A Hero in Discuise

A Hero in Discuise

  • Submitted By: jnorton
  • Date Submitted: 12/11/2008 1:41 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 509
  • Page: 3
  • Views: 613

A Hero in Disguise During my freshman year at college I was asked to read a novel called “One Foot in Eden”. The book was a mystery novelwrote by Ron Rash. Will Alexander is the sheriff in a small town called Jocassee in southern Appalachia; he knows that the local bad ass Holland Winchester has been murdered. The only thing is that the sheriff can’t find neither a body nor someone to attest to the killing. The story is told through the voices of the sheriff, a local farmer, his wife, their son, and the sheriff’s deputy. The second chapter is told through the voice of Amy Holcomb, Billy’s wife. Amy is the hero in this story; she wants a baby so bad that she will do anything to get one, but never succeeds in having one. Then they find out that Billy is incapable of impregnating her because of having the polio as a child. So Amy decides to go see the Widow Glendower, an old womanthat lives way of in the woods that everyone claimed was a witch. The widow according to Joseph Campbell would be the mentor in the Hero’s Journey; she is the Merlin-like character who is Amy’s mentor. At first she gives Amy a potion to give to Billy to make him capable of planting his seed inside Amy. When this fails to work the Widow suggest to Amy “you got a man who can’t give you a baby, so you got to lay down with a man who can”. Amy doesn’t like the idea but is desperate. This is when Amy crosses the first threshold and decides to sleep with Holland Winchester in hopes of getting pregnant. The next chapter in the book is told through the voice of Billy. It takes place in deep summer when the “day star rises with the mourning sun”. By now Billy knows that Amy is pregnant with Holland’s child and doesn’t like it. It really bothers him to know that she is carrying around another man’s child, but loves Amy enough to be able to live with it. He’s out in the fields working one day when Holland decides to show up to visit Amy, well Billy has had all that he can take, grabs his shotgun and...

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