Amanda gribb

Title:

THE CONTEST- suggests sense of competition (Refer to concerns/ themes)

Characters of the story

AMANDA GRIBB

Dominant:

• 
  Hosts the competition- ‘ Amanda Gribb, copying rodeo procedure (the rule of law in Elk Tooth), established a prize purse by collecting ten dollars from each contestant.
  
• 
  Saves Creel and Plato
  

KEVIN

Determined:

• 
  ‘Kevin was determined and bought hair restorer with his allowance to help the nascent whiskers along.’
  
• 
  the anemic blond hairs of his son, Kevin.
  
• 
  ‘Kevin Cokendall, whose few whiskers made up in length what they lacked in profusion.’
  
  
  

WIREGLASS COCKENDELL:

‘Wiregrass Cokendall showed thick and fiery red bristle’

Old Man DeBock

• 
  ‘ two-inch frizz in his normal appearance’
  
• 
  ‘whiskers seemed to stall at that length without going on to glory’.
  
• 
  ‘ said it was because the hairs were set deep in the cervices and wrinkles of DeBock’s ancient face, great furrows indicating a toothless condition.’
  
• 
  ‘ a calf had kicked out DeBock’s fronth teeth’
  
• 
  Old Man DeBock’s whiskers were short and yellow-white.
  

DARRYL MUTSCH:

• 
  Interested in folklore- ‘ said it was because the hairs were set deep in the cervices and wrinkles of DeBock’s ancient face, great furrows indicating a toothless condition.’
  

DEB SIPPLE:

• 
  Deb Sipple’s, as crinkled as ramen noodles, came in black with streaks of grey down each side
  
• 
  Give Deb Sipple a book, she thought, and he’d probably chew the covers off. 
  
  
  

CREEL ZMUNDZINSKI

• 
  The Game and Fish warden, Creel Zmundzinski, also grew a red beard
  
• 
  ‘unpopular liberal views’
  
• 
  Creel’s mother died two years later of complications from breast cancer, and after a few wretched months with his mother’s sister and her husband in Encampment, he was sent to a boys’ home and raised as an orphan.
  

PLATO BUCKLEW:

 big, axe-headed blond often mixed up in fights and referred to as “Plate-Head” by those who found that his advocacy of roadless wilderness areas, wolves, and horse-logging veered dangerously from traditional attitudes. 
HARD WINTER RALPH:

• 
  Hard Winter Ulph, who’d been born during the blizzard of 1949 in some shack south of Wamsutter, showed jet-black, pencil-straight whiskers that stuck out like the spines on a hat-pin cactus.
  

LOBETT:
A suet-faced Englishman with the chewy name of Lobett Pulvertoft Thirkill, working on Fiesta Punch’s ranch for the winter, joined in and contributed a faceful of tan five-o’clock shadow.

WILLY HUSON:

Willy Huson (color of mashed sweet potato)

QUENT STIPP:
The sulphur in the water sort a rots the hair or at least softens it up,” said Quent Stipp.

MERCEDES

• 
  ‘Mercedes de Silhouette, widow of Bill de Silhouette’
  
• 
  ‘ Mercedes had inherited the sheep, the ranch, the house, and its contents, including the books.’
  
• 
  ‘Mercedes de Silhouette was wearing a pair of her dead husband’s pajamas and his claret-colored silk bathrobe. She smelled of bourbon.’
  
  

BILL

• 
  ‘a sheep rancher who had graduated cum laude from Princeton and over the years amassed a tremendous number of books on diverse subjects.’
  
• 
  ‘He’d get right at the yellow pages and find him some secondhand book dealers and then he’d go there and claw through them shelves until he’d picked out fifty or sixty he liked and have em sent up home.’
  

ERWIN:

‘Erwin Hungate, who was a reader, his big tallow-colored face buried in a book even at the bar.’

LEWIS McCusky:

The next afternoon when Amanda Gribb arrived at Pee Wee’s to relieve owner Lewis McCusky, he said, “Mercedes de Silhouette called up. Says you come by after your shift, don’t matter how late cause she sits up watchin old movies. She found what you want. I’d say go on ahead any time because I’m goin a be right here tonight watchin the game.”

Types of Character

MAIN CHARACTERS- Amanda, Creel, Plato, Old man

DYNAMIC- Creel, Plato

MINOR/FLAT- Kevin, Wireglass, Old Man Debock, Bill, Mercedes, Erwin, Lewis, Lobette, Darryl, Hard Winter Ulph

Only two women, dominated by men

Narration

3^rd person omniscient but diction and style portrays the rural setting

Structure

CHRONOLOGICAL but digressions- lost teeth, guy collected books, prison story

1) Decision to take part in the contest (March, Sept)

2) Feb, 5 months later, discussions of beard and qualities

3) Book

4) April- suspense

5) Arrival of the stranger

Conflict

• 
  Person vs. Person: A struggle between two people.
  

COMPETITION

• 
  Kevin and dad
  
• 
  Creel and his friend against new comer
  

• 
  Person vs. Society: A story that deals with a social outcast who has been discriminated against.
  

• 
  Edwin Hungate- people don’t understand him
  

Tone and Mood:

Humorous, may be satirical but also forgiving towards her upbringing

HUMOUR:

• 
  Incongruity- Mercedes (romantic, lavish name)- comes out smelling of bear, Oxymoron- Christian Cannibals, nervous habit in the army
  
• 
  Colloquial, informal lang
  
• 
  Descriptive detail - The many names and words used to describe simple, mundane things is humourous (refer to appearance in concerns)
  
• 
  Disgusting- Amanda Gribb complained, for the zinc counter was sprinkled with loose hairs night after night. 
  
• 
  ‘damp beards, whiskers clotted with hardened egg yolk, residues of mustard, individual crumbs clinging to hairs like boys swinging on ropes above a swimming hole’
  
• 
  Actions- well timed, warm weather for beard, ‘swelled with vocabulary’- doesn’t really matter because it’s like pearls before a swine, finookery- prob can’t pronounce or made up word
  
• 
  Endless arguments on beards- rep of ‘that’- Amada Gribb tired of bar arguments that beards were or were not good protection against bronchitis, that vegetarians favored beards more than creophagists, that beards inspired political radicalism.
  
• 
  Types of books being collected by Bill- Saddle Galls, The Rooster Book, Into Surinam with Colonel Mascara, and the like. 
  
• 
  Didn’t read books but knew every word for beards- vocabularies of the Pee Wee’s patrons swelled with such splendid words as pogonophile, finookery, gnostic, countenance, postiche, obelisk, serendipity, and the stirring phrase Floreat Barba! 
  
• 
  Length they are willing to go
  
• 
  Amanda Gribb called 6 times
  
• 
  The kind of gifts Creel was giving
  
• 
  Caricature/ Exaggeratin- exaggerates certain features- advertisement and description of hair
  
• 
  Style- ‘ said it was because the hairs were set deep in the cervices and wrinkles of DeBock’s ancient face, great furrows indicating a toothless condition.’
  
• 
  ‘cowboy style’
  
• 
  ‘but tempting as these arrangements sounded, no contestant dared sacrifice length to style.’
  

• 
  Stories- ‘ rinsed them with coffee and jammed them back into the vacant spaces’
  
• 
  Richard the Lion-Hearted, she read, once entertained his warriors with a feast in which the pièce de résistance featured the roasted heads of captive Saracens, who had been shaved before going into the oven. Farther along she spotted a passage on beards and vegetarians. 
  
• 
  He was given to mossy jokes, as one about the Egyptologist who discovered a bit of wire in an excavation and declared the Egyptians had invented telegraphy, only to be aced by a rival who said that since no such piece of wire had been found in Assyrian site excavations, the Assyrians must have enjoyed wireless telegraphy.
  
• 
  The two friends helped each other out of tight spots, as the time when Plato, driving through a blinding whiteout with no visibility, ran off the road and into an open burial pit for a horse Darryl Mutsch had put down and, except for the horse, which was in situ, put off filling the hole. The cavity was precisely the same size as a Forest Service truck. It took the two friends most of one night to get the vehicle out with a heavy-duty tripod and winch.
  
  
  

Themes/ Concerns:

Rural setting

WHEN?

• 
  STARTS- ‘mild winter’, ‘ first snowfall’ , ‘a few snowflakes drifted on September 12’
  
• 
  COMPETITION HAD TO END- ‘Fourth of July’
  

WHERE?

Library- knotty pine corners, through log-girdered passageways, into rooms of trophy heads and leather chairs, and at last into a large, dim room with a northern clerestory. There were thousands of books from floor to ceiling, in shelved stacks running the length of the space.

• 
  Close knit community –Elk tooth
  
• 
  Even women are tough
  
• 
  3 pubs
  
• 
  ‘Amanda placed the book in a prominent position on the bar, and it was soon well-thumbed and stained with various alcohols.’
  
• 
  Not even a proper library, exactly 2 readers (1 is dead)
  
• 
  Strong sense of competition (Refer to concerns)
  
• 
  BETS and FADS, alliteration - ‘ They embrace fads and fancies, and fortunes ride on rash wagers’.
  
• 
  Law- ‘rodeo procedure (the rule of law in Elk Tooth)’
  
• 
  Shops- ‘ The only businesses in Elk Tooth were the Elk Tooth bank, the Western Wear and Feed store, and the three bars Pee Wee’s, Muddy’s hole and the silvertip.’ (link to masculinity/ refer to concerns)
  

Diction- ‘cowboy style’ , ‘cow crowd’(ALLITERATION) ,‘roosterin’

• 
  Idiom and alliteration- ‘the chance of a pancake in a pigsty’
  
• 
  Link to animals:
  

‘ a calf had kicked out DeBock’s fronth teeth’

• 
  Link to farming:
  

Willy Huson (color of mashed sweet potato)

“It’s goin a be terrible a shave all this hay off,” said Mutsch. 

• 
  Primal instincts (Refer to concerns)
  
• 
  Focus on folklore and ancestry- ‘ rinsed them with coffee and jammed them back into the vacant spaces’ –BACK IN THE 1950S
  
• 
  Hard Winter Ulph, who’d been born during the blizzard of 1949 in some shack south of Wamsutter, showed jet-black, pencil-straight whiskers that stuck out like the spines on a hat-pin cactus.
  
• 
  There was another bond: both of their great-grandfathers had done time in the territorial prison at Laramie; Cephas Bucklew, a plasterer from Ohio, had stolen a horse blanket from a Cheyenne livery stable, and C. C. Alkerson, a ship’s carpenter from Boston imprisoned for perjury when he tried to claim bounty money on three nonexistent wolf hides, enlivened Creel Z maternal lineage
  
• 
  Dialogue style-. The sulphur in the water sort a rots the hair or at least softens it up,” said Quent Stipp.
  
• 
  ‘but nobody else can find a damn thing. I spent days here once lookin for somethin on cowboy songs.’
  
• 
  Name of dog- Beard talk made a change from speculation on the whereabouts of Darryl Mutsch’s missing dog, Cowboy George
  
• 
  ‘cowboy style’
  
• 
  How they spend time- so bored host beard competition, at bars, the book is thumbed with stains, hardly any library and watching movies or games
  
• 
  Crime rate is high
  

-FOCUS ON APPEARANCE

Beard:

• 
  Diction-‘Kevin was determined and bought hair restorer with his allowance to help the nascent whiskers along.’
  

Old Man DeBock

• 
  ‘ two-inch frizz in his normal appearance’
  
• 
  ‘whiskers seemed to stall at that length without going on to glory’.
  
• 
  ‘facial moss’
  
• 
  ‘pencil-straight whiskers’
  
• 
  “It’s goin a be terrible a shave all this hay off,” said Mutsch.
  
• 
  ‘The beards showed odd color and texture variations.’
  
• 
  ‘Old Man DeBock’s whiskers were short and yellow-white.
  
• 
  Simile-Deb Sipple’s, as crinkled as ramen noodles, came in black with streaks of grey down each side
  
• 
  Wiregrass Cokendall showed thick and fiery red bristle in contrast to the anemic blond hairs of his son Kevin.
  
• 
  The Game and Fish warden, Creel Zmundzinski, also grew a red beard
  
• 
  Simile- Hard Winter Ulph, who’d been born during the blizzard of 1949 in some shack south of Wamsutter, showed jet-black, pencil-straight whiskers that stuck out like the spines on a hat-pin cactus.
  
• 
  ‘There were many examples of beards as fashion statements—metal threads worked in, dyes and gold dust, the pointed beards of Arabs, the rectilinear faux beards of the Egyptians, the curly extravagances of the Assyrians, the Hittites’ square-laced beards, plaited beards, immensely long beards that could be parted and looped around the ears’
  
• 
  ‘By late April most of the beards were thick and bristly’
  
• 
  ‘facial adornaments’
  
• 
  Beard of old man (Symbol), ‘
  
• 
  Comparison and simile- ‘damp beards, whiskers clotted with hardened egg yolk, residues of mustard, individual crumbs clinging to hairs like boys swinging on ropes above a swimming hole’
  
• 
  Length- Smilie- ‘ flowing into it as twin Missouris into the Mississipi were masses of hair’ , Metaphor-‘looking at a tsunami of a beard’
  
• 
  ‘Just wanted to see where you were from’
  

Other:

• 
  Diction- A suet-faced En-glishman with the chewy name of Lobett Pulvertoft Thirkill, working on Fiesta Punch’s ranch for the winter, joined in and contributed a faceful of tan five-o’clock shadow.
  
• 
  Hyphens ‘ tallow-coloured’
  
• 
  Parenthesis -Willy Huson (color of mashed sweet potato)
  
• 
  Hyphen and alliteration-Mercedes de Silhouette was wearing a pair of her dead husband’s pajamas and his claret-colored silk bathrobe. She smelled of bourbon. 
  
• 
  Diction-‘sarcastic style freckled with irony and untranslated’
  
• 
  ‘big ax-headed blonde’
  
  
  

-COMPETITION:

• 
  Son and father- Wireglass and Kevin competing with each other-‘and to his father’s chagrin, Kevin Cockendall
  
• 
  ‘Wiregrass Cokendall was thrilled to find a footnote referencing a Muslim story that the devil had only one hair on his chin, though of exceeding length, and used this nugget to taunt his son, Kevin. Kevin thumbed through until he found a passage describing a civilization that killed the red-bearded men among them.’
  
• 
  Make Old Man DeBock shave and then ‘They were heartened when the whiskers seemed to stall at that length’
  
• 
  Willing to read books for the competition
  
• 
  Biblical allusion, reference to Assyrians, Egyptians ,Arabs and American Indians
  

-MASCULINITY

• 
  Harsh ‘k’ ,‘T’ and D sounds emphasize masculinity- ‘Elk tooth’, ‘ Old Man DeBock’, ‘ Deb Sipple’, ‘Wireglass Cockendell’, ‘Kevin Cockendell’, ‘ Zmudnzinski’, ‘Hard Winter Uplh’ ,’ Wamsutter’ , ‘Lobett Pulvertoft Thirkill’
  
• 
  ‘Angle Iron Pass’- symbolic of physical strength
  
• 
  ‘ The only businesses in Elk Tooth were the Elk Tooth bank, the Western Wear and Feed store, and the three bars Pee Wee’s, Muddy’s hole and the silvertip.’- phallic symbols and ‘D’ AND ‘T’ sounds emphasize masculinity
  
• 
  Adverb and alliteration- ‘ cruelly competitive’
  

• 
  Associated with hunting- The kind of gifts Creel was giving\
  
• 
  Fights- big, axe-headed blond often mixed up in fights
  
• 
  Hardly 2 women, Amanda is tough
  

PRIMAL INSTINCTS:

• 
  Vet declared the competition
  
• 
  Comparison to an animal: ‘nascent whiskers’
  
• 
  ‘whiskers seemed to stall at that length without going on to glory’.
  
• 
  ‘Old Man DeBock’s whiskers were short and yellow-white.
  
• 
  ‘pencil-straight whiskers’
  
• 
  Worse’n havin a cat on the bar,” she said.
  
• 
  ‘Give DebSipple a book, she thought, and he’d probably chew the covers off’
  
• 
  Hair measurement tape is used to measure animal
  

-VALUE OF EDUCATION:

• 
  Old man at the end of story- family educated, graduated from Princeton
  
• 
  “Come on in,” she said. “I think I found you a good one. But it’s hard readin. A lot a foreign language and them sideways leanin words.” 
  
• 
  Lack of exposure- ‘No one could quite understand what the author, one Reginald Reynolds, was saying, as it was written in an abstruse and sarcastic style freckled with irony and untranslated Latin and French. The author also favored maze-like circumlocutions and assumed his readers possessed profound knowledge of history, literature, seafaring, religion, military strategy, dialectic, nursery rhymes, and philosophy.’
  
• 
  ‘Gradually the Enlightenment did not emerge but curiosity flowered as they read’
  
• 
  Foreshadowing- ‘The wind lifted fine alkali dust from the bottoms of the dead ponds, streamers of mineral particles blowing east’
  
• 
  ‘throaty guzzle’ – motor vehicle, personification
  
• 
  Man is symbol of enlightenment- ‘silver bike’, ‘snowy radiant white that seemed backlit by a full moon’, ‘heavy, silverly waves of hair’, ‘ silver straw’
  
• 
  ‘ luteous glow, it’s fluffed fullness, the mild fragnance of rose petals that waffed from it’ – Olfactory imagery and Alliteration
  
• 
  Symbols- Motor cycle
  
• 
  Comparison of how these people spend their days to how much he has achieved, graduated ‘summa cum laude’- with highest honour, Has married (these ppl are mostly bachelors), studied ‘ergonomics’- productive efficiency which contrast with what they are doing
  
  

CLARET

Obelisk



Square-laced beard

Grouse

Wolf scat

Side burn

Luteous glow