Alice Walker is an esteemed Author who is celebrated for her work internationally, she won a Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1983 and has been awarded the national book award. One of her works Everything is a Human Being is an exceptionally striking piece that uses a Native American literature style as opposed to the more western-centric western literature style. Walker’s text Everything is a Human Being shows the difference between Native American and western culture and the connection between the abuse of natural resources by western civilization and the mistreatment minority peoples. Walker attains this by using intertextuality and linking the current destruction of nature to previous destruction of minority civilizations, she shows the ecological
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She takes a seed of an idea involving historical context where everyone is involved and needed to help others it doesn’t matter who are what you are and turns it into an ecological battle to protect nature. Walker touches on the idea of collective responsibility for others actions on, Walker states “The Earth holds us responsible for our crimes against it, not as individuals but as a species- this was the message of the trees.” (662) it links to a subject that historically many people are aware of and understand it due to its multiple points of view it can take whether it be the enslavement of African Americans and other minorities for profiteering, an issue which did not stop until people came together as a community and rallied to prevent the oppression of minorities and fight for equal rights, just African Americans fighting for equal rights and just women fighting for voting right s would never have gotten anywhere if people didn’t come together from every race and sex and fight for collective equality. The workings of Christopher Manes in his piece Nature and silence helps to solidify this gap and the need for this cultural rift to be fixed, stating “A Tuscarora Indian once remarked that, unlike his people’s experience of the world, for Westerners, “the uncounted voices of nature . . . are dumb.” (Manes 1), this is the mentality that Walker used to justify her innocents to the …show more content…
Walker while talking about the Wasichu or a person of western culture who destroys nature and doesn’t care for the environment states “you can see the men who did this were crazy… They just killed and killed because they liked to do that- black elk speaks” (Walker 663). The Wasichu were so wasteful and never killed to survive they killed for pleasure which lead to the needless death of thousands of buffalo. This is just one example of a pointless waste of natural world this thinking started during the middle ages and the renaissance, the opinion man in western culture had towards the great chain of being changed, it changed from man respecting and loving nature to making it subservient with the nuances of the humanism age (345, Manes.) as western culture grew it industrialized doing everything necessary to bring the greatest success to mankind as opposed to nature as a whole and thus started the tyrannical thinking that has destroyed so much of nature with little thought or care for the result. Walker describes the trees a sick people because she recognizes that they are not just some resource for man to use but they are beautiful living breathing individuals who have lives and families like any person does. Walker also accepts the fact that everyone even herself in some form or another has wronged nature and has had an impact on nature no matter how small it might
She takes a seed of an idea involving historical context where everyone is involved and needed to help others it doesn’t matter who are what you are and turns it into an ecological battle to protect nature. Walker touches on the idea of collective responsibility for others actions on, Walker states “The Earth holds us responsible for our crimes against it, not as individuals but as a species- this was the message of the trees.” (662) it links to a subject that historically many people are aware of and understand it due to its multiple points of view it can take whether it be the enslavement of African Americans and other minorities for profiteering, an issue which did not stop until people came together as a community and rallied to prevent the oppression of minorities and fight for equal rights, just African Americans fighting for equal rights and just women fighting for voting right s would never have gotten anywhere if people didn’t come together from every race and sex and fight for collective equality. The workings of Christopher Manes in his piece Nature and silence helps to solidify this gap and the need for this cultural rift to be fixed, stating “A Tuscarora Indian once remarked that, unlike his people’s experience of the world, for Westerners, “the uncounted voices of nature . . . are dumb.” (Manes 1), this is the mentality that Walker used to justify her innocents to the …show more content…
Walker while talking about the Wasichu or a person of western culture who destroys nature and doesn’t care for the environment states “you can see the men who did this were crazy… They just killed and killed because they liked to do that- black elk speaks” (Walker 663). The Wasichu were so wasteful and never killed to survive they killed for pleasure which lead to the needless death of thousands of buffalo. This is just one example of a pointless waste of natural world this thinking started during the middle ages and the renaissance, the opinion man in western culture had towards the great chain of being changed, it changed from man respecting and loving nature to making it subservient with the nuances of the humanism age (345, Manes.) as western culture grew it industrialized doing everything necessary to bring the greatest success to mankind as opposed to nature as a whole and thus started the tyrannical thinking that has destroyed so much of nature with little thought or care for the result. Walker describes the trees a sick people because she recognizes that they are not just some resource for man to use but they are beautiful living breathing individuals who have lives and families like any person does. Walker also accepts the fact that everyone even herself in some form or another has wronged nature and has had an impact on nature no matter how small it might