Analysis Of Major Jackson's 'Urban Renewal'

When thinking of human society, what comes to mind as the most classically “human” aspect? Would it be emotions, community, or urban development? The animal kingdom exemplifies two of these characteristics: there are many different types of animal communities who have complex forms of organization with hierarchical structures and the bonds they share with each other are an example of the emotions they can exhibit. Similarly, many plant species are seen growing together by region; their own forms of community. The complicating evidence in this scenario is the idea of development: animals or plants have not created their own types of materials, which defined in the context of being human produced are called “man-made,” and nature does not have

Specifically, the grandfather in this poem appears to represent involvement with nature because of his decisions to garden as he “stabs his shears into earth” (line 4). However, he is also representative of urban life too as he “watched the neighborhood” from “a three-story” building (line 10). The author describes the world, which the grandfather has a small “paradise” in, apart from the elements desecrated by humans, which include “a trampled box of Cornflakes,” a “craggy mound of chips,” and “greasy / bags of takeouts” (lines 23, 17, 2, and 14-15). The passive nature of the grandfather’s watching over the neighborhood can be interpreted in a variety of different ways, most of them aligning with the positive versus negative binary created by the authors of these texts. The author wants to show the reader that, through the grandfather’s complexity of character, a man involved in both nature and more human centered ways of life, there is multifaceted relationship that man and nature share. Through the also violent descriptions of the grandfather’s methods of gardening, the connection between destructive human activities and the negative effects on nature is