John Muir's Fascination With Nature

Philip Levine’s poem Gospel is about a man’s viewpoint on life while receiving bad information. Throughout the poem the speaker uses similes, metaphors, synechdoches, rhetorical questions, and personification to explain more to the readers. The beginning lines explain and give background information to the readers on how the man viewed the world. As the poem goes on the tone of the poem starts to shift to a sense of depression.

Two scholarly writers brilliantly conveyed nature in their own opinion, an essay written by John Miller called, ”The Calypso Borealis," and a poem by William Wordsworth called, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.” Both authors created work that acquires their idea of the beauty of nature while showing their compassion and love for nature. They each endured the essence in their own way. Each author also used their memory as descriptive imagery to creative share the scenery and amazement of their experience. Each individual has their own personal opinion about nature and how they decide to express their feelings can be diverse, and both authors, John Muir and William Wordsworth, expressed their compassion and love for nature in their own way.

Authors use literary devices so that the readers can connect and better understand the mood of the story. Bradbury in “The Pedestrian” uses a variety of lit devices to develop his mood of the story. Bradbury in "The Pedestrian" uses personification, simile, and imagery to develop the mood of loneliness so that the reader can see the dark world the character is living in.

Imagery is something that is constantly being used since the beginning of time in multiple ways. The book writers, music artist, and everyday people use it to create an image in someone's head. Throughout Beowulf, there is a lot of imagery being used. In the beginning of Beowulf’s last battle, even before he fights, he says farewell to his followers for the last time and he chooses his words. He creates an image in the reader’s heads. The images that the words create makes it feel as if you were really there looking at everything actually happening. Such as, “They stretched their beloved lord in his boat, laid out by the mast, amidships. The great ring-giver. Farfetched treasures were piled on him,and precious gear.” This is a great example of imagery. This is from one of

The Calypso Borealis adventure was a difficult challenge to overcome but in the end, it was worth it for Muir. Wordsworth has strong feelings for the daffodils and nature. "We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."-MLK. Wordsworth and Muir express their strong connection and passion they have for nature using similes and personification to describe the way they feel about Nature to the readers.

William Cullen Bryant wrote “Thanatopsis” at the very young age of seventeen. The word thanatopsis is defined as, “a view or contemplation of death.” It surprised me when I learned that he had written such a deep and detailed poem about nature and death when he was my age. I had to read the poem a couple of times before I even began to understand Bryant’s wording and what he meant by it all.

The world has yet to know “its” true secrets and dive deeper under the mask of perception. Though we may feel like nature is throwing karma at us at times, we continue to honor nature for its patience. In the poems, “Ode to Enchanted Light” by Pablo Neruda and “Sleeping in the Forest” by Mary Oliver, both of the literary works share an appreciation for nature. Though this is true for both, they express their love and feelings differently. Pablo Neruda’s poem praises light as enchanting, whereas Mary Oliver’s poem personifies Earth as a motherly figure and gives off mother nature vibes. The earth seems to comfort the speaker as they go through a series of gentle, calm events to help them sleep. Although both poems glorify nature, one specifically celebrates light while the other shares the speaker’s relationship with the earth. Both poems perform different methods to evaluate and share its purpose.

President Roosevelt said “The time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone.” is one of the examples how President Roosevelt ’s and John Muir’s camping trip in Yosemite supported their goal to preserve nature. Some of the reasons how they supported their goal to preserve nature are they admired the place. Also, they fought for nature. Finally, they spent time in nature.

“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.” (Abbey) These words, written by Edward Abbey in 1982, resonate the ideas proposed by John Muir nearly a century prior. While both Muir and Abbey both appreciate the natural beauty found in the American Southwest, only Abbey recognized the threat of human intervention on the preservation of the natural beauty of these wilderness areas.

“The Story of an Hour” is a short story written by Kate Chopin. It details a wife named Mrs. Louise Mallard, who struggles with a heart condition. After learning of her husband, Brentley Mallard’s death in a railroad accident, Mrs. Mallard deals with grief in many stages. Chopin incorporates many literary devices throughout “The Story of an Hour,” but imagery is the most evident. “A Short Guide to Imagery, Symbolism, and Figurative Language Imagery” describes imagery as “a writer or speaker’s use of words or figures of speech to create a vivid mental picture or physical sensation”(Clark). In the short story, “The Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin uses nature imagery to portray the journey of emotions that Mrs. Mallard experiences

The environmentalist movement began simply to protect wildlife from the greed of corporations, like stated by author, John Muir. Farmers began to use techniques that mirrored the same, environment-damaging business tactics as corporations (which encouraged heavy amounts of chemicals to be used to catalyze production). This caused environmentalists like Wendell Berry to speak out against the chemicals and tactics used, developing the environmentalist movement. The biggest shift in the movement happened when society realized its impact on the environment. Authors like Rachel Carson urge humanity to preserve the environment by outlawing the use of chemicals. Meanwhile, Bill McKibben calls out consumer greed to be the main offender of environmental damage. Diana Lind, a more recent author, pitches ideas that support the

Nature is a pure and natural source of renewal, according to Romantics who frequently emphasized the glory and beauty of nature throughout the Romantic period. Poets, artists, writers, and philosophers all believe the natural world can provide healthy emotions and morals. William Wordsworth, a notorious Romantic poet, circles many of his poems around nature and its power including his “The World is Too Much With Us” and “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.” At first glance, the two poems seem alike, with many parallels corresponding to the importance of nature and its impact on human beings. Although both poems have different tonal approaches, they both come to the same conclusion that nature is a necessity to all human beings.

Although Coleridge reflects on nature as being that “one Life within us and abroad “in most of his other poem, but coming In “Dejection: An Ode” we see more of the dialects between the imagination’s role in creating perception and nature guiding the soul. In the opening stanzas of “Dejection” the flipside to the romantic celebration of nature –the romantic emphasize on subjective experience, individual consciousness, and imagination. If our experience derives from ourselves, then nature can do nothing on its own. Beginning with the fifth stanza, Coleridge suggests that there is a power –personified joy that allows us to reconnect with nature and for it to renew us and that comes both from within and from without: “the spirit and the power, / Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower / A new Earth and new Heaven” (67–69). That reconnection with nature will renew the world for us. The speaker in the next stanzas reflects how he has lost this connection, as his “afflictions bow me down to the earth” (82) and his “viper thoughts” have stolen his “shaping spirit of Imagination” (86). Coleridge speaks of the wind’s inability to raise him out of his

We as humans are blessed creatures. We have the ability to freely decide what we want to do with our lives. We can choose to be charitable or deceitful, it is our choice in how we live life. Some choose to follow the one true God who created all, while some are misguided by false gods and way of living. Naturalism is one of these types of lifestyle. Naturalism is the belief that nothing is really special. It is just natural. The way the world was created and how it will end to human existence, reason, morality and history is all just a tremendous thing called nature and that is the way life is going to continue to be. Naturalism is a very scientific way to live life. Naturalists are always trying to find out the why's and how's of the universe,