Rhetorical Analysis Of Richard Louv's Last Child In The Woods

As humans become intrigued to the developing digital reality around them, they become unaware of the existing world around them. Within Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods, Louv begins to explain the advancement of technology, then continues to argue about how society is beginning to drift away from the experiences of nature. Louv also calls the audience into action, he develops his argument with the use of irony and juxtaposition. He thoroughly applies juxtaposition and irony creates an aspiring tone for the audience to bring action of the upcoming world.

Louv uses this example to prove how people are trying to change nature, not get closer to it. He goes on to say that the most obvious reason of why we are getting farther away from nature is because of technology. Louv believs technology is what is driving us apart from experenicing all the wonders nature has to offer us such as, "children's early understanding of how cities and nature fit together. " The example

In Richard Louv’s, Last Child in the Woods, he develops an argument relevant to today’s times about the separation between people and nature and how little nature is actually appreciated. His conversational, yet crisp diction, didactic tone, and use of allusions to the past strengthen his argument.

“But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the colour to their lifetime; and, still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it.”

“Kids see Nature as a lab experiment.” Children in the modern civilized society view nature as a lab experiment that ought to be studied. This lab education that children encounter with nature leads to no interest with the abundance blissful beauty of Mother Nature, which is really devastating. Nonetheless, if children were educated about their forefather’s interaction with wildlife such as: haunting, gathering, and encountering the exquisite of Mother Nature would they spend more time outdoors interacting in the woods than only lab experiment? Also, do the children need to be educated about the advantage and the benefits to encourage children

The hoards of advertisements on television, in newspapers, and magazines, use whatever means in order to catch the attention of the viewer. They have gone so far as to use animals and nature in any form they wish. This is far more than just a moneymaking scheme, it is a representation of the relationship between nature and the advancing and dominant culture. It almost seems that the more technologically advanced a culture becomes, the more distant the relationship there is to nature. It is because of this that we are left to view the images that are put before us by others. Buying that carton of orange juice in the grocery store looks more appetizing if the pictures depict the oranges on the tree,

Humans should put a rest to trying to study and explain nature. We are surrounded by the howling abyss of the unknowable. People should embrace it for all that it is with a sense of “awakism” and encounter new experiences with an open mind. Though unfortunately, the common conception of nature is often narrow. Joyce Carol Oates is one nature writer with this narrow-minded conception of nature. In fact, Oates has an entire poem, “Against Nature”, dedicated to how much she despises it! In “Against Nature” Oates pushes her beliefs about nature being meaningless. She uses lines such as “It’s as impersonal, as coolly detached, as the Oversoul itself: a “wise man” filters his emotions through his brain. Or through his prose.” (199-202) to criticize nature writers such as Henry David Thoreau, whom she was referring to in this line, about how they perceive and write about nature and its meanings. Joyce tends to mock anything that gives nature any sort of meaning. The overall central idea Joyce Carol has on nature is that it serves no moral purpose; it is just a mere presence, nothing more. I must say that I highly

Through disregarding the primal sanctity of nature, we are shown its total force, and, regardless of exhibitions to its very real destructive capacities, or, alternatively, in its landing on some perceivable moral spectrum we can understand, it seizes root in awestruck terror. As we’ve learned, it’s perhaps the innermost foundation for the sublime in nature, namely through solidifying our placement, respectively, in that established system. We are later given the argument, though, that highlights the importance of our rhetorical abilities, which can prove capable, in some cases, of creating their own sublime experiences. Still, what’s proven most fruitfully, across the board, is a distinct combination of the two, in its contributions for us. Pokemon, gotta catch em all, it’s you and me, I know it’s my destiny, here we stand, in world

Many children waste their time on the little things in life when they should be out exploring the great outdoors. In today's world there is a separation between people and nature. The idea that over half the world population is separated from nature is a very depressing thought. People and nature should have an unbreakable connection. When I get overwhelmed with school and drama I just go out in the badlands weather it is riding my dirt bike on new trails or looking for sheds on my horse it calms my soul. My generation has no clue about how many lessons there is in nature. Louv proposes three arguments as to why people are separated from nature is television, car trips, and video games.

Similarly to Zimmerman, Amy Irvine shows that humans have lost their respect for nature in her article “Spectral Light.” Irvine’s article describes a dangerous encounter between her husband and a black bear in their yard, along with the reactions of the townsfolk. After her husband’s encounter with the bear, there

In the novel “Last Child in the Woods,” written by Richard Louv, the concept of a Nature-Deficit Disorder is brought to light as having drastic impacts on today’s children. The idea of children freely wandering the woods brings highlights to its own dangers. Many would instantly think of how the woods may contain wild animals ready to cause harm along or criminals looking to kidnap or murder, however, the beauty and creative space that is the woods is overlooked because of the fear that paralyzes parents. Louv begins his inquiry by referencing a conversation with his sons where one of them asked why their father’s childhood was more fun than his own despite only being 10 years old. The son referred to his father’s adventures in the woods, tree houses built, playing by the swamp, all things that are not nearly as common nowadays. Perplexed by this concept, Louv didn’t truly realize the number of kids that truly felt this shift until he was researching for another book called the “Childhood’s Future,” which involved talking to kids and their parents all over the country, from all different types of communities. The number of kids who even acknowledged spending time outside on a regular basis was rare no matter the environment the child was in. In his research of this nature deficit, Louv began to look into studies done by various universities that support the idea of spending unstructured

The humans got to survive in the nature anyway. When the nature tends to threaten the humans, Carter’s version of the natural world explains, through stories, how humans fight back with the nature. The narrator invokes

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Bernard Marx discovers the vivid emotion of nature through his visit to the Savage Reservation, America’s last remnant of unadulterated wilderness and humanity in a bleak, dystopian world. Writing critically on society, Huxley comments on the degradation of morals, and the rise of a superfluous and perpetually distracted, albeit technologically advanced, world, amid the dying influence of nature. Similarly, in his 2008 book, Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv expresses concern over the widening divide between people and nature, in particular children and nature. Citizens in Huxley’s novel are infatuated with dazzlingly visual entertainment machines, which provide transitory pleasure; likewise, Americans today have forgone nature for equally trivial technological pursuits. Louv’s sharp critique on the bastardization of nature for short-sighted whims, and his concern about the effects of isolating children from nature, are achieved and expressed through exploring science’s relationship to nature, several subsequent illustrative examples, and ironic social commentary -- through these techniques, Louv calls for action to preserve posterity’s interest in and exposure to nature’s romantic beauty.

Even when humankind was still largely a hunter-gatherer nomadic society there was always one constant in their life—nature. Nature was a creative force that contained the ability to either kill them or keep them alive with no preference for the human’s opinion. As humankind formed society and began to exert their own force against nature, and nature became “a social creation as much as it is the physical universe” (TB 107) as this balance of power shifted unknowingly into the hands of humans. With this ability nature began to become a haven that people could escape to in order to reflect on their thoughts and seek peace from the crowded city life they had known. However, this new peace with nature did not completely negate humankind’s previous experience with nature. Much like Garreau suggests in Edge City nature is a spectrum that contains “hideous wilderness […] at one end of the spectrum, and the garden on the other.” It is important to understand the complicated relationship humans and nature have as shown in this spectrum, as well as recognize the need to conserve and preserve the current nature we have. This can be done through looking at the relationships between humans and nature in hostile environments, agreeable environments, and environments that contain both elements.

The crackle of gravel under rubber, the quiet murmur of wind dancing through the leaves, and the bittersweet scent of pine. These are the sounds and smells I wake to as the car trundles down the drive to my grandparents’ home—and there are few I love better. I imagine Aldo Leopold felt much the same about his farm in his Sand County Almanacs. His, an abandoned farm in Wisconsin in the 1940s, mine an abandoned farm in Northern Michigan my maternal grandparents bought in the 1960s. It was this farm that intimately introduced me to nature beginning infancy. I believe it is due to this exposure to nature that I am keenly aware of the complex connections between humans and nature today.