Analysis of The Bull Moose
"The Bull Moose" by Alden Nowlan is a finely crafted poem which reminds us of how far man has strayed from Nature. Through a carefully constructed series of contrasted images, Nowlan laments, in true Romantic fashion, man's separation from Nature.
The strength of the old moose is impressive. On his death march, he nonetheless comes "lurching" and "stumbling" in ponderous and powerful strides to "the pole-fenced pasture''- the edge of civilization. A crowd quickly gathers, a crowd of men and women, old and young - all notable for their insensitivity and lack of respect. They confuse the moose with one of their own domesticated animals, like the cattle or collie or gelded moose or ox, failing to see the nobility and ancient wisdom of this moose from "the purple mist of trees." The scene becomes obscene as men "pry open his jaws with bottles" and "pour beer down his throat." The symbolic crown of thistles hammers home the innocent suffering perpetrated by these giggling and snickering buffoons.
But this moose is no "shaggy and cuddlesome" doll. Living in freedom beyond the fences of civilization, this king of the spruce, cedar, and tamarack meets his degraded executioners with overwhelming power. The deep roar of this magnificently horned ancient "blood god" contrasts sharply with the puny and cowardly whine of the automobile horns.
Nowlan's sympathy for the moose and his disgust for mankind is forcefully expressed in a natural free verse. This poem calls us to rethink the arrogant self-righteousness we hold toward Nature. By fencing ourselves in, perhaps we shut ourselves away from those qualities necessary to make us truly human.
Teachers Comments: This essays strives to be concise, i.
Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, describes the adventure of Christopher McCandless, a young man that ventured into the wilderness of Alaska hoping to find himself and the meaning of life. He undergoes his dangerous journey because he was persuade by of writers like Henry D. Thoreau, who believe it is was best to get farther away from the mainstreams of life. McCandless’ wild adventure was supposed to lead him towards personal growth but instead resulted in his death caused by his unpreparedness towards the atrocity nature.
In 1990, when he was 22 years old, Christopher McCandless ventured out into the Alaska wilderness in search for true happiness, and 2 years later he suffered a tragic death. An aspiring writer, Jon Krakauer, found McCandless’ story fascinating and chose to dedicate 3 years of his life to write a novel about him. The book entitled “Into the Wild” tells the tale of Christopher McCandless, an ill prepared transcendentalist longing for philosophical enrichment, who naïvely, failed to consider the dangers of isolating himself from human society for such a long period of time. Though Christopher McCandless made a courageous attempt to separate himself from society, in order to achieve self-fulfillment, the stubborn nature of this reckless greenhorn led him to his unfortunate demise.
From the lone hiker on the Appalachian Trail to the environmental lobby groups in Washington D.C., nature evokes strong feelings in each and every one of us. We often struggle with and are ultimately shaped by our relationship with nature. The relationship we forge with nature reflects our fundamental beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. The works of timeless authors, including Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard, are centered around their relationship to nature.
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells was an intriguing and exciting book about a Time Traveller and his journey’s through time. In this book, the Traveller explained to a group of men who were discussing the nature of time that time was the fourth dimension; just like the three dimensions of space: length, width and height. The Traveller argued that since time was a dimension, then it stood to reason that people should be able to move along the time continuum, into the past or the future. Most of the men do not seem to believe the Traveller or his theory, but agreed that they would like to travel in time, and talked about what they would do if they could. To illustrate his point, the Time Traveller went and got a model of his time machine from his laboratory to demonstrate and later returned to detail the places, things and people he had seen in his travels with his working Time Machine. Throughout the story, the Time Traveller faced setbacks and challenges, but the book outlined how he persevered and pointed to the future mankind faced.
What is time? Is time travel possible? When nothing is changing does time still exits ? Is that really true? Are you real? Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that is significant to us when questions and other clams bring curiosity about whether things are real or not.
In Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer explores the human fascination with the purpose of life and nature. Krakauer documents the life and death of Chris McCandless, a young man that embarked on an Odyssey in the Alaskan wilderness. Like many people, McCandless believed that he could give his life meaning by pursuing a relationship with nature. He also believed that rejecting human relationships, abandoning his materialistic ways, and purchasing a book about wildlife would strengthen his relationship with nature. However, after spending several months enduring the extreme conditions of the Alaskan wilderness, McCandless’ beliefs begin to work against him. He then accepts that he needs humans, cannot escape materialism, and can never fully understand how nature functions. Most importantly, he realizes that human relationships are more valuable than infinite solitude. McCandless’ gradual change of heart demonstrates that exploring the wilderness is a transformative experience. Krakauer uses the life and death of Chris McCandless to convey that humans need to explore nature in order to discover the meaning of life.
The poet in her writing used the language tools of symbolism, images, metaphor and nature to illustrate her poetic ideas. The writer, used the word ‘’Hunters’’ in the first line which indicates an imagery of man in existence, example
Ovid. “Lycaon’s Punishment.” Adapted by Charlotte Otten. The Literary Werewolf an Anthology. Ed. Charlotte Otten. 1st ed. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002. 221-223.
Both “The Clan of One-Breasted Women” and “An Entrance to the Woods,” gives a viewpoint on the human relationship with nature. Terry Tempest Williams critizes man for being ruthless when it comes to nature and other humans. Wendell Berry believes similarly the same thing. He believes that man needs nature just as much as they need civilization. However, regardless of the differences, both writers offer an insightful perspective on the forever changing relationship between man and nature. And this relationship is, and always will be, changing.
Furthermore, understanding the fact of how the villagers in that village practiced and participated in such a barbaric ritual and archaic event were not accepted by people. In addition, people who read the story commented that the modest people of the Midwest are superstitious and backward. Here, Jackson conveyed successfully with her subtle writing style that something is about to happen. She also used a third person point of view when writing this short story. The third person point of view permitted the author to keep the outcome of the story an exposure. This therefore led to the reader to consider everything is well but actually there is something wrong somewhere. Furthermore, what could be seen from the story is people were different compared to present, there is a huge difference in cultural practices. Therefore the actions of the story go in the opposite direction of people’s opinion in the present in terms of value of life, violence and the development of respect in a family.
Nature is often a focal point for many author’s works, whether it is expressed through lyrics, short stories, or poetry. Authors are given a cornucopia of pictures and descriptions of nature’s splendor that they can reproduce through words. It is because of this that more often than not a reader is faced with multiple approaches and descriptions to the way nature is portrayed. Some authors tend to look at nature from a deeper and personal observation as in William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, while other authors tend to focus on a more religious beauty within nature as show in Gerard Manley Hopkins “Pied Beauty”, suggesting to the reader that while to each their own there is always a beauty to be found in nature and nature’s beauty can be uplifting for the human spirit both on a visual and spiritual level.
“Can the future affect the present, and can the present affect the past?”(1) This is the question posed by the philosophical concept of retrocasualty – the product of time travel to the past. Time travel has been a common staple in science fiction writing, so many of its explanations owe their origins to tales of protagonists discovering its often confusing implications. Many people may already have a great understanding of a few hypothesized behaviors of time travel due to popular media, such as Back to the Future, Star Trek, and many other works of fiction. Currently, scientific knowledge is too premature to know if time travel is possible, no less how it behaves, so questions and answers are open for anybody to contemplate. The most famous question of time travel is the one posed by the temporal paradox, in which the time traveler invokes a condition which causes the circumstances that led up to time travel, or the time traveler’s presence, to become impossible. Many theories have attempted to answer this paradox, introducing behaviorally diverse concepts such as merging time lines, multiple dimensions, or a nature of time where everything is predestined. The act of time travel can produce radically different effects, depending on which solution to the temporal paradox is applied.
Time travel has always been an ambitious dream in science fiction. Writers such as H.G Wells not only kept their readers mesmerized by great novels such as “The time machine” but also introduced the idea of time travel in the imagination of their readers. Today time travel is not regarded as strictly science fiction. Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity permits a unique kind of time dilation that would ordinarily be called time travel. The theory states that, relative to a stationary observer, time appears to pass more slowly for fast-moving bodies. For example, a moving clock will appear to run slow; as a clock approaches the speed of light its hands will appear to nearly stop moving. So if one can move information from one point to another faster than light then according to special relativity, there will be an observer who sees this information transfer as allowing information to travel into the past.
There are philosophical views about nature of time in time travel if it is possible. One view is called eternalism which means the beliefs of past, present and future already exist. Eternalism is description of space time as an unchanging four dimensional block. Another philosophical view of nature of time is presentism which means there is a past but the future isn’t set yet. As passes the present becomes as the past and the future as the new present. This means that time is moving forward into the future and leaving the past behind.
The act of time travel assumes that we can travel time at a rate different when compared to the normal world. There are several theories on how one could travel through time physically even if the methods wouldn’t make a lot of sense logically. These methods range from altered movement in regular space to the abuse of certain cosmic phenomena which may or may not exist. In this paper I will argue that the physical possibility of time travel is sound and therefore possible even if only theoretically.