Wells Tower is a powerful writer who takes an abstract approach to exploring the complexity of relationships and connections between men and women, parents and children, and people in general. He created a world of brutal men whose lives generally don't go the right way, as well as strong women who have had to deal with more problems and stress than one could imagine. These themes are particularly present in his short story “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned,” which chronicles the life of a barbaric Viking nation that lives to destroy and ravage other, smaller nations. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In “All Ravaged, All Burned,” the story is told from the point of view of Harald, who is also the narrator. In the opening lines of the story, Harald explains that their people have been victims of crop diseases and "dragons", and they attribute these natural phenomena to a Norwegian monk named Naddod. He said, “We all know who it was,” referring to the monk. After careful consideration, Harald, not wanting to leave his wife, agrees to go with the other Vikings to the island where Naddod is, to kill him and put an end to the madness. It seems that almost every male in their clan has had problems with a wife or wife. Djarf, who was the boss of their ship and a "war fool", has no problem leaving his wife for months and she doesn't seem to mind either, this is made clear in the story: “So Djarf, whose wife was a sour, carp-mouthed thing and had little argument for staying at home, was preoccupied with getting back in the ship and going to put things right in Northumbria. Another example of their women's problems is that of Harald's friend Gnut: "His wife had died years ago, died of bad milk, and now that she was gone, the part of Gnut that felt at peace in a place that did not move beneath him had become ill. and died too. After his wife passed away, all he likes to do now is row. Another theme presented repeatedly in the story is horror and barbaric rituals or acts, expected in a story about the Vikings, but important nonetheless. Our first encounter with this is when we learn the story of Djarf, it explains that he comes from a place where people take unhealthy pleasure in the macabre sides of life and it also says: "They have a habit there -down if they don't. like the look of a child when it comes out of its mother's womb, they cast it into the depths and wait for the next one. This is about throwing a newborn baby into the ocean as if it were a simple rock. Another example of the clan's barbaric nature is made clear when Djarf finds Naddod and, almost instantly, cuts open his stomach but leaves him alive on the ground. At this point, Gnut turns to Harald and says, "Oh, Lord, he makes a Blood Eagle?" “Yeah,” I said. “It seems like that. » Then, Djarf begins to cut open his back and tear out his lungs, while he is still alive. You can tell it's normal for them and no one bats an eyelid, Djarf even tells the kids to listen and learn, teaching them how to do the "blood eagle" and they all seem fascinated by it instead of being disgusted. Summary/ResearchWells Tower is an award-winning author who began his career in 2009 with the release of his short story collection titled “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned.” Tower's interest in sociology and anthropology, in which he earned degrees from Wesleyan University, mixed with hismaster's degree in fiction writing from Columbia University "makes it seem as if his stories were case studies drawn from an ongoing study of relationships" (Schiffman). His typical writing style deals with aspects such as excessive drinking, cheating, fights, etc. and in the words of Sam Anderson on Tower, "He is, like his great ancestors, a connoisseur of violence." His stories in “All Ravaged, All Burned” depict the sometimes dark but always shocking reality of life. From Viking warriors to envious teenage girls, this book has it all. Schiffman proposes that “a strong sense of longing permeates all of these stories—the desire for something more, for something lost, or for something that will probably never be found.” Which in itself is kind of a dark interpretation and seems to present that there is hope for something but nothing will ever happen. The main story in his collection takes a different approach from other stories that vaguely describe contemporary Americans. This story is very unusual and it's strange that it takes a completely different approach from the other stories, instead of a brooding teenager or a middle-aged man whose life is falling apart, the characters in this story are a boat loaded with Vikings who went on a pillage. a defenseless island. After reading the main story and realizing that it is nowhere near the plots of the other stories in his book, it begs the question: why did he put this story in there? Or why is this story alone about the Vikings and not contemporary America? When asked about this in an interview with Michael Carroll, Tower replied: “The Viking story contains a lot of violence, but it's a kind of burlesque. All I was really trying to do with this totally over-the-top, grotesque, gory thing was show it as a counterpoint to this everyday alienation of the lives of these rank-and-file Vikings. (Carroll 4) This means that it was simply an absurd exaggeration of the Vikings and all it did was counteract the current view of the Vikings. Also he may have put the Viking story in the collection to make the book more interesting, contemporary America can get boring after a while so this would help the reader stay interested if reading a story about Vikings pillaging an island and killing everyone on it. It is also worth noting that today people are inherently interested in Viking-type stories and modern stories that depict ancient times and violence. There are so many shows and movies today that deal with stories from the Renaissance era, one of the most popular among them is Game of Thrones, a fantasy/sci-fi TV show which depicts a fictional world filled with Viking-like characters and barbarians. . What's even stranger is the fact that these barbaric Viking-age people speak the same middle-class American dialect that's used in all the other stories and isn't much different from how we're talking today. Tower's syntax and use of familiar terms makes the story very easy to follow while still providing plenty of detail. He also has a wide range of voices when it comes to the voices he can write with: “Tower can write with equal power about young women and boys; about ancient hell-raising, skull-pounding Vikings and an observant old man confined to the 21st century house, even about a happy-go-lucky pedophile. (White) this shows his versatility as a writer, and he does a good job in allthe domains. In Tower's book, all but one of the stories capture a contemporary America with somewhat normal problems. A man gets caught cheating, a boy has a horrible stepfather he hates, a child hiding from a bully are all issues that people can relate to, but Tower uses these issues and then presents a bigger problem, usually darker too. In one of the short stories in his book "On the show", a child hides from a bully and, while hiding, he is "found by a monster worse than anything in the haunted house." (Barr) and his father doesn't believe him. This theme takes a reversal in the story of the Vikings, where their problems are very different, poor crop yields/weather, pillaging gone wrong, friend gets stabbed by a child then kills the child, etc. but while they are Vikings and they face a lot of things. In different circumstances than the protagonists of other stories, they always have the same type of problems, such as problems with their wives or with women in general. The central theme of all the stories is the depiction of contemporary America, and it would be strange if a single story was not mReligion as an Aspect of the Pledge of Allegiance