Monthly Archives: October 2012

The Cold

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Rowlandson effectively uses the wintery season she was captured during to portray the bleak and desperate mood felt in this excerpt. Her having had to “sit all this cold winter night upon the cold snowy ground,” portrays a lack of control over her environment. For her captors, the Wampanoags, would not provide shelter to her and her sick child, and she had no ability to affect that. This exposure to the elements also sets the scene as cold, which is something she puts emphasis on by using it twice in that one phrase. That coldness can then be transferred to the Native Americans in a symbolic gesture, further portraying Rowlandson’s situation as bleak. And if her captors, her environment, and her mood are all cold and bleak, what will keep her motivated?

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A Spiritual Awakening: Thoreau

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Excerpt from Henry D. Thoreau, Walden

“It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men.  Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.  Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. . . . We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.  I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.  It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do.  To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.  Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.  If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.” Continue reading →

Thoreau’s Still Standing

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Last week we were assigned sections of Henry Thoreau’s Walden. His section on ‘Economy’ was interesting as a whole but there were a few pages and specific passages I thought still greatly apply to the world today. I wanted to take a further look at two of them.

First, Thoreau refers to the laborer as some one with “no time to be anything but a machine”.  This phrase could very well be applied to the working force today in a few different ways.  Although a ‘laborer’ in the time of Thoreau is very different than the ‘laborer’ of the 21st century, there is striking similarity between the lifestyles. Literally it can be applied because the majority of work is now done on/with machines. With the assembly line, laborers skill level is minimal. The laborer is one who is faceless to the consumer society. With the raging capitalism and mass production in corporations like Walmart, laborers are forced into factories where their face is irrelevant and their rate of production is all that matters. They are essentially a “machine”. If they break (get sick, injured, etc.) they can be easily replaced with a new part (employee) as there is no shortage of people entering the work force on a daily basis.

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Connections & Reflection: Man and Nature

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In Emerson’s Nature, the relationship between man and his environment is one of great importance.  Though written in a time before global warming and over-harvesting was a problem, Emerson writes very wise words that reflect the idea that man and nature depend on each other. First off, Emerson states that finding a certain peace with nature is essential to finding delight in the natural world. Man and nature need to find a harmony. This brings me back to the last post I wrote where I stated that the wilderness was a place where a person faces themselves and has to fight and be at peace; for when left to their own accord it is up to man to decided whether he be evil or not.

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Nature, God, or Spirit?

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One of the topics that I found to be most intriguing from our class discussions were our talks about Emerson’s, Nature, piece.  However, I found his spiritual associations with nature a bit confusing.  The “transparent eyeball” piece we analyzed in class addresses this aspect of his perceptions, as do some other areas of the text.

We learned that Nature has come to be thought of as the “manifesto” of transcendentalism.  We also learned that reason versus understanding and finding divinity in nature are interests of transcendentalists too.  To myself, these ideas seem conflicting. Emerson writes, “In the woods, we return to reason and faith.” (29). This seems very foreign.  Reason and faith are very different ways of thinking.  I have always viewed faith as believing in something without needing reasoning, while reason seems like something involving little faith and mostly facts.  So the juxtaposition of the two feels shocking and contradictory. Emerson abandoned his life of organized religion, so I wonder to what kind of faith is he referring?  Especially, since later in the essay he writes that “religion and ethics” have an, “analogous effect with all lower culture, in degrading nature…” (48).  Although Emerson references and makes many comparisons of nature with religious topics, I am led to believe that perhaps he is not directly referencing a religious faith, but rather faith in oneself, or perhaps something else?

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Thoreau

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After reading Thoreau I could not shake this feeling that things would be so much easier if the world was simpler like Thoreau lived for those two years. The simplicity kind of life that he lives and little amount of money he uses is astounding. The sense of community that Thoreau is surrounded with helping him start out, is where I feel that in “Economy” he is expressing the need to get back to nature. Thoreau being able to draw off of his own experience, freely using “I” and describing nature so brilliantly.

“We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes.” (10)

I really like this little quote because it shows the world works together. How everything is all connected and if we remembered that our lives would be a lot easier just like Thoreau’s life was simple when he was connected and surrounded by nature. Everything in his life was simpler. He had to work harder to get what he needed but he didn’t use more than what he needed to survive from nature.

Nature and Man’s Connection

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To Emerson, the natural world is better than his own, offering mankind all the life and inspiration that is absent from society. Emerson paints a vivid picture of nature and man’s important connection to it. Emerson convinces his readers that the relationship between man and nature is sacred, comforting, and vital for survival.

Emerson asks his readers “to what end is Nature?” (27). He goes about answering this question with several arguments.  Emerson makes certain to his readers that “we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable,” this is so because the ”order of things” in nature will answer all questions (27). He then goes on to explain that, “the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul” (28). Assuming that the Soul resides in each man, Emerson makes the conclusion that “therefore, all that is separate from us…must be ranked under this name, NATURE”(28). Emerson also notes that nature is anything “unchanged by man” such as the sky, the landscape, the air, etc.  By slowly drawing out the definition of what nature is Emerson makes a mysterious entity become tangible to his readers.

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Two Defintions of Nature found In Rowlandson

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For this week’s blog I thought it would be a good idea to examine the text “A Narrative of Captivity” by Mary Rowlandson  from two weeks prior because of personal favor for the text and answer one of  the courses  “central questions” in order to get a better grasp on how this text can be viewed as “environmental literature” .  The text will be examined with the focal point of answering the central question- “What kinds of environmental and nature are of interest in the text?  How does the author define these terms (explicitly or implicitly), and how useful are these definitions?” I will focus heavily on the “useful” aspect of the definitions of natures, as I feel it has been covered in class thoroughly how the these texts are anthropocentric or ecocentric and how they align with another important questions such as Buell’s checklist.

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The Rattling Fitchburg Railroad Interrupting Revelation

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The chapter “Sounds” from Walden highlights the Transcendental motif of revelation and spiritual elevation through direct experience with nature instead of through tradition, as represented by books and literature.  As the chapter progresses, Thoreau’s serenity, spiritual elevation and reverence is interrupted by the railroad which after much contemplation, becomes a metaphor for civilization, commerce, and  economic drudgery. The railroad becomes an opposing force, a reoccurring interruption that’s piercing whistle interrupts the pastoral transcendental life Thoreau is leading at Walden Pond.

Thoreau dives straight into revelation by direct experience in the opening of “Sounds”.  “I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans”(Thoreau 97). Instead of reading, Thoreau sits serenely, after a morning bath in his doorway contentedly observing the serenity of his garden, noticing the sunlight and listening to the chirping of birds. “Sometimes in a summer morning,having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in the sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery…in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around…” (Thoreau 97)

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