Wordsworth And Muir Nature Analysis

Improved Essays
Decades ago, the esteemed chief of the Ponca tribe, Standing Bear, argued that “Man’s heart away from nature grows hard.” Even years prior to our modern environmental movement, mankind has always had a profound respect and admiration for nature. Our natural world has been celebrated in song, literature, art, poetry, and just about every other form of media one can think of. Naturalists, like William Wordsworth and John Muir, praise nature through written works, showing the emotional effect of the environment through personal experiences. Wordsworth and Muir express their deep and appreciative relationship with nature using personification and heavy use of conflicting tones in their works. Applying human features to nature allows both Muir

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Emma Marris presents us with a new way of viewing nature in the first chapter of her book, “Rambunctious Garden”. She explains that the definition of nature depicted in our “glossy magazines” describing a place “somewhere distant, wild and free” is incorrect, as it “blinds us” from the truth (Marris 1). Marris argues that we must adjust this definition to also include the nature found in “the bees whizzing down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan” and “the butterfly bushes that grow alongside the urban river” as well as the nature found in “managed national parks” (Marris 2). She uses experiences gained during her time spent in the forests of Hawaii and in Australia’s Scotia Sanctuary as evidence to support her argument. Marris also makes the point…

    • 858 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    For billions of years, nature has dictated the survival and appearance of a species. However in Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods suggests that know we– human beings– are the ones changing the face of nature. Louv introduces the article with a study about controlling the color of butterfly wings then moving on to show the comparison between parks and advertising. Then, Louv transitions into a hypothetical example of a mother who did not want to buy backseat entertainment for her child and the mother then clarifies that she is doing this because of how her “understanding of how cities and nature fit together was gained from the backseat” (lines 49-50). Through the use of a scientific study, hypothetical example, series of rhetorical questions, and repetition Louv sheds light on the increasing separation between people and nature to his reader– anyone who has either fallen or is falling out with nature.…

    • 595 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The connection between humans and the land has undeniably been a source of vitality and community for centuries. In recent history, many people are becoming more and more alarmed by the disappearance of this natural land they grew up on, and therefore the memories connected with this land. In Tamale Traditions, by Amy Coplen, the author utilizes anecdotes and careful word choice to manipulate the reader’s emotions toward understanding this invaluable connection. Her goal in provoking strong emotions in the reader is to make them more receptive of her message of environmental conservation. Throughout this passage, the writer consistently, and persuasive, builds up her argument through making the blanket statement that all humans are connected to nature.…

    • 1137 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    1.) Thoreau’s journals, within “American Earth” by Al Gore, consolidates numerous themes and materials revolving around environmental writings. Sequentially he starts out contemplating that even after one dies they will live on through nature. He then continues to elaborate on the beauty of nature and how humans take it for granted. This is evident when he’s describing men that have grown ignorant to sounds of nature, “silence audible,” as he calls it.…

    • 450 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As a result, it is evident that individuals require connections with landscapes…

    • 963 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Emerson’s essay “Nature”, Emerson looks beyond the simple visuals of the woods and explores how his connection with Nature grants him enhanced perception of his existence, and how he himself is encompassed and uplifted by the existence that is Nature. Emerson While remembering his transcendental walk through the forest, Emerson writes, “There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which Nature cannot repair. ”(Emerson’s “Nature”) Emerson feels invincible in this moment due to his current independence from society bequeathed upon him by Nature.…

    • 320 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Compare/Contrast Essay Nature eases the mind and takes you to a place where problems seem like nothing. A place where you go to live in hope and forget about reality. Many components make up the exactness of nature including: commodity, beauty, language, and discipline. The pieces of “from Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson and “Living Like Weasels” by Annie Dillard each share argumentative categories that are easy to compare and contrast.…

    • 613 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Jane Hirshfield is connected to nature at her home in Marin County, California this is where she gets her inspiration for her poems. Hirshfield published “Tree” in 2000 as a free verse poem, breaking it into 4 stanzas and 4 sentences to convey the nature world. The poem represents a “young redwood” (line 2) that is growing near a house, near a kitchen window. The redwood is already scraping against the window frame of the house, reminding the reader of the “foolish” (line 1) idea of letting it grow there. Humans were created to be one with nature, but as they evolved as a species, they were obligated to choose between the materialistic world or the world of nature.…

    • 951 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Muir And Wordsworth

    • 855 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Naturalism has a superpower that can be used to find a connection with all things in humans and nature. This power can be in all of us, because it's the power of observation and we can interact with nature by exploring its natural surroundings. Romanticism has no superpowers but does have amazing effects from its beauty, depending on your view of nature, the effects can be life changing; or a place of peace, "bliss of solitude", and a relaxing state of being. In these two writings, Muir faces dangers in his path to get to the flower, and Wordsworth stumbles upon these flowers while walking around in nature. They also use techniques, like diction, tone, and syntax in their writing to help effectively make the reader read all the way through…

    • 855 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This reflects how the Civil War and Darwinism affect the way that nature is viewed. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s stories “Self-Reliance” and “Nature” display his pre-war views describing nature as beautiful, connecting everything together. Emerson shows how nature and individuality can connected to a person “The power which resides in him is new in nature and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried” (Self Reliance). He uses nature to present his ideas of nature and humans connecting on a deeper level. ”…

    • 1040 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The reading for this week comes from William Cronon’s book Uncommon Ground. Throughout the passage, Cronon argues that our modern view of wilderness is paradoxically flawed, but due to the historical effects of the sublime and the frontier that emerged at the end of the 19th century, the adoration of wilderness has become ingrained in our culture. These ideologies have imprinted man-made moral values and cultural symbols on wilderness. Cronon asserts that this romanticism of nature currently underpins actual environmental concerns. He concludes reading stating that a middle ground where humanity and nature intersect must be found in order to create a better world.…

    • 700 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Through human’s manufacturing developments, as they separate and begin to reject nature, they lose the comfort that nature once provided them with. As humanity’s materialism expands and mankind naïvely rejects and grows ever distant from nature, it loses and finds alternatives for the simplistic beauty of nature. Nature is the narrator and is calling for a reunion with mankind. Upon knowing the comfort that nature provides humanity with, nature attempts to remind man of the simplistic pleasures by calling out, “I know my sunshine pleases/ Despite thy wayward will” (11,12).…

    • 836 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the essay, The Calypso Borealis, John Muir uses very intense descriptions and changes the tone of his essay using words to show readers how nature gives him peace, but at the same time it gave him a hard time. “The flower was white and made the impression of the utmost simple purity like a snow flower.” In this paragraph, John uses the word “purity” which has a peaceful and spiritual connotation. It also shows how the feeling of the first encounter with flower will stay with him for a long time. Another example of his use descriptive words is “though very crooked course by compass, struggling through tangled drooping branches and over and under broad heaps of fallen trees.”…

    • 414 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In his essay, “A Wind Storm in the Forests,” John Muir who was a naturalist and the founder of Sierra Club one of the most influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States describes his deep appreciation and love for the environment. In his writing, john describes the beauty of the wind and he make the suggestion that the wind are godly because they completely organize the forest in which they appear. He describes how trees in the sierra national forest respond differently to the wind and he also explains how he climbed a 100 ft. tree during a wind-storm to experience the wind-storm first hand. This essay explains the beauty of nature and how we should all work hard to preserve the environment. One of the main ideas in…

    • 467 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Texts are deliberately crafted by composers in response to their contexts, either political, historical or cultural, composers develop their desire to construct their personal representation of the landscape to allow responders to perceive the nature in ways they do. The representation between landscape and poet is portrayed in, the romanticised poem, “Train Journey” by Judith Wright, the post colonisation poem, “Flame Tree in a Quarry” by Judith Wright and the outback painting of the effects of post European Colonisation, “Emus in a Landscape” by Russell Drysdale. These three texts convey the importance of a beneficial relationship between man and nature as a means of gaining a positive perception on the beauties of nature. Furthermore,…

    • 1643 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays