Hatfields Boy An Shootin example essay topic
A hillbilly rivalry turn into a genu-wine merican legend cause it was wrote up in the newspapers all the time. Near bout any magazine or paper you could name run a story bout soon as gettin wind of one thing or nuther outta them hills. Why, people out in California could read bout it in the San Francisco Examiner and folks in New York could pick up The World an likely as not find a story on the Hatfield / McCoy business. Sho, jus soon as them paper-hawkers heard's much as a squabble or peep, itd git put to pencil that day, an out in print the next!
Theres a reporter come down from some paper in Philly an' talked with one o' the younger Hatfields an wrote bout it eggs-cloosive and all, bein the first interview with one o the feeders themselves. The Hatfield boy up an got himself all worked up an hollers: Blood cries out for blood! , an that reporter fella wrote it all an put it in his paper. The boy aint had the foggiest on what the feud was bout an said so! Ifn you read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, youll find it near same as what Buck said when Huck ax him bout fightin the Shepherdson. What was the trouble about, BuckLand "I reckon maybe I dont know.
Well, who done the shooting was it a Granger ford or a Shepherdson Laws, how do I know It was so long ago. Dont anybody know Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other folks; but they dont know, now, what the row was about in the first place (pp 103,104, ) The Hatfield an' McCoy feud werent much differnt. Whats more, the seed of it all was a pig steal in an' a land deal what went sour an went to court, an old McCoy comin out on the short end an lay in for Hatfields boy an shootin him, an by an by they aint nobody membered how it started an was jus shootin each other cause the othern had shot one o theirs, so they shot one o the othern, an so on til it got sos couldnt none of em recollect when or why the fuss kicked up in the first place! 'Nuther thing, too; That story bout Hatfields boy runnin off with one o McCoys daughters an gettin hitched, -that happened tween a Shepherdson boy and Bucks sister, too. Fact is, evbody run here fig gerd them two was court in an spark in in secret on account a Harney Shepherdson walk thru the woods singin: Soph. I jus met a gal name Soph ! , an mos evbody knowd who hes singin bout.
Cept n, course their folks aint knowd or theyd a never stood fer it, so aint nobody told em. This piece was an exercise intending to reflect Twain style by use of vernacular, the run-on sentence (next-to-last-paragraph) to both compel and confuse, and weaving in re-hashed Shakespeare with an absurdly comic modern twist. Actual influence was from a feud in Missouri involving a family named Darnell. Feud in HF parallels feud written about in Life on the Mississippi, including location and similar details (HF, U. of California ed. with expl. footnotes) Norton Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 2, 5th ed., 1998, W.W. Norton and Co., New York, (Chapters 17 and 18).