Would You Go Into the Storm? Does the helplessness of animals bring people guilt? Maybe even give them the need to help them? In the story, "What Happened During the Ice Storm" that is exactly how a few boys had felt. The author Jim Heynen displays the story how the boys went out in the freezing cold to help pheasants that were sitting in the cold all alone. The theme the author is trying to get across is that it is human nature to protect yourself and others in stressful situations. In the story it tells everyone that most of the livestock is safe and protected in the barns besides the pheasants. Evidence from the text states that, "The boys went out into the freezing rain to find pheasants too." Proving that these …show more content…
The story says, "The boys stood still in the icy rain. Their breath came out in slow puffs of steam." This helps support the fact that the boys were volunteering to stand outside in the bitter, icy rain to help figure out a way to help the birds. Instead of giving up on finding a solution to help them and going back inside where it was cozy, they stood outside together to come up with a plan to take care of the birds. Instead of following their nature and going to where it was warm and comforting they stood outside as long as it took to come up with a way to help the birds and then help themselves by going back home. And finally the boys were willing to give up their warm, dry coats to help the pheasants take on the cold. The author says, "He was taking off his coat, the thin layer of ice splintering in flakes as he pulled his arms from the sleeves."
Baldwin talks of a "disease" which afflicts black Americans and can wreck race relations and creating a "rage in the blood" so he is using the "disease" as a metaphor for probably the rage that black Americans have for experiencing the inequalities of life in the US especially in the 1960's when the civil rights movement was so strong and segregation was so strongly practiced in the South still.
