In William Wordsworth's poem, "The World is Too Much with Us," he is making a declaration about the struggle between nature and humanity. Wordsworth is well known for his description and love for nature and in, "The World is Too Much With Us," he entails us with his powerful feelings, obsession and longing for a much simpler time were humanity was not able to meddle so harshly with nature.
I believe that humanity and nature can and should live in harmony. In the poem Wordsworth states, "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers," describes mankind destroying nature for progress unaware of their effect on the environment. Wordsworth believes humanity has the potential to harmonize with nature and even states are capability to do so as "powers." The money-oriented advance of mankind is described in the lines, "We have given out hearts away, a sordid boom." Humans as a whole are materialistic. Unfortunately, humanity is too self absorbed and materialistic to make an effort for the longevity of nature. As much as I try not to consume myself with material objects I always get drawn into buying something new and trendy. I think that people often times get caught up in money and expensive things. Everyday there is a different new invention to buy, often times at the expense of nature. The westernized, well feed, materialistic, freed and self absorbed society we live in, feeds are minds with the idea that we are never full.
Society will continue to annihilate the environment until finally there is nothing left if we continue on our streak. In the line, "Little we see in Nature that is ours," Wordsworth visualizes nature and humanity living together in accord as the ultimate goal. Humanity is the variable factor that must be changed, because nature is the weaker. Nature is naive and powerless being described as a "sleeping flower," against wicked mankind. I think mankind is also naïve, because we do not have any idea that we are destroying something when we buy a product. For example, for many years consumers of canned tuna fish were not aware dolphins were also caught in the nets used by the fisherman and killed as a result. While humanity will never stop in there quest for forward progress, Wordsworth believes that nature will eventually stop its own destruction.
...s man has caused, but when all is said and done the world will go on, but the humankind inhabiting it may not. We will die off long before nature does. I also believe that Hardin looked at the adding of more cattle to the field as being unavoidable in human nature to want to profit more at other's expenses. I do not see this to be true. Uneducated people maybe, but as people began to be educated they would no longer do it. We have implemented many different pollution clean up plans in the United States and it continues to be a big issue that people take seriously. I also believe that people are able to find other resources once one is depleted through either developping replacements for those resources or using renewable resources and in the end it balances out. The only way to really prevent people from taking more than their share is to remove the incentive to.
...when was the last movie released that portrayed humans treating Mother Nature with compassion and love, rather than as an object? From this, it can be determined that popular culture definitely reflects the human perspective of nature, especially in relation to how it is treated. One may argue that popular culture shapes our view of nature, due to the fact that media released to the public shows humans destroying nature. If seen in a movie, one is more likely to “do it”. This statement can be negated due to the fact that we as humans are performing the destruction of nature, and are exposing it to societies around the world, in an effort to stop it in the future. Humankind is only a small portion of nature, but we are causing it most time. Hence, reflecting the destruction of nature by humans in popular culture, making an effort to end it in years to come.
William Wordsworth is easily understood as a main author whom expresses the element of nature within his work. Wordsworth’s writings unravel the combination of the creation of beauty and sublime within the minds of man, as well as the receiver through naturalism. Wordsworth is known to be self-conscious of his immediate surroundings in the natural world, and to create his experience with it through imagination. It is common to point out Wordsworth speaking with, to, and for nature. Wordsworth had a strong sense of passion of finding ourselves as the individuals that we truly are through nature. Three poems which best agree with Wordsworth’s fascination with nature are: I Wandered as a Lonely Cloud, My Heart leaps up, and Composed upon Westminster Bridge. In I Wandered as a Lonely Cloud, Wordsworth claims that he would rather die than be without nature, because life isn’t life without it, and would be without the true happiness and pleasure nature brings to man. “So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me
While Rachel Carson’s “The Obligation to Endure”, Christopher Kemp’s "Medieval Planet", and Jared Diamond’s “The Ends of the World as We Know Them” all cover subjects relating to environmental issues, each author goes about purveying his or her message in a different manner. Kemp’s New Scientist article explains humanity’s environmental effects by imagining a world in which we never existed and hypothesizing how it would look and function with our absence. Carson’s essay depicts a frightening reality about the current state of humanity and the environment. She warns readers about how we are the only species who possess the capability to disrupt and even destroy Earth’s natural patterns. Diamond articulates his work with an unusual spin, using examples of historical civilizations that have snuffed themselves out by their own progress or poor relationship with the environment. The main message conveyed in Diamond's essay is that we are just as capable of choking ourselves out by our own doing today as were the historical civilizations that suffered the same fate. Despite their differing focuses, each article agrees that humans are outgrowing the finite amount of resources that the Earth can provide. A delicate symbiotic relationship between life and the environment has been maintained throughout time. Life on Earth was shaped by the constantly changing climate and surroundings. However, humans have gained the capacity to transcend this relationship. Through our ingenuity and industrialism, we have separated ourselves from natural restrictions. Because of this progress, we have been destroying the natural cycles of Earth’s environment and continue to do so at an alarming rate. Humanity has become Earth’s infection, ravaging the worl...
The World Is Too Much with Us, written by William Wordsworth in 1807 is a warning to his generation, that they are losing sight of what is truly important in this world: nature and God. To some, they are one in the same. As if lacking appreciation for the natural gifts of God is not sin enough, we add to it the insult of pride for our rape of His land. Wordsworth makes this poetic message immortal with his powerful and emotional words. Let us study his powerful style: The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! (Lines 1 - 4) Materialism, wasteful selfishness, prostitution! These are the images that these lines bring to me! Yet, is it not more true today than in Wordsworth’s time, that we are a culture of people who simply consume and waste?
Wordsworth truly emphasized the influence nature had on human morals and emotion. He spiritualised nature and regarded the environment as a philosophical moral teacher, as a mother and even guardian, as the one true elevating influence that was greater than any other. He believed that between man and Nature there is mutual consciousness and understanding, as well as a spiritual connection. According to him, human beings who grow up in the lap of Nature like he did were the ideal humans, the perfect kind. Above all, Wordsworth emphasized the moral influence of Nature as this pastoral influence. “They are second only to nature, which is "the breath of God." (Wordsworth 221). It was his special characteristic to concern himself, not with the strange and remote aspects of the earth, and sky, but nature in ordinary, familiar, everyday moods.Wordsworth stressed upon the moral influence of Nature and the need of man’s spiritual discourse with it “Great and benign, indeed, must be the power/ Of living nature,” (Wordsworth 167). He did not recognize the scary, hideous side of nature, only its
When the Industrial Revolution started, Wordsworth was appalled by the idea of factories and how workers were hired to work such long hours, with hardly any pay for all of their hard work. During the Industrial Revolution there were many factories being built up, these took away most of the open countryside that everyone had so enjoyed. So like most romantic poets of his time Wordsworth decided to revolt against the Industrial Revolution and wrote many pieces about nature to show his feelings of opposition to the revolution. Wordsworth always thought of himself as a humanist writer, so it just made sense that his poems written during the industrial revolution were completed about nature du...
William Wordsworth rejected all the traditional assumptions about the proper style, words, and subject matter for a poem during the Romanics period. When explaining his writing Wordsworth said, “There will be found in these volumes little of what is usually called poetry diction; I have taken as much pains to avoid it as others ordinarily take to produce it.” (Marshall) Because he took such a different approach to his writing, many people criticized his poems. Literary critic Harold Bloom said, “The fear of mortality haunts much of Wordsworth’s best poetry, especially in regard to the premature mortality of the Imagination and the loss of its creative joy.” Wordsworth does in fact express fear of mortality in the poems The World is too much with us, London, 1802, The Prelude, and Lines composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.
Moreover, searching for the different mechanics in each of these poems makes it easier for the reader to analysis and interpret them. To begin, in “The World is Too Much with Us” the way the punctuation is fit into the poem is different since there are many semicolons between each line and one period suggesting that the poem is actually one long sentence. Then I believe the speaker to be someone who acknowledges that he too has lost connection with nature since he’s been preoccupied with other things in the world. This is proven throughout the whole poem since he talks in first person using the word “I.” The tone of this poem is angry, frustrated, and dissatisfied because of how the world has changed. The rhyme scheme is also another appealing mechanic here too since Wordsworth only uses fou...
In his poem, 'Lines Written in the Early Spring,' William Wordsworth gives us insight into his views of the destruction of nature. Using personification, he makes nature seem to be full of life and happy to be living. Yet, man still is destroying what he sees as 'Nature's holy plan'; (8).
Wordsworth recognizes the connections nature enables humans to construct. The beauty of a “wild secluded scene” (Wordsworth, 1798, line 6) allows the mind to bypass clouded and obscured thinking accompanied with man made environments. “In which the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world, is lightened,” (Wordsworth, 1798, lines 40-43). Wordsworth observes the clear and comprehensive mindset conceived when individuals are exposed to nature. Wordsworth construes nature as a force, delving further into the depths of humans, bringing forth distinct universal and spiritual perspectives. Wonder and awe in the face of nature is awakened within even the most stubborn of minds. The human spirit becomes at mercy to nature’s splendor.
The Scientific Revolution, perhaps one of the most significant examples of human beingsí relationship with the natural world, changed the way seventeenth and eighteenth century society operated. The power of human knowledge has enabled intellectual, economical, and social advances seen in the modern world. The Scientific Revolution which included the development of scientific attitudes and skepticism of old views on nature and humanity was a slow process that spanned over a two century period. During the Scientific Revolution, scientific knowledge enabled humans to control nature in order to improve society. With leaders such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and Rene Descartes, the Scientific Revolution proves to be a crucial piece to the puzzle of understanding the effects of humansí interactions with the natural world.
Wordsworth is deeply involved with the complexities of nature and human reaction to it. To Wordsworth nature is the revelation of god through viewing everything that is harmonious or beautiful in nature. Man’s true character is then formed and developed through participation in this balance. Wordsworth had the view that people are at their best when they are closest to nature. Being close creates harmony and order. He thought that the people of his time were getting away from that.
In William Wordsworth’s poems, the role of nature plays a more reassuring and pivotal r ole within them. To Wordsworth’s poetry, interacting with nature represents the forces of the natural world. Throughout the three poems, Resolution and Independence, Tintern Abbey, and Michael, which will be discussed in this essay, nature is seen prominently as an everlasting- individual figure, which gives his audience as well as Wordsworth, himself, a sense of console. In all three poems, Wordsworth views nature and human beings as complementary elements of a sum of a whole, recognizing that humans are a sum of nature. Therefore, looking at the world as a soothing being of which he is a part of, Wordsworth looks at nature and sees the benevolence of the divinity aspects behind them. For Wordsworth, the world itself, in all its glory, can be a place of suffering, which surely occurs within the world; Wordsworth is still comforted with the belief that all things happen by the hands of the divinity and the just and divine order of nature, itself.