In Paul Bogard's “Let there be Dark”, he talks about our depletion of artificial light and how we are depriving our future generations of natural darkness. Not only does he communicate to the reader about our over-exhaustion of artificial light, but he conveys that darkness has become an object that has recently been diminishing, as our lives revolve around daylight. He explains to his audience we need to conserve and protect our darkness before our lives are consumed by artificial light, which creates an unhealthy atmosphere for us and our environment. In order to convince the reader of his claims, Bogard uses a series of persuasive elements like personal experience, ecological impact, and factual reasoning.
Drawing from personal experience, Bogard explains his childhood stories at his family's cabin in Minnesota. When “[He] knew woods so dark [his] hands disappeared before [his] eyes.” This element of persuasion Bogard includes appeals to the emotions of his reader, as he reminisces about his childhood. This feature in his article is important to build his argument about the value of darkness, as he reveals personal involvement to his claim. However, he continues playing with the readers feel when he explains the
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Bogard explains that the rest of the world depends on darkness as well, including species of birds, insects, mammals, fish, and reptiles. He talks about the relevance of preserving darkness as it impacts our environment. Pursuing this further, he builds his argument by using a metaphor that compares ecological light pollution to a “bulldozer of the night, wrecking habitats, and disrupting ecosystems.” Bogard undoubtedly is able to convince his audience of the consequences of light pollution, with his analysis and comparative thinking methods; which is what makes Bogard’s next point more
As society continuously expands, building new structures, light pollution becomes increasingly problematic. Paul Bogard addresses this problem and argues against the increasing light pollution in his writing, “Let There Be Dark.” Through his use of the ethos and pathos, Bogard attempts to persuade his audience of the beauty of natural darkness.
Furthermore, the author uses pathos wisely and provides examples with animals to make his point appealing to his audience. "Nesting sea turtles, which show a natural predisposition for dark beaches, find fewer and fewer of them to nest on." (242) Beaches nowadays are covered with the glow of lamp posts, and it decreases the number of places for eggs of sea turtles and decreases the population of them. This shows us that we are affecting the life of creatures that surround us and it causes pity and sadness within the reader like
The mind is a wonderful thing. It allows us to think on three very different levels. One we choose to express, one we don’t choose to express, and one we do not even know exists. All these stages of thinking are clouded over in Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness. Three menacing forces occur that completely take over the white man to act inappropriately. They accuse others of acting savage, when they violently act against people of other cultures. They conform to specific beliefs, and push aside their subconscious thoughts. These men also have an abundance of ignorance that makes them feel false superiority. The Heart of Darkness reaches into the minds of readers, to prove that all of civilization is surrounded by an abundance of forces that can fog our mind, and darken our hearts.
In his essay 'Let There Be Dark', Paul Bogard tells the story of darkness and its importance to every aspect of the world. He uses a combination of personal anecdotes, vivid language, and strong evidence to convince the readers that darkness, indeed, is an "irreplaceable value and beauty" that is slowly being lost.
Testimony on Behalf of the Dark, a collection of essays by twenty-eight wonderful writers on the value of darkness and the costs of light pollution. Bogard’s writing has appeared in print and in articles in the Los Angeles Times, Outside, National Geographic, Conservation and others. Over the years he lived and taught in New Mexico, Nevada, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. Currently, Bogard works as an assistant professor of English and teaches creative writing and environmental literature at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. This article recounts Bogard’s childhood experience with the nature of darkness as he offers a persuasive argument on the importance of darkness on our planet earth, in which natural darkness should be preserved.
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.
Paul Bogard an advocate for the preservation of natural darkness from the article from the Los Angeles Times “Let There Be Dark”. Paul uses logos that make the reader actually stop for a second and think about it, how the reader has never thought of wasted light, that nights are getting brighter, and that there is an average increase of light in the sky by about 6%. This makes the audience feel as if Light Pollution is a big deal and that many people are clueless or careless about the entire situation. The purpose of Bogard’s article is to enlighten us about light pollution, and how sacred natural darkens is because the world depends on it, the nocturnal animals, and also states that if it wasn’t for natural darkness, Van Gogh would have never given the world his famous painting of the “Starry Night”. Paul Bogard’s tone is very questioning and blunt, he asks many questions for the readers to think about, but also says what he means with no hesitation.
Throughout its entirety, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness utilizes many contrasts and paradoxes in an attempt to teach readers about the complexities of both human nature and the world. Some are more easily distinguishable, such as the comparison between civilized and uncivilized people, and some are more difficult to identify, like the usage of vagueness and clarity to contrast each other. One of the most prominent inversions contradicts the typical views of light and dark. While typically light is imagined to expose the truth and darkness to conceal it, Conrad creates a paradox in which darkness displays the truth and light blinds us from it.
Levenson, Michael. "The Value of Facts in the Heart of Darkness." Nineteenth-Century Fiction 40 (1985):351-80.
* McClure, John A. “The Rhetoric of Restraint in Heart of Darkness” in Nineteenth Century Fiction, Volume 32, Issue 3 (Dec. 1977), pp. 310-26 – available through www.jstor.org
Bausch, Richard, and R. V. Cassill. "Heart of Darkness." The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 126-86. Print.
...h, ed., Heart of Darkness: An Authoritative Text-Backgrounds and Sources of Criticism, 3rd Edition, Norton & Co. (New York:1988), pp. 251-262. Web. 7 June 2015.
This is clear through his presentation of darkness always overpowering the light. Joseph Conrad has such a negative outlook on life that he believed that even light could not be trusted. "I know that the sunlight can be made to lie, too, yet one felt that no manipulation of light and pose could have conveyed the delicate shade of truthfulness upon those features" (Conrad 90). It is clear in Heart of Darkness, that the light blinds people from seeing the darkness in the world. Conrad sees the world with such a critical eye that he knows that no matter what light usually means the world is completely surrounded by darkness. Conrad continues to play with the meaning of light and darkness showing that neither is what they seem to be. In reality, Conrad is instilling the idea that light and darkness do not have any meaning along with the rest of the words used in literature. For Heart of Darkness, Conrad is showing that the darkness is used to show how literature is unable to show the precise meaning of something through language and symbols. The connection between words that are used to create a novel is arbitrary because the meaning comes from the reader. For this reason, Conrad changes the meanings in Heart of Darkness so that the reader can go astray from the commonly accepted ideas about language and realize that all words have no meaning or significance. The only way for something in literature to be understood
From the very beginning of Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad traps us in a complex play of language, where eloquence is little more than a tool to obscure horrific moral shortcomings. Hazy, absurd descriptions, frame narratives, and a surreal sense of Saussurean structural linguistics create distance from an ever-elusive center, to show that language is incapable of adequately or directly revealing truth. Understanding instead occurs in the margins and along the edges of the narrative; the meaning of a story “is not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze” (105).
Conrad, J. (2006). Heart of darkness. In P. B. Armstrong (Ed.), Heart of darkness (4th ed., p. 25). New York London: Norton Critical Editions.