Living Like Weasel And The Lowest Animal By Annie Dillard

1551 Words4 Pages

Human Connection to Nature
Americans today are starting to realize the importance of nature. Over the course of time we grew distant our connection with nature.With technology today continues to advance and automotives that tie in with our daily lives. However, Americans are beginning to respect nature and it’s values just as we did when the Native Americans lived all off the land. Americans are starting to rebuild our connections with nature again to receive all it’s values and to be one with nature again. The viewpoints of our connections between humans and nature are strongly expressed in Annie Dillard's essay “Living Like Weasel” and Mark Twain’s essay “The Lowest Animal”. Even though both these authors show a different view with our …show more content…

Twain argues that humans have totally disrespected nature in all regards and are destroying nature goes on. Although the great commonality they share is how nature should be treated. In the beginning of Twain's essay he talks about how indians used to disrespect nature for fun and games. “I had come acrossed a case where many years ago, some hunters on our great planes organized a buffalo hunt for the entertainment of an English earl - that and to provide fresh meat for his leader. They had charming sport. They killed 72 great American and took part of one of them and left 71 to rot”(Twain 536). In this quote Twain talks about how we have taken nature for granted. Since the first native Americans settled on the land we haven taken we have taken natural tools for granted. Instead of studying these great animals the people slaughtered them for no absolute reason. If we can look at nature differently rather than playing it like a game, we can take so much from it. Humans also the nature which we hold within ourselves for granted. “I convinced myself that among the animals man is the only one that harbors insults and injuries, broods over them waits till a chance offers, then takes revenge”(Twain 537). Instead of forgiving others around us and loving them no matter what they did to us we want to make them pay for it. We oftentimes take others for granted and hold a grudge against them for the simplest …show more content…

However they present this feeling on opposite sides of the spectrum. Annie Dillard presents this position in more of an optimistic point of view. She talks about how her encounter with nature has made her life better to live for herself and how it can help us as well. However, Mark Twain shows a more negative connotation to his presentation. In Twain’s essay he shows how we have taken nature for granted and how man is practically the worst being on the planet. Both of these authors connect to the real world today. In Annie Dillard's case, which is a more positive light on how we treat nature to learn and grow, we have begun to embark on a huge project to preserve all natural parks. We have started to begin our process to connect with nature more so we can begin to learn from it and utilize it for its true meaning and have a great life. The real world, unfortunately, still connects to Mark Twain's essay as well. Humans today still disrespect nature to a great extent. People today still hunt for game and leave animals behind to rot or even worse they don't finish the job and leave an animal behind to suffer. We also have polluted our world an extreme amount. Factories around the world have made the air worse and worse for not only us to breath in, but animals around us. However, the world is changing more so for the better than the worse which is a great thing for us to be proud of

Open Document