We Are Bound for the Promised Land
Back in the old days, the communities were a lot more conservative. Every father was the head of the family. Many people lived in small towns, and had farms. Almost everybody knew each other, in each town, and everybody knew if something big had happened, or if something was worth knowing. There were a much bigger difference between boys and girls, and it was not normal to play boys and girls, like it is now. In the text, We Are Bound for the Promised Land, we see some of these points, and we learn about how life was, for a girl named Eilean, back in the days.

In the text, We Are Bound for the Promised Land, we meet a girl named Eilean MacLeod. Eilean is a girl living in a small town with her mother, her father and her two sisters. She helps out her family, by feeding the chickens and the cow, wearing a little apron over her dress. Eilean goes to school every day, and has to friends named Angus and Lewis. Angus and Lewis are to boys, and Eilean father is not very happy about that. He wants Eilean to be “normal”, and have friends who are girls, instead of boys. Eilean is the youngest in her family, and is not treated very well, by anybody else, but her mother. Her father is very strict, and at one point he hits her so hard, she falls to the ground. Her mother loves her, but there is nothing she can do, because se does not want the father to get mad. It’s obvious that the father is the head of the family. Eilean seems very quiet, but she isn’t really. She is nobody else but herself, and she doesn’t seem to care about what other people think about her. She goes her own ways, and not much can stop her.

The style of the language used in the text, We Are Bound for the Promised Land, is very old. It is obvious, that when you read the story, you are supposed to get a feeling of what it must have been like, living Eilean and her families lives. When you read the story, you hear about how Eilean works every day, and you get a feeling that her life isn’t easy. Then you hear a bit about the family, and you get to know more about, how life was back then, and what Eilean must have gone trough. When you hear about her job feeding the animals, you know she lives on a small farm, and you get a feeling that she lives in a small town, without it being said.

The themes in the text, We Are Bound for the Promised Land, are very different. The first theme I want to point out is “the old days”, I think you hear a lot about what life was like back then, and I think it is very interesting, to hear about the life of a girl, who was not like everybody else. With that being said, you can also say, that one of the themes is “being different”, because Eilean is so different, and that is so loveable about her. It is good to know, that not everybody liked the way it was back then. Another theme is “family”, because you hear about the MacLeod family, and how things work in their family. The father is the head of the family, like in every other family back then, and that is so different from what we are used to today. One of the themes could also be “sisterhood”, because Eilean has two sisters. Eilean is kind of left out, and the two other sisters are more close with each other, than they are with Eilean, and I think that is a shame, but it makes a good point in the story.

All in all I think it is a very interesting story, and I think you learn a lot from it. It’s not that typical happy story, where everything is going well, and you have a happy family. No, it is more atypical, and you hear about some problems, and some other sides of what it must have been like many years ago, for our grandparents, and I think that is very good.