As I traverse the overgrown meadow, the impressible soil sticks to my worn shoes. It is dark, chalky, and alluvial. From it, life has flourished, unhindered by barriers of concrete and asphalt. The grass is coarse, and high reaching; the spruce trees tower solemnly. They are sentinels, guarding the ravine from the commotion of the city. They offer protection from any unwelcome reminders of the pandemonium and instability that await me upon my return to civilization. Beyond the ravine is an endless mixture of harsh, discordant noise. There is a steady sprawl of vehicles, construction sites, and sirens. Cement and rebar dominate the landscape. Everywhere, people hurry frantically, impatiently, overwhelmingly – all in an attempt to fulfill their
In my generation, I am able to catch what is relatively the tail end of this slow extinction. And to be quite honest, I had not devoted a moment of thought to this phenomenon until I read Leopold’s passages. In fact, I am always the first one to compliment a new highway project that saves me five minutes of driving or even a tidy farmstead as I pass. Now, more than ever, my thoughts are in limbo. It was just last week when my dad pointed out an area off the highway that displayed miles of slowly rolling cornfields. His reaction was to the beauty of the countryside. Mine was to question his. I found myself thinking about all of the hard work that created that beauty, and then how much more beautiful it was fifty, a hundred, or even two centuries ago. Only the mind’s eye can create this beauty now, and that is exactly why Leopold’s concerns are validated.
Outside of the Ingram’s house – on one hot and humid Spring evening, late in the season in this Big Apple suburb called Nanuet – the unforcast and oppressive heat of the wilted afternoon had yet to relinquish the atmosphere from its smothering grip: Viciously humid for the human beings attempting to attend to their responsibilities; Viciously humid for the their canine and feline companions relegated to a daytime life out-of-doors; Viciously humid, too, for all of the flighted avian creatures calling home the dwindling woods and forests in this county of Rockland. Once a pleasant balance of woodland and suburban homes, nearly all of the county’s hamlets were now almost exclusively the latter.
Jane Smiley’s novel, A Thousand Acres, is a contemporary interpretation of William Shakespeare’s classical tragedy King Lear. Comparisons are clearly visible in the very beginning of A Thousand Acres when Smiley begins with a vivid description of the landscape. Even the characters are similar and having read King Lear, I already had an impression of them before reading A Thousand Acres. But they are not completely similar as there are some differences due to the perspectives through which the stories are told.
When the newlyweds move in they are wary of their new landscape, the unfamiliar surroundings, cultural barriers and difference to their old landscape along with the people in the landscape cause them to be unreceptive to the landscape. The changing relationship between the people is demonstrated through the comparative description of the couple in their old and new neighbourhoods. Their prior residence was “in the expansive outer suburbs where good neighbours were seldom seen and never heard”. This is juxtaposed against the noisy Macedonian family that “shouted, ranted and screamed”. The accumulation implies the severity of the noise and juxtaposed against the silence of their old neighbours, Winton demonstrates his purpose that the landscape shapes us and irrational emotions of fear and worry interfere with our receptivity to the landscape. The negative connotations of “uncomfortable”, “nervous”, “disapproval”, “resented” and “disgust” used to describe their neighbours highlights their lack of receptivity to their new landscape. The strained relationships with the neighbours continued into autumn and although displeased, the couple “took careful note of what was said”. The gradual acceptance emphasises the time required to fully accept the new people and their landscape as well as the shift in perspective that is only possible with time. The lack of receptivity to the landscape impacts the couple’s relationship with the neighbours and hence this shows the complexity of human behaviour because it is based on emotions which are impacted by the receptivity to the
The valley is described as a “desolate” place where “ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills into grotesque gardens”. (21) Ashes that dominate the area take the shape of natural greenery. The term “grotesque gardens” uses alliteration, with juxtaposition; to highlight the odd pairing of ashes and greenery. Ashes are associated with death while ridges and “gardens” represent the potential to flourish and grow in the promise and ideal of equality as in “the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams.” (143) The trees that once stood here were able to speak to man’s dreams, which allude to America, the land able to speak to man’s dreams and capacity for wonder. All this is replaced by grey ash that suffocates the inhabitants, restricting them to their social class. This presents a bleak image of hopelessness that surrounds the valley.
As the novel progresses, the narrator describes once again the setting of the environment: “When spring came, after that hard winter, one could not get enough of the nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I used to watch in Virginia, no budding woods or blossoming gardens” (79). This passage is important because it reflects what was stated earlier in this paper, that the theme of man and his relationship with nature is one that has a pivotal impact on how an individual will see life. There are many immigrant farmers in My Àntonia and whether an individual will see life with hope or misery depends in large part to the environment that they put themselves
First I´m going to describe ``the character’s names in the short story ‘’The Ravine’’. They´re names are Joe-Boy and Vinny. They’re both boys and they’re both fifteen. They’re both friends and they’re both hawiian. In this essay I’ll be comparing and contrasting Joe-Boy and Vinny from the short story’’’’The Ravine’’.
The speaker dreams of escape from this listless weariness brought about by the creeping vision. He walked the “narrow streets of cobblestones,” symbolizing oppression as was suggested by the narrowness of a street made up of cobblestones, indicative of it’s ancientness, or the “old ways.
Upon arrival into the jungle of vast buildings, the first thing noticed is the mobbed streets filled with taxi cabs and cars going to and fro in numerous directions, with the scent of exhaust surfing through the air. As you progress deeper into the inner city and exit your vehicle, the aroma of the many restaurants passes through your nostrils and gives you a craving for a ?NY Hot Dog? sold by the street venders on the corner calling out your name. As you continue your journey you are passed by the ongoing flow of pedestrians talking on their cell phones and drinking a Starbucks while enjoying the city. The constant commotion of conversing voices rage up and down the streets as someone calls for a fast taxi. A mixed sound of various music styles all band together to form one wild tune.
passed by me, the whirlwind scooped up a dormant pile of leaves lying next to
From caves and trees, man moved to mud huts and animal skin tents. Constantly striving towards improvisation to suit his changing needs, he has today, shelter in the form of buildings in brick and concrete, that he has termed architecture; gardens and malls where he spends his leisure time, these along with the buildings and the spaces between, he calls urban fabric. There are road networks, that link buildings to each other, buildings to public plazas, that link living areas to work areas, or living areas to educational areas, or living areas to shopping areas.
The question that rises is this: if urban space is of such great importance in dystopian fiction, then what is the role of nature? Respectively, dystopian authors study this question and try to provide an explanation. There are no doubts that nature has always impacted greatly on the organization of human life, but it seems that the hunger for power of totalitarianism influences even this. There are two options of what place nature can occupy in this kind of works; it either obeys the power of the dystopian metropolis and is completely controlled,
I was walking down a run-down road accompanied only by the rattling tracks of a train zooming right above me, I felt the ground slightly rumble and so did the pigeons as they dispersed into the thick smog covering downtown San Francisco. I continued down the road with my hands firmly glued into my pockets as I passed two husky bikers leaning against the graffiti-ed wall of a run-down convenience store, staring at me as I pass their immaculate Harley’s
...periences ever changing as the viewer moves throughout the space. Cullen advocated for unique nature in urban design, which formed ‘serial vision’. In Cullen’s novel Townscape, he articulated his theory with the use of illustrations along with descriptive text, his theory and method is still influential today. Despite others queering his theory, through the empirical study presented about Emerald Lakes, this has shown effective in better understanding the relationships between the emotional responses and space along with the experiences felt by the viewer. In Cullen’s theory, as previously stated, an urban designer can inflict an emotional response from those who utilise and experience the space. Ultimately urban designers aim to create a successful environment for people to enjoy and use, it should be heed to societal needs while remaining aesthetically pleasing.
Forty-four acres of farmland that--building from memory and photographs--would eventually become the epitome of rustic charm. The old homestead was surrounded by the kind of eerie, primeval wilderness that can only be truly felt by the unfiltered imagination of youth. Never more truer than when the fog would roll out of the thicket, over the rise and fall of the hills and creep up to the doorsteps.