While reading the Swallow Barn by John Pendleton Kennedy I couldn't help but wonder why Kennedy would in a sense, bash the establishments on the plantation. He uses sayings like, "a face without eyebrows", "unplastered", and "melancholy" to describe the house on the plantation. I think that he uses these kinds of words to describe the house because he wants the readers to know that the house has lost its beauty. He uses the same language when he discusses the barn. It's described as, "huge, crazy and disjointed" which explains that it is an eyesore as well. He goes on to say that there is a "sickly-looking wagon" sitting out front. After all of these descriptions I realized that maybe he was bad mouthing the establishments because people from the south place a huge importance on the land because that's what they life off of what with farming and growing crops to support their families.
One thing that helped explain how much people from the south cherish the land was the language he used to describe the land surrounding the house and barn. Kennedy talks about how plentiful it is and how it is where the true beauty lies on that plantation. He states that the land has patches of forest and a "succession of fields clothed with a diminutive growth of Indian corn, patches of cotton or parched tobacco plants" which lets the reader know that the grounds are full of life.
Living on this plantation is a man named Frank Meriweather who I see as a man who thinks very highly of himself. His dress and attitude bring me to believe this. When Kennedy started talking about Meriweather and his political views, I was thinking to myself, wow this Meriweather character cannot make up his mind.
Overall I enjoyed this passage because the language was easier to understand and I loved all of the description he used when discussing the barn, the house, and the land surrounding them.

John Smith's readings for me, were hard to understand. I found myself rereading them a few times just to understand the meaning. John Smith's views on how if children are raised wrong then they could grow up to do bad things, is a very valid point. You see this everywhere in the world today, children who have no parental control grow up to led lives with no respect for authority. Another thing, I didn't know that Pocahontas never married John Smith and I can no longer watch that movie without being a little bit disapointed.

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