Jenny Allen's Essay 'The Trouble With Nature'

However, nature serves as more than just a source of conflict in this story. Nature, perhaps, is its own character in “Mrs. Manstey’s View.” In addition to being personified frequently as a friend of the woman, nature also provides comfort to her while ill and pushes this quiet, elderly woman into violence just to preserve itself. Nature also represents her desires. In her youth, Mrs. Manstey wanted to live in the

Nature comes right inside as if to prove something"(Allen 1). She uses this humorous statment to tell her audience that nature pays no attention to human bounderies. Allen also uses the final two paragraphs to instill her point in to her reagers minds. "But many cannot help thinking about

In the book World Without Us, author Alan Weisman talks about what would happen to the natural and built environment we’ve established if humans suddenly disappeared. In Chapter two, Unbuilding Our Home, Weisman effectively informs his readers of the total control that nature has on our society by describing the immediate effect it takes on our own homes. He forces the readers to recognize that we coexist with nature yet nature has the upper hand on man-made objects. Weisman achieves this by targeting the reader’s emotions through description and personification and by providing insight that appeals to the reader’s intellect of the future.

These paragraphs infrom the reader about what the writers purpose is because they are very detailed and specific on what Jenny Allen is going to talk about and the point she is trying to get across with the troubles nature can cause. She says "Nature comes right inside, as if to prove some kind of point" (Allen 1). She says this in the article because many city people want to go out to the country to experience the outdoors and be close to nature when in reality nature is already right inside their homes. She also mentions "Mother nature at her most sublime" (Allen

In Jenny Allen's essay " The Trouble With Nature" humor is utilized in order to conver that people say they want to get closer to nature when Nature somethings that is always around and you cant get away from it. The writer uses a lot of humor is this essay by cmparing things of nature to things outside of nature. For example, when talking about bats she says " there is a black thing hanging from the kitchen ceiling. It is the exact same size and shape of a charcoal briquette, and you woner what a charcoal briquette is doing up there" ( Allen 3 ).

In the passage from Richard Louv book, Last Child in the Woods, Louv develops an argument about the separation of people and nature. He is worried about the future because nature seems worthless to younger people, kids aren't experiencing nature and that is becoming the new norm.

Alexander Von Humboldt was a Prussian naturalist whose work has helped shape and define our modern understanding of nature. He used enlightenment rationalism to navigate his way through life and his deep connection to his natural environment inspired a visionary movement in ushering out the monotheistic creationist worldview. “Humboldt’s books, diaries and letters reveal a visionary, a thinker far ahead of his time. He invented isotherms...discovered the magnetic equator...came up with the idea of vegetation and climate zones that snake across the globe…and revolutionized the way we see the natural world.” (Invention of Nature, 5). Although his work was extensive, author of ‘The Invention of Nature, Andrea Wulf suggests that his work has largely been forgotten due to his polymath approach of including art, history, poetry and politics that made him unfavorable. While Humboldt gave us our concept of nature itself, “the irony is that Humboldt’s views have become so self-evident that we have largely forgotten the man behind them.” However, although his work individual work may be overlooked, Humboldt’s success in making science more accessible work and as a result, his legacy lives on as the source of inspiration for many influential thinkers throughout history.

Val Plumwood in her essay “Paths Beyond Human-Centeredness,” illustrates the impact that humans have on nature and non-animals when it comes to preserving environments. Understanding that nature has it’s living properties that let it thrive among its resources allows for people to grasp the complexities that come about when construction companies destroy the environment in which they work. Plumwood uses the term dualism to refer to the sharp distinction between two classes of individuals. There is the high class, which is considered as the “One.” In contrast, the other side of the division consists of individuals that are classified as lower and are subordinates to the “One” as “Others.” This account on dualism allows the reader to understand how humans can significantly alter the environment because of the way they perceive its resources and inhabitants. Plumwood defines five characteristics that illustrate the oppressive actions that change the connection between human relations and the relationship between humans and nature.

Humans have adopted a need to control instead of survive creating a separation from dependence on the wild which is the very thing we depend most on, thus resulting in destroying the wilderness and wildness of nature. This separation is not a mere physical separation; the drive to control creates this illusion of connection. For example, in Jack Turner’s essay, In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World, he explores this idea through analyzing Henry David Thoreau’s essay Walking. Turner states “human beings no longer accept their status as “part and parcel” of a biological realm that is self-willed, self-determined, self-ordered. Instead we have divided ourselves from that realm and make every attempt to control it for our own interest.” As a society, have we have become too dependent on what we can make in a factory or lab rather than seeking the solutions in nature? The wilderness is a place we should use to understand ourselves and our existences, doing this we regain respect for the wild and with that the ecosystems that sustain our lives.

Since the creation of mankind, nature has provided us with the resources to survive by providing humans with food and shelter, which is why humans view nature as a home. In Mark Twain’s novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the main character Huck tries to escape to the north with a runaway slave named Jim. While in nature, they learn how to trust each other and develop their own opinions instead of following what society believes is right. In Emerson’s short essay, “Nature”, Emerson describes nature as a place in which it provides protection from all calamities and disgraces. While in nature, he’s able to become relaxed and peaceful. In William Cullen Bryant’s poem, “Thanatopsis,” Bryant writes that although everyone will eventually die, death shouldn’t be feared, but instead embraced. While nature does bring death, it also provides care and a sanctuary, which clears our dark thoughts away. Although nature can often bring sadness, it ultimately provides a hideaway from society; therefore, people should preserve nature because we rely on it.

In this case, this movie shows simple folk who are invaded by modern society. “When the creatures awake from their hibernation they discover that while they were sleeping, a soulless suburban development stole their woodland space and the humans have erected a huge partition, a hedge, to fence them out” (Halberstam 10). For the creatures who lived in the woods that were taken over by the humans, the simple life is replaced by fast moving, wasteful and irresponsible people. These animals had to adapt to the changes in their new environment, food choices, new creatures, and relationships with those creatures. They had to work to outgrow their title of “vermin” given to them by the humans by proving that this was their territory and they were not going to let it be taken away from

Nature is uncontrollable. Nature is wild. Nature is free. Nature isn’t subjected by human laws, so it perceives us for who we are and not for what we have done in the past or continue to do. From the very beginning, we have seen man attempt to control the untamed side of humans. We are used to laws that we’ve had to be obedient to, rules that we wouldn’t dare to break. But the question is, who handed man the role to distinguish between what is right or wrong? Who gave man the authority to try to tame natural human impulses? Hawthorne portrays nature so significantly in the Scarlet Letter because the book is based off of the strict Puritan lifestyle, and it forgives us for disobeying their man-made laws, it allows the people who have become an outsider in society and provide a security blanket from the judgmental minds of man.

The Practice of the Wild encourages us to find the wild within ourselves, society, as well as nature around us. Snyder prompts us with the question of what it means to truly return to the wild. The words wild and nature although similar have different meanings yet tend to be used interchangeably by our society. According to Snyder respecting nature is a fundamental part of Buddhist tradition; a way of life he has chosen to follow. “Nature” to him is defined as all living things and the environment surrounding them but, he does refer to nature as outdoors as well. The “wild” is formal and free as compared to our modern civilizations, Snyder states that it may be easier to state what the wild is not rather than to define it. As a society, we have chosen to become civilized instead of living as we were intended to, at one with the world around us. Humans are wild, we have a fight or flight reaction, involuntary responses that link us to the nature that we have

Kenneth Lincoln has called Louise Erdrich as the most significant Native writers of the second wave of the ‘Native American Renaissance’. Her novels got recognised when her first novel Love Medicine (1984) got National Book Critics Circle Award. After that she continued her charm of wonderful story about Native Americans lives. In her novels, we witness the Native American life, their way of living, culture, spiritual connections with the land, healing process of people’s lives, and the wisdom of the old people. Louise Erdrich tells the story of Ojibwe families who live near a reservation in North Dakota.

The classical classifications of Teddy Roosevelt environmentalism no longer applies to our given circumstances. Though he helped create and solidify the existence of national parks, the nature that is most familiar to us is also the most overlooked, and these natural entities that are ignored are often found in the urban landscape (Cronon 1996). Socially we have constructed the idea that wilderness is out there and far away when it is actually within everything we interact with on a daily basis (Cronon 1996). The environmental themes touched upon in our class have some degree of resignation of dissociation, but the field of interdiciplinarity enables us to recognize that these dissociations in one way or another construct and support various themes within restoration, invasive species, and novel ecosystems. Deconstructing these themes enables us to link various connections that would support and deepen our understanding of the successes and follies associated with these themes. More often than not we are required to think outside the quadrilateral prisms and conjoin a collective thought in the thread of a Mobius strip.