Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek features various creatures struggling to survive in the perilous habitats of Tinker Creek. From her own experiences living near the creek, she presents detailed descriptions of the deaths of different insects and animals, mainly due to attacks from other creatures of the same species. Throughout the distinct chapters of her book, she stalks and studies the creatures to construct an overarching theme of life. Dillard argues that in order for any creature to sustain its life, it must cause death to others, even if it means killing members of its own group. In an attempt to expose this horror of reality, Dillard astonishingly employs the muskrat, often thought as a peaceful creature found enjoying the calm water. By presenting the muskrat as a victim of its predators as well as a predator of its own species, Dillard reveals that even the most peace-loving creatures, like the muskrat, are both the objects and the subjects of death. Chapter 11, titled “Stalking,” characterizes the muskrat as a prey to numerous predators and the object of death. Although Dillard observes the muskrat as it serenely travels down the creek earlier in the chapter, she suggests that the muskrat is no exception to the theme relating to death. Dillard claims that the muskrat is the “bread and butter of the carnivorous food chain” (195) and compares it to the rabbits and the mice since any animal big enough to eat mammals will eat the muskrat. To support this idea, she lists the common predators of the muskrat that hunt and kill it for their own survival. From hawks and owls to foxes and minks, the muskrat finds its enemies in all places of the sky, the land, and the water. The struggle of the muskrat to avoid its preda... ... middle of paper ... ... Through this sentence, Dillard argues that in order for the new born muskrats to live into adulthood, the other muskrats protect them even if it means killing their children. Once again, the theme of life and death asserts itself through the muskrat since the death of the young muskrat was caused by adult muskrats in an attempt to secure the safety of the new born muskrat. Thus, the muskrat remarkably serves as the predator of its own family and the agent of death for survival in the cruel nature of Tinker Creek. Annie Dillard declares and defends the argument that the death of a creature is a necessity for another creature to survive. Through the case of the muskrat, she demonstrated that multiple predators, whether they are of the same species or not, can hunt a single creature. In order for life to continue, another life must be sacrificed and death is natural.
the idea of the wild and its importance and necessity of human interaction with the wild.
In a land swarming with predators, this family of delicate prey found their place and made the best of it, despite the fact that America, a somewhat disarranged and hazardous jungle, was not the wholesome promise-land they had predicted it to be.
Terry Tempest Williams writes a beautiful memoir bringing together the unnatural and natural world. Williams claims that cancer found in her family was caused by the atomic and radiation testing where she lived during the 1950s and 1960s, but she came to realize that once one is diagnosed with cancer, its course occurs naturally, and slowly deteriorates one’s body. Terry Tempest Williams describes how cancer affected everyone in her family by detailing how she and her family struggled through the time when her mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer to the time after her death. She specifically describes this struggle by incorporating the birds that she studies near her hometown in Utah with the flooding of Great Salt Lake to her mother and other relatives’ journey with fighting cancer. In the first half of the book, Williams often times describes the birds that she studies at the Bird River Migratory Bird Refuge as a means to escape and suppress the hardships that she faces with her family. By the end of book, she learns that suppressing and escaping the cancer and disease that surrounds her family is not the answer, instead, she realizes that it is better to accept it, and learn how to cope with death and the changes it can bring. The relationship between the inescapability of life and death and the uncontrollable elements of nature deliberated in Terry Tempest William’s memoir Refuge make this a poetic, graceful, and telling book.
At other times, nature can be a source of solace for those who have suffered. Following the death of Gladys and Kate, Grainier looks to the horizon to seek comfort from his crushing loss. “All his life Robert Grainier would remember vividly the burned valley at sundown, the most dream-like business he’d ever witnessed waking – the brilliant pastels of the last light overhead, some clouds...
In John Steinbeck’s book “The Grapes of Wrath” he vividly illustrates through the lives of an Oklahoma farm family, the Joads some the ramifications of depression, drought, dust storms, and degradation of people. In chapter three Steinbeck puts the spotlight on a turtle that was crossing a highway. The turtle represents the slothful odyssey of Joads and other migrants in search of work. The turtle epitomize being tough, strong willed, and persistence. Steinbeck writes, “All over the grass at the roadside a land turtle crawled, turning aside for nothing, dragging his high domed shell of the grass.” The turtle was focused on his goal to get to the other side of the street, not...
In “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop, the narrator attempts to understand the relationship between humans and nature and finds herself concluding that they are intertwined due to humans’ underlying need to take away from nature, whether through the act of poetic imagination or through the exploitation and contamination of nature. Bishop’s view of nature changes from one where it is an unknown, mysterious, and fearful presence that is antagonistic, to one that characterizes nature as being resilient when faced against harm and often victimized by people. Mary Oliver’s poem also titled “The Fish” offers a response to Bishop’s idea that people are harming nature, by providing another reason as to why people are harming nature, which is due to how people are unable to view nature as something that exists and goes beyond the purpose of serving human needs and offers a different interpretation of the relationship between man and nature. Oliver believes that nature serves as subsidence for humans, both physically and spiritually. Unlike Bishop who finds peace through understanding her role in nature’s plight and acceptance at the merging between the natural and human worlds, Oliver finds that through the literal act of consuming nature can she obtain a form of empowerment that allows her to become one with nature.
Instead of just throwing the topic of death into his reader’s faces, he tries to slowly ease them into it. Starting with the death of a tree, it is something so miniscule and less emotional. It allows Lewis to bring up the topic of death without bringing up so many emotions. Then to head deeper into the conversation he talks about the death of a small animal, a mouse. By bringing up the idea of something that is living and breathing it opens the reader’s heart to let more emotions flow. Lewis’s final barrier is broken when he starts discussing
Two poems, “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop and “The Meadow Mouse” by Theodore Roethke, include characters who experience, learn, and emote with nature. In Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “The Fish,” a fisherman catches a fish, likely with the intention to kill it, but frees it when he sees the world through the eyes of the fish. In Theodore Roethke’s poem “The Meadow Mouse,” a man finds a meadow mouse with the intention of keeping it and shielding it from nature, but it escapes into the wild. These poems, set in different scenarios, highlight two scenarios where men and women interact with nature and experience it in their own ways.
As Tim Ingold, a British anthropologist critiques, this common detached relationship with nature may lead to the disrespect and ignorance of our environment. In engaging with our environment, we must act as a constituent part of it, versus an omnipotent outsider. This interpretation is outlined by Colin Jerolmack in “The Global Pigeon”, where he exposes humans’ lost harmony with nature as a modern cultural construction shaped by social conditions. He refers to this sociological and problematic paradigm as “nature lost”. Mutualistic relationships are not limited to the natural world, for a greater link can be drawn between humans and animals. Conventionally, nature is depicted as a closed system, interacting within the biophysical factors included. In broader terms, however, nature is a mutually symbiotic exchange between humans and animals. Rather than a study of animal symbolism and classifications, Jerolmack aims to understand the ways in which animals play an active role in people’s societal realms. Like many urbanized animals, pigeons thrive in cities as they follow human patterns and live off our excess. Urban life makes us anomic and reckless in relation the the environment because the bond to nature has been
Annie [played by Aileen Quinn] is a story written by Martin Charnin about a little girl who was left for the doorstep of an orphanage when she was extremely little and goes on to live a miserable life of working at the orphanage. Until one day a person named Grace Farrel [played by Ann Reinking] came along and invited one orphan to stay with her and Oliver Warbucks [played by Albert Finney]. During Annie’s stay Mr. Warbucks realizes how much he likes Annie and wants her to stay. In a way to tell her he gives her a new locket. Without knowing, Annie doesn't accept the locket in result of her own was given to her by her parents before she had been given up. With this knowledge a search is sent out with a reward of $50,000. With
As a small child, Jeff seemed happy enough, playing with his dog or riding his bike, but was fascinated with death. When Lionel removed some animal bones from under the porch, the remains of small creatures killed by small local predators, Jeff seemed quite pleased by the sound they made dropping back into the bucket. His father dismissed it as childhood curiosity.
Many people wonder: what is the meaning of life? What is the human purpose on this earth? At least one time in our lifetime, we all look at ourselves and wonder if we are living our lives the way we were meant to live them. Sadly, there is not a definite answer to the principles of human life. Every human comes from different backgrounds and different experiences throughout their existence. Each person is different, each with different emotions and reactions to their surroundings. People strive to uncover the secrets to the meaning of life. In reality, humans are given the desire to live the way we want and have a critical thinking mind, unlike animals. In the essay Living like Weasels, Annie Dillard believes we should live more carefree and instinctual as weasels, but what we were given as humans is a gift that no other creature has – free will and choice to shape our own lives.
Society’s refusal to accept differences drives the creature toward violence. The standards of normal and abnormal are established at an early age, and no individual is left untouched. The creature, as a living being, has the right to be accepted and loved. However, the instant he tries to integrate in society, someone notices that he does not fit society’s definition of normal and revokes his rights. The creature tries to find food in a village to survive, and encounters a man in a hut: “He turned on hearing a noise; and, perceiving me, shrieked loudly, and, quitting the hut, ran across the fields with a speed of which his debilitated form hardly appe...
Upon learning of Armstrong’s motive, Isobel attempts to hang herself. As Isobel lies helpless on the floor, fighting for one last breath, Stephenson illustrates that Isobel’s “heels flutter almost imperceptibly” (92). Later, everyone gathers around Isobel’s dead body much like they did around the fluttering bird in the first experiment. “But this time Isobel, in her coffin, has taken the place of the bird in the air pump”(96). The fact that now a dead Isobel symbolizes the bird implies that this time the experiment has gone dreadfully wrong. The fact that the second experiment fails harbors a much more solemn consequence than if the first had failed. If the bird in the first experiment had died, tears would have been shed only until the purchase of a new bird. Not only does Armstrong sacrifice a human life in the name of science, but he symbolically diminishes all that the bird and Isobel represent. Isobel’s death implies the demise of freedom, will, and humanity.
Judith Wright's poem `The Killer' explores the relationship between Humans and Nature, and provides an insight into the primitive instincts which characterize both the speaker and the subject. These aspects of the poem find expression in the irony of the title and are also underlined by the various technical devices employed by the poet.