Personal Narrative- Destruction of Nature Essay examples

Personal Narrative- Destruction of Nature If you ever get a chance to visit Chaco Canyon National Monument in New Mexico, you should take the time to just stand in the desert and listen. The silence in this place is physical; you can feel it surround you. This is a silence with depth and layers that are unbroken even by the wind, which moves through emptiness and speaks only in occasional sighs through the canyons. The air itself is very clear—the lack of humidity gives the cliffs and buttes sharp lines, and the colors of the earth, though muted, stand in stark relief to the blueness of the sky. Night comes gradually to this place. The height and dryness of the air allows the stars to appear before the sun has set—creating an odd†¦show more content†¦These are issues that I often ponder. I realize this consciousness is atypical of many of my compatriots. However, the roots of my compulsive musings are not wholly random because I was subjected to much similar thinking from an early age. Having grown up in a region where civilization and development were slow in coming, and where trees outnumber cornstalks and coal mines corn silos, we had ample opportunity to reflect on man’s relationship to nature. My parents are two well-educated, biologically trained individuals with an almost obsessive need to be outdoors. They met, so the story goes, in a graduate school class when my mother asked my father for his pocketknife to scrape moss from a tree trunk. It was love amongst the bryophytes. They spent several years trekking all over the U.S. on vacations to national forests and monuments and deserts and mountains, and my arrival on the scene did not cease their wanderings. Though I did restrict the locale. There are numerous pictures of one of my parents standing on some wooded ridge with the peak of my red hat sticking up over their shoulder. Once I was old enough to scramble along the trails by my own power, my father began taking me to work with him. In those days, he was a state biologist, and by the time I started kindergarten, I had been all over the state hiking, trapping, caving, camping, and generally running as a feral child. School was a change in routine, though on nice days, either one or bothShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of The Wind Rises And Showa 1660 Words   |  7 Pagesthe war. However they are far from the â€Å"heroic narratives† that gained favor right after the war. (gluck 49). While the content of heroic narratives differ nation to nation, they all evoke the same sense of â€Å"national unity by effacing experiential difference, creating whole nations of partisans, resistant’s, anti-facists – and above all victims (gluck 50). Showa and The Wind Rises escape the constraint of heroic narratives, by interjecting personal memory into vernacular and public memory. The worksRead More The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald1335 Words   |  5 PagesW.G. 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This links to USE OF MAPS AND DISCUSSION ABOUT USE OF MAPS. Look at the mapsRead MoreThe Demise And Destruction Of Mary Shelley s Frankenstein1301 Words   |  6 PagesVictor Frankenstein’s drive for admiration and glory from his peers proves to be the cause, and drive, of his self-centered goals. When contemplating the need of nature vs. nurture the story of Frankenstein shows that both are needed although in this story the demise and destruction that occurs in the story is inevitable despite either nature or nurture. Victor describes his early life as picturesque, he has a close and loving family that supports not only him but also cares for other people. He isRead MoreFrankenstein Novel Analysis Essay1664 Words   |  7 Pagesupdates while he’s on one of many sea trips and to coincide with that, readers of the novel get a glimpse of the personal turmoil he is facing. On his trip, Walton meets a stranger who he thinks can be the one to help aid in his feeling of loneliness and isolation. 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Images drawn from the realm of music parallel the destruction of Alex’s identity, either through conformity to a group’s style of violence or through failure to embrace the homogeneity of group actions associate with violence. As Alex’s narrative progresses, the musical imagery follows the decline and re-emergence of his personal identity as a function of his involvement in violence. Musical references underscore the power of violence toRead More Music, Violence, and Identity in A nthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange1456 Words   |  6 Pagesremaining an individual in the face of group-oriented violence. Images drawn from the realm of music parallel the destruction of Alex’s identity, either through conformity to a group’s style of violence or through failure to embrace the homogeneity of group actions associated with violence. As Alex’s narrative progresses, musical imagery follows the decline and re-emergence of his personal identity as a function of his involvement in violence. 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The machinations at work driving the play’s narrative forward are parallel to the guises both the witches as well as Lady Macbeth undertake in order to achieve their ends. Upending against the narrative was the perceived notion that reigned within the time of Shakespeare through which public norms had enabled an extensive division between the genders took root as the social