Alexandra Guerrero
Dr. Despain
CODES 121
29 October 2024
Reflection
While reading The Great River, which is 71-86 pages long, I saw a difference from reading literary text last week. First is the way it’s written. One was a poem with many symbols and meanings related to the author’s lived experiences with loss and grief. This week’s reading is more about the natural history of the Mississippi River that shaped the country. The titles of some of the pages were named “ Half Horse, Half Alligator,” which is what they call the Kentucky frontiersmen who fought together with Jackson in the battle of New Orleans.
As the text says, Thomas Jefferson saw a future within the Mississippi Valley that would help with land hunger. “Jefferson turned the land hunger that drove the first western settlers into a political imperative: democracy could truly flourish, he claimed, only if the new nation expanded across a substantial territory, ensuring that as many citizens as possible could own a portion of the land.”
Overall, the text tells how the Mississippi Valley influenced Jefferson to travel, opening new territory or land to the people as he said, “empire for liberty,” giving the people of his country an opportunity to have their land to live out of. “ He hoped the watershed would be converted to a garden-or a collection of gardens, spreading across the landscape like a quilt. Private property everywhere. The only shared resource he spoke of was the river itself, the highway into his promised land”. Lastly, the story exposes the American frontman’s hard work that shaped the country’s future.
Works Citedhttps://bb.siue.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-601585-dt-announcement-rid-68297140_1/xid-68297140_1