’ home. It seems that Gretel is creating her own vision of the Cowboy on her terms, by what she witnessed on one ranch in Wyoming. Claiming it is the “geographical vastness and social isolation” that makes the Cowboy hard to hold and even harder to love going so far as to state, “They lack the vocabulary to express the complexity of what they feel” (Ehrlich, 1985, p.
Carolyn C. Jolley
ENG/125
July 31, 2013
Dr. Ozichi Alimole
Reaction Paper-Non-Fiction
Having traveled a great deal since birth, partly due to my father being in the Air Force and the rest is blamed on some gypsy spirit residing deep within, much of Gretel Ehrlich’s story, “About Men” resonated with me. I understood her loneliness for places once visited, and the need to find solace in the now places as she did while on the New York Subway searching for posters of Cowboy’s. “What I am aching to see is horseflesh, a glint of spur, a line of distant mountains, brimming creeks, and a reminder of the ranchers and cowboys I’ve ridden with for the last eight years” (Ehrlich, 1985). In contrast, for me personally, is Joan Didion’s memoire of a woman that has a lot of time at “home” and is clearly unhappy with how she must live out her days.
Home can mean many things to people, after all is it a unique and subjective experience that only we can appreciate-good or bad. In these stories I read each woman seems to define “home” as an entirely different existence, though they are both lonely, drifting through life in the places they must now call home. Even though Greta was not born on a ranch, she felt a connection to the ranch …show more content…
Gretel was more involved with the plight of the Cowboy, and Joan was consumed with her place in this world away from her parents’ home. It seems that Gretel is creating her own vision of the Cowboy on her terms, by what she witnessed on one ranch in Wyoming. Claiming it is the “geographical vastness and social isolation” that makes the Cowboy hard to hold and even harder to love going so far as to state, “They lack the vocabulary to express the complexity of what they feel” (Ehrlich, 1985, p.