A
farm in Iowa. "About 95 percent of Iowa's landscape is still farmed.
Iowa's farms produced more in value each year than all the diamond mines in the
world put together. It remains number one in the nation for the production of
corn, eggs, hogs, and soybeans, and is second in the nation in total
agricultural wealth, exceeded only by California, which is three times the
size. Iowa produces one-tenth of all America's food and one-tenth of all the
world's corn" (Bryson 172-173). Source: www.secondshelters.com
In a chapter in The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt
Kid, Bill Bryson talks about Iowa and its last golden age of the family
farm to get his readers to understand a bit more about his childhood world. Throughout
the chapter, Bryson shows great pride in Iowa's farming by giving interesting facts
such as that here were 215,361 farms in the state in 1930 and the absolute
maximum that was predicted was 223,000
farms. As a child, Bryson spent a lot of time in Winfield near where Bryson's
father grew up and Bryson's grandparents lived. Bryson describes the Winfield
he remembers as a perfect town for a little kid like him because of "its
hansom Main Street, its imperturbable tranquility, its lapping cornfields,
[and] the healthful smell of farming all around" (Bryson 173). Bryson
reminisces about how his grandfather's barn and the fields of corn looked like the most fun places in the world until
he went in and realized that they were really scary places to be. Whether he
was drinking Nehi brand pop, watching TV that had seven channels (more than
what he had at home), having supper provided by a group of chuckling women all
named Mabel, watching tornadoes from safe distance, sleeping under piles of
blankets, overcoats, tarpaulins, and old carpets or viewing a town called Swedesburg
from the windows, Bryson remembers that
there was always some sort of strange adventures waiting for him down on the
farm. However, Bryson expresses his sorrow at the end when he informs the
readers that the Winfield that he used to know "is barely alive" and that
the best thing that he can say is that he "saw the last of something
really special." Throughout the chapter, the author uses a lot of vivid
details, metaphors, similes and hyperbole to get the readers to almost actively
feel what he is feeling. I think that sentences such as "If you so much as
flexed a finger or bent a knee, it was like plunging them into liquid nitrogen"
(Bryson 184) are effective in captivating audiences.
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