Analyzing+a+Narrative+-+Wine+on+the+Desert

**Characters:** Durante & Tony
 * Setting: (Sarah, Susannah, Lauren)**

There are two main characters in the short story "Wine on the Desert" by Max Brand. One of the main characters, Durante, is a murder er on the run from the sheriff. In his desperate struggle to get away, Durante wanders into the desert in the direction of his friend Tony's house. Tony lives in an adobe house in the desert and is surrounded by a ten-acre vineyard. He has a wooden leg and is very hospitable to Durante. When Durante asks Tony if he can give his mule water, Tony willingly agrees and even asks Durante what he would prefer for dinner. While Tony is tending to his every need, Durante is both rude and lazy, two qualities that have a large impact on his death. Before Tony and Durante eat dinner, Tony had already taken the time to scrub his face and sleek his hair back. Tony can also be described as clever and attentive to detail. Living in the desert is difficult because of both the heat and it's very easy it is to get dehydrated. Tony 's alternative is to store water in tanks and use it to nourish his vineyard and for surviv al. Durante eventually turns on Tony, and ruins his vineyard paradise. He then forces Tony to fill his canteen with water, and to get Durante back, Tony fills it with wine instead, because wine cannot satisfy a person's thirst for water. Durante killed a person and is running away from the crime scene to the desert. When he arrives at Tony’s house, Durante is selfish and takes advantage of Tony’s hospitality. Durante asks Tony to give his mule water and does not even offer to help Tony cook the food or set the table. Durante is just a rude and obnoxious outlaw who takes advantage of good hearted people like Tony.

**hey its mePlot: (Katherine, Neelie)** When the, Durante has killed a man and is walking towards Tony's house in the desert, in attempt to run from the sheriff. Tony is happy to see Durante and welcomes him into his home with open arms. One of the first converstations Durante and Tony have is about Tony's rifle, and how he can shoot a rabbit through the head. Tony fixes Durante an extavagant meal and they begin their dinner conversations. During their meal they talk about the death of Tony's father in great detail. He died of thrist in the desert. The next morning when Duranante woke up, Tony was outside shooting rabbits for their breakfast. When Tony came inside to show Durante his rabbit, Durante showed a sudden interest in Tony's gun. When Tony showed it to him, Durante snatched it from Tony and held him at gunpoint. Durante marched Tony outside and started to explain to Tony his situation. Durante said that he had murdered a man and when the sherieff started looking for him he would come to the first source of water. Even after hearing all of this, Tony still offered for Durante to hide in his wine cellar. Durante shot all of Tony's water canisters and t old Tony that he never stood up for himself. He then demanded Tony to go inside and fill up his canteen. Tony brought Durante back his canteen. After that, Durante took Tony's shotgun and rode off into the desert. About a half a mile away from Tony's house, Durante dropped the shotgun, not expecting Tony to retreive it due to his wooden leg. L ater when he turned around for one last look at the vineyard, he saw Tony retreiving his gun. When Durante t ook a sip from his canteen he discover ed that Tony had filled it with wine instead of water. He thought about turning back towards Tony's house but the image of the dead rabbit. After galloping onon his mule for three hours, Durante's mule died and Durante was left to slow ly die of dehydration.

**Conflict: (Arsema, Madeleine)** Max Brand's "Wine in the Desert" has three main conflicts: man vs. man, man vs. himself, and man vs. wild. The conflict man versus man is shown when Durante has to go against his supposed friend, Tony, and destroy everything his friend has worked for, demolish Tony's whole world and life. Durante shoots Tony's years worth of water, which had taken Tony the whole previous year to collect. This is not only Tony's only way of survival, but also Tony's only way to make wine, which means everything to him. The fact that Durante, who Tony just welcomed into his home and treated like family, could just crush his friend's lifetime of work in one instant says a lot about his character (I know this is a run-on and poorly constructed sentence but I was trying to think of better ways to say this and I couldn't really think of anything). It is shown again when Tony gets Durante back by filling his water canteen with wine.The conflict of man vs. himself is shown t hree times : once when Durante is weighing his options: going back to Tony and possibly getting shot or caught by the sheriff, or continue on towards the mountains and possibly die of thirst and when Tony is deciding if he should stand up for himself while Durante is making him a fool and risk his life, or if he should just sit there and take it and have everything that he has worked for in his life strewn from him and killed (also probably a runon I apoplogize). This conflict is also portrayed when Tony decided to fill Dante's canteen with wine instead of water. Even though we don't find this out until Dante decides to take a sip of the "water", there must have been a lot of thought, especially since this decision was life or death. Even though Dante ended up taking advantage of Tony and treating him like dirt, Tony is not portrayed as having a violent nature, so the fact that he made the decision that ultimately killed his so-called "friend" definitely was not an easy one. The conflict of man versus wild is demonstrated three times : once showing Tony conquering mother nature and living in a barren and abandoned desert and the second time when Mother Nature conquers Durante and ends up killing him with lack of water and carelessness to check his canteen. The third demonstration seems to happen throughout the story. The desert itself is personified in the short story as a cruel and oblivious being. It seems as if the desert doesn't care about what happens to the people that fall victim to it. While Dante dies in the desert from dehydration, it seems as if the desert is not aware or even cares. Dante tries to survive the harsh conditions, but in the end he knows he is powerless against it.

**Theme: (Katie J., Katie C., Mary Catherine)** In Max Brand's "Wine on the Desert" the view that nature is not to blame for human deaths that occur in nature is a theme that recurrs through the plot. In the story, the narrator describes nature in a very passive and inert manner such as when it is described saying, "No stars, no wind, the air as still as the water of a stale pool, and he in the dregs at the bottom". This evokes the sense that nature is innocent, and that Durante somehow provoked his own demise. This can also be show through the fact that Durante would not have died if it was not for his poor decisions in drinking the wine in stead of water. In Max Brand's " Wine on the Desert" the theme is to stand up for yourself and to never take advantage of someone. In the short story Tony is taken advantage of by Durante, which leads to Tony being stranded in the desert. Tony then goes on to stand up for himself by secretly putting wine in Durante's water bottle, which leads to the death of Durante. In the end Tony's action to stand up for himself left Durante in shock but showed him never to take advantage of someone. Durante learned the hard way that you cannot take advantage of someone without them standing up for themself. The miss conception cost him his life in the long run. The theme of "Wine on the Dessert" is do onto others as you would like done onto you. This is because the fact that he took advantage of his "friend" Tony and for that reason eventually killed. The wine that Tony put into the canister instead of water shows the revenge that he wanted on Durante. Durante took away Tony's life: his way of surviving, his father's work, and his happiness. All it took was a single bullet to the water canisters and all was lost. It also took only one canister of wine to kill a man .The religious references throughout the short story also represent the theme because of the religious beliefs that if a man does right good things will happen, but if he does wrong there will be consequences. This shown by Durante's wrong doings, which ultimatly cost him his life.

**Symbolism: (Clara, Kennan, Natalie)** The water in Max Brand's short story "Wine on the Desert" represents life and survival in the torrid desert ; nothing could live without it. The wine, however, represents trickery because Durante thought what Tony put in the canister was water. It also represents trickery because it seems like the wine would hydrate you to some extent, even if not as well as water does, but instead it dehydrates you. The grape vines represent how beauty and worth can be created out of the most hostile enviornments if someone puts effort into it. The oasis on which Tony lives is a representation of Tony's motivation and capabilities when it comes to a challenge, such as living in the middle of the desert. Despite his wooden leg, representing his weaknesses and handicaps, he is able to "live pretty good here" (5). From Durante's point of view, the mountains symbolize a hideout that provided safety and protection from the sheriff and an escape from the crimes he previously commited.