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More handpicked essays just for you.
The role of nature in modern literature
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Recommended: The role of nature in modern literature
In Jenny Allen's essay "The Trouble With Nature" huimor is utilized in order to describe different ways people handle nature by using humor, imagery and contrast. Jenny Allens purpose of writing " The Trouble With Nayure" is to explain how you shouldn't be surpirsed to see nature if you go outside. "Nature comes right inside, as if to prove some kind of point" ( Allen 1). You dont have to be putside in order to see nature because it will also come into your home even iof you don't want it to. Not everyopne deals with nature the same way when they see it. " Some people shoo the bats out the door with a secrion of the newspaper. Others try to go about their day and not look at the bat, leaving the kitchen door propped wide opened in the
In Emerson’s article, Nature, the passage shows great value of how man and nature can be similar. The article shows in many ways how man can represent nature, and how nature can represent everything. Emerson’s Nature can be related to Guy Montag’s journey into nature in Fahrenheit 451, and the author’s ways of showing similarity between man and vegetable can be presented as showing how nature is mixed in with literature and humans.
Adding to this idea that nature and all of its ugliness and abnormalities is still in fact nature, Quammen goes on further by addressing the human attitude towards nature’s intricacies. By this, Quammen refers to the human attitude towards nature as a whole based solely upon his/her opinion of one organism. As textual evidence for this idea, the example of the spider can be used again. Most people associate the black widow as being venomous and deadly, and so they unfairly associate the same characteristics with harmless beneficial house and garden spiders as well. This attitude toward the spiders can also be applied to nature as a whole. Since humans posses this attitude towards nature, a lot of nature’s beauty is often overlooked.
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.
Perceptions of the natural world have fluctuated throughout humanity’s short time on this earth, going in and out of style as societies and technologies have grown and died. As is the the very nature of literature itself, literature and its authors have managed to capture these shifting views, expressed and illustrated by the art of written word. Naturally, the literature chosen for us to read based on this fluid theme of nature encompasses an array of perspectives. One of these views is that nature is sublime and above all else, a reflection of all that which is perfection. Another is that nature is cold, uncaring, and indifferent to the vanities of humanity.
Nature can be described as being odd, it can even be described as being distracting. Nature can be used to help with things in life such as medicine, but William Cullen Bryant uses nature in a different way that people usually do not see it. He uses nature to guide humanity through some of his darkest hours. In William Cullen Bryant’s “Thanatopsis” and “To A Waterfowl”, Bryant promotes extended metaphors in order to show nature as being a guide for humanity.
Throughout the Romanticism period, human’s connection with nature was explored as writers strove to find the benefits that humans receive through such interactions. Without such relationships, these authors found that certain aspects of life were missing or completely different. For example, certain authors found death a very frightening idea, but through the incorporation of man’s relationship with the natural world, readers find the immense utility that nature can potentially provide. Whether it’d be as solace, in the case of death, or as a place where one can find oneself in their own truest form, nature will nevertheless be a place where they themselves were derived from. Nature is where all humans originated,
... of nature is to get the theme of the intermixing of technology with man and nature across; “I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red; /around our group I could hear the wilderness listen” (15-16) in these lines we get more of a feeling than an image of the intermixing of technology and nature.
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.
fields serves as the apparent motive for the murder of Carl Heine. To a local
In the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, there are many themes, symbols, and motifs that are found throughout the novel. For my journal response, I have chosen to discuss nature as a prevalent symbol in the book. The main character, Montag, lives in a society where technology is overwhelmingly popular, and nature is regarded as an unpredictable variable that should be avoided. Technology is used to repress the citizens, but the oppression is disguised as entertainment, like the TV parlour. On the opposite end of the spectrum, nature is viewed as boring and dull, but it is a way to escape the brainwashing that technology brings. People who enjoy nature are deemed insane and are forced to go into therapy. Clarisse says “My psychiatrist wants to know why I go out and hike around in the forests and watch the birds and collect butterflies,” (Bradbury 23) which shows she is a threat to the control that the government has put upon the people by enjoying nature.
Human beings are naturally societal and relational. Even before the Neolithic revolution, humans roved around in groups, hence hunters and gatherers societies, not hunter or gatherer (singular). People stayed tougher not only for collective security, prosperity and necessity, but mainly for the benefit of the self. Whether for protection, emotional need or monetary gain, individuals, as a result, banded together in order to satisfy those needs first. If humans were always societal, in one form or the other (by societal, I mean always in conjunction with other humans: families, tribes, kingdoms, etc.), then the idea of a pure state of nature does not exist. A state of nature implies a time when people did not have societies but if humans always had societies, then what the history of man is simply a history of the ranging developments of different forms of societies over time. What political philosophers identified as “state of nature” are simply, observations or conjectures of human rationality, characteristics and the human condition. A “state of nature” has to exist only in order to justify the institutional arrangements of a group of people, whether it is real or not.
In Jenny's Allen essay "The Trouble With Nature" humour is utilized in order to inform and entertain people in the audience who wants to become closer with nature. In the first and last two paragraph the author talks about nature and how some poeple visit the country in order to be near nature when in reality nature is everywhere, outside and inside. We leave the comfort of our own home to go outside where nature supposedly is but nature in your home everywhere the kitchen, the corner of room walls, etc. " Hoping that if they focus on all of their thoughts and energy on the racoons going away, maybe, maybe this will happen" (Allen 13). In this quote its not said buts its implied that nature cannot just vanish and be gone.
In Jenny Allen's essay "Trouble with nature" humor is utilized in order to create the image of nature invading the home, letting people who think they want to go out in nature know that it is nothing but trouble. Allen carries on this image in each paragraph of the piece. These two paragraphs (12 and 13), inform the reader of the writer's purpose when she describes the "nature" throughout the home. "they find they needn't go outdoors to get closer to nature, Nature comes right inside" (Allen 1). When people say they want to be closer to nature, first, they need to take a look around their home.
One characteristic of Naturalism in literature is that the characters in a story are described as being conditioned or controlled by the environment in which they are in; in essence man versus nature. In “To Build A Fire”, the man travels in the Yukon at a bone-chilling 75 degrees below zero. The environment in this story is used to portray a harsh, unforgiving landscape that can ultimately control ones fate if they don’t take the necessary precautions as the man did in this story. He didn’t think the environment could pose such a danger that any situation he encountered in it would get out of his control. Even with the advice of an old-timer to the area who advised him to take a partner at 50 below 0. It illustrates that the environment may seem under ones control, but one should never let their own perception of control interfere with the realization of the reality that no one runs nature other than “mother nature”. This is not to say that the environment was set out to hurt the man, rather, the environment was indifferent to what was going through it and ultimately what happened to the man. In essence, nature is revealed in this story to have no heart, compassion, or emotions regarding its actions. In this quote nature can be seen to control an action which is out of the individuals control: “In a seemingly safe, solid spot, the man falls through the snow and wets h...
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.