During class Tuesday, we learned a new literary term, environmental racism, that plays in important role in the books that we have been reading this term. I especially noticed this in “Under the Feet of Jesus”. Environmental racism can be defined as the disproportionate effects of pollution, toxicity, and other environmental harms we see on racial minorities. There are many examples of this form of racism that we see in this novel, involving the main characters. The first example I thought of was the one we went over in class. This example was when Alejo and Gumecindo were stealing peaches in the orchard and the airplane went over the trees spraying pesticides. Continue reading →

In Rachel Carson’s novel, Silent Spring, it is clear that she is suggesting that the government has played a large and negative role on what our environment has become today. Carson believed that with the negative action that our government has taken when “protecting” the environment, our environment has unfortunately been pushed the wrong direction. The invention of chemicals that are meant to kill “pests”, such as bugs or weeds, have sacrificed the health of the human race and the environment around us. Carson does not believe that this pollution is an easy fix. “This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it initiates not only in the world that must support life but in living tissues is for the most part irreversible” (6, Carson). As you can see, she has strong views on this topic, even calling this the “chain of evil”.  She sees the government as the very problem, which led the environment to have obtained as many issues as it has.

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When reading Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, I thought that it would be interesting to analyze and focus on the connection that links humans and the environment. There were many connections that played a part between the two topics, one in particular stuck out to me. I noticed that Mary Rowlandson used “leaving farther my own country, and traveling into a vast and howling wilderness” (318, Rowlandson) to describe the unknown territory that the Wampanoag people were taking her to. I found this interesting because it showed that Mary considered the wilderness and unknown to be a negative thing and that she was not willing to leave the comfort and familiarity of her old town, Lancaster. She wanted to return to her town even thought she knew that it was not the same place anymore and that she had no choice but to move on, she even relates this emotion to a biblical story, “…I understood something of Lot’s wife’s temptation, when she looked back” (318, Rowlandson). Like in the Lot’s wife, Rowlandson was leaving her familiar environment and going the new wilderness that she was not familiar with and to her this was a negative and dangerous thing. Rowlandson did not think of the new territory as a good and healthy environment but rather the wilderness as dangerous and scary, especially since she was being forced to go against her own will like Lot’s wife.

Another part in Rowlandson’s narrative where she talks about the wilderness and unknown environment in a negative way was during the second remove when they Indians moved them out again and she referred to the land as “the vast and desolate wilderness” (312, Rowlandson) again. During this particular part of her story she seemed to have given up for a moment when being taken from her familiar environment. There was a point where she quotes herself, “I shall die, I shall die” (312, Rowlandson). She clearly did not think that she was going to survive the new territory and that she was going to die like the rest of her family and town. These connections stand out to me because they display the clear sense of fear and negativity that the environment plays with Mary.

I have read the creation story in the Bible numerous times throughout my life, but have never read it from a literary standpoint until this class. Doing this, and paying even closer attention to how the environment plays a role on the story and towards the characters, I found that the story had more meaning and symbolism than I had ever realized. The story also incorporates a direct relationship that the environment has with Adam and Eve. The role of power in this story changes throughout the two chapters. In this story, God created the world and everything in it and saw that it was perfect. He then gave humans the power over the environment, “Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on earth” (Genesis 1:26). To me, this means that God created the world and everything in it for humans. Later in the story, God also gives Adam the power of naming all living things, “So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field” (Genesis 2:20). To me this led me to believe that God wanted humans to hold the power on earth over the animals, until he created the Garden of Eden. Continue reading →