Perspectives

Here, we will help you put “Oregon Journal” by Vittwia Mickelson into perspective by looking at different aspects related to time perspective, relevance today, and societal perspective.

Time or periodical perspective

When you deal with the time perspective, keep in mind that the text was published in 1924 in the Oregon Journal. The route called the Oregon Trail was opened in the early 1800s and the text focuses on the final years of the movement towards the west, as well as on its aftermath.

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Societal perspective

The society depicted by Vittwia Mickelson is quite complex. On the one hand, Vittwia talks about the society formed by nurses, doctors, and wounded soldiers on the front. When she explains how soldiers were tricked into allowing doctors to amputate their limbs, Vittwia’s bitterness resurfaces:

The contract doctors at that time received $50 for every amputation and, of course, much less for merely bandaging a wound, so they usually decided on amputation, frequently explaining to me, as a justification, that gangrene might set in, so they would play safe and take off the wounded arm or leg. The soldiers called those contract doctors the ‘Iowa butchers’. (p. 118, ll. 35-40)

Then, Vittwia focuses on the society formed by farmers traveling in prairie schooners westwards and on the various conflicts on their road.

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