British Literature Ii Time And Nature

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Gregory Yeast

Professor Lynette Shaw

British Literature II

Time and Nature

Earth, known for its grandeur and vulnerability, comes as a mystery to many individuals. Some scientists study the works of the Earth by researching the functions within its environment, inwardly and outwardly. Earth is also known to provide as many ailments, like poison ivy, through the use of its ecosystems and their elements as much as it provides a plentiful of natural remedies, such as air, water, heat, and sunlight to cure illnesses. Naturopathy, for example, is a "system of alternative medicine based on the theory that diseases can be successfully treated or prevented without the use of drugs that avoids drugs and surgery and emphasizes the use of natural remedies to treat illness" (Merriam-Webster).

Nature provides an abundance of ingredients to mankind to promote better living. Oil rich lands in the Middle East can provide an abundance of wealth to farms in southern North America, such as petroleum and phosphates (Global Connections, "Like Oil and Water," para. 1); however, farmers and other ecological workers, worldwide, are still striving to maintain the value of Earth’s agricultural resources, by making good use of "sustainable forest management" methods between the Earth’s population and compromised ecosystems. Some agriculturalists promote an abundance of certain species by creating conditions favoring their growth and development. "Agroforestry and other forms of reduced-impact agriculture are more attuned to the Earth’s ecological value than most other farmers in the rainforest, they are also attuned to the Earth’s economic values" (Mongabay, Actions, Saving Rainforests Trough Sustainable Development, para. 10 ). Natural bodies of water are also of great importance to Earth’s survival because their nutrients are beneficial to trees, which help produce oxygen to all other forms of life. It is vital for Earth to restore its environments; otherwise waste on the Earth’s surface will cause the more damage and alter the pattern of sustainment to the ecosystems, preventing other species to thrive. For example, airborne particles from factories that flow into lakes and streams polluting marine ecosystems carry a heavy impact on human survival. "The oxygen used by bacteria is the oxygen dissolved in the water, and that’s the same oxygen that all of the other oxygen-respiring animals on the bottom (crabs, clams, shrimp, and a host of mud-loving creatures) and swimming in the water (zooplankton, fish) require for life to continue "(NASA Science, Dead Zones). Contaminated groundwater can also release particles into crops through the Earth’s surface into vegetation. Due to 25 billion tons of soils being lost through wind and water erosion, there is an incentive to prevent erosion not only to benefit agriculture but also to increase carbon sequestration" (ORNL, Earth’s Vegetation and Soil).

The amount of precipitation that recycles back into the Earth’s surface can redeposit pollutants in two ways: wet (water) and dry (air); most notably the excessive amounts of sulfur and nitrogen released by cars and industrial processes, specifically acid rain contaminants. Wet and dry deposits are dangerous because rain washes toxins into creeks, ponds, and other waterways, passing onto marine ecosystems and food webs (Briney, Acid Rain).Infected sediment is a direct result of erosion, deforestation, and agricultural and hydroelectric projects. Sediment fills lakes, harbors, reservoirs, and other aquatic environments. It can prevent photosynthesis by reducing the sunlight in the water and can disrupt underwater food webs. Sediment can destroy feeding and spawning grounds of fish, preventing them from filling their niche in the community (Prasetya, Protection from Coastal Erosion).

Logging operations around the world harvest trees to supply the American population with common necessities vital for survival and allows the agriculture to cultivate the Earth’s ecosystems as needs, like fire burns, to the soil to plant new trees. However, logging can also hinder other factors in the ecosystem due to the destruction of nature, which can hinder animal species from gathering the nutrients needed to nourish the human population. Survival is not just for nature itself but for the whole of constant rebirth and growth, continually, and although there are many factors that work for and against nature, the ecosystem more often can build a resistance to negative factors and still thrive.

"Fifty below zero meant eighty-odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to mediate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man’s frailty in general, able only to live within certain limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man’s place in the universe" (London, To Build a Fire, 107).

The tale of To Build a Fire explains the tragedy of a young man who chooses to travel alone through the Klondike against nature’s unrelenting winter weather. His life depends upon his ability to build and start a fire in sub-freezing temperature, after he has fallen through the ice into a hot spring. The "one hundred and seven degrees below freezing point" (111) has begun to impact the feeling in his fingers as he continually smacks his fingers against his leg to bring feeling back to them. After starting his fire he was soon able to "thaw the ice from his face" and then was able to eat his biscuits. However, after the first successful fire begins to die down the man attempts to build other fires, but each attempt remains futile as the young man soon realizes his mistake in taking on a journey through the Klondike wilderness, during the dead of winter, where there is no sun. In a constant state of panic the young man continues to try new endeavors to save himself by running "blindly, without intention, in fear such as he had never known in his life" (117), and soon realizes his efforts to warm his body are fruitless and slowly refrains from further panic attacks to meet "death with dignity" (118).

London’s theme throughout the story gives note to the man’s fate with nature by frequently reminding the reader the man has no free will as nature sets the pace for his fate, by the man’s lack of accountability. The man’s first accident with the snow was outside of his influence whereas the second accident with the snow was his own doing. The man believe his first accident was just a case of bad "luck," however, acknowledgment of his second incident with the snow was not by mistake, but of his own free will since he built a fire under a spruce tree. He must have been aware removing twigs from around the tree would have caused the snow to shift and fall through the limbs onto the fire, snuffing it out; generating his own "sentence of death" (113).

The man clearly exemplifies low instinct toward survival and underestimates the various signs of nature. For example, he ignored much of the advice he received from the old-timer, explaining "no man must travel alone in the Klondike after fifty below." Her refers to the old-timer as being "womanish" and presumes to think "any man who was a man could travel alone." (113). He quickly realizes his mistake when he is faced with various freezing parts of his body, e.g., hands, fingers, and feet and thinks back to the old-timer’s advice and believes he would have been better off to have a trail mate to assist in building a fire (114) and never have travelled alone (115).

The dog on the other hand, is all about nature and is very keen to instinct and survival. Even though the dog could not analyze the severity of the cold as the man is able to, its instinct told it a "truer tale" (108). It "had inherited its knowledge" (111) about the cold and knew it was no time for travelling" (111). The dog was able to discern the spring was unsafe, to "bite the ice that formed between its toes" (110), and even knows not to get too close to the fire for fear of singeing itself (111). The primary fight is man versus nature; it would be incorrect to assume nature aggressively attacks civilization. Nature does not go out of its way to harm – it would be just as cold without civilization’s presence. The environment is uninterested with the presence of the man, as it often is to outside influences. The cruel winter does not benefit the man in any manner and will not notice if he succumbs to the cold and dies. In the same way, the dog does not care about the man, only about itself and its own personal struggle for survival.

Survival of the fittest depends on an individual’s ability to eliminate interferences concerning the health and nature of Earths elements by utilizing the many strategies available to help ensure reproduction of plant growth; every factor is of great consequence to the preservation of stability within Earth’s various ecosystems. Similarly, species within each ecosystem must also live by the boundaries nature has set. Poor climates can lead to land erosion overall affecting the outcome of species merging within their own environment reproducing. Waves smashing against shorelines can also cause erosion during flooding and heavy rainfalls. Destruction to irrigated land will affect vegetation as well as destroy the land used for crops; survival of any species can be compromised and eventually become extinct, also known as population extinction, which is the elimination of a species from a specific area or region. "Marine deterioration and growth may be natural environmental processes, but preservation conservationism and inhabitant sustainability studies show certain levels of environmental growth are in jeopardy of random extinction" (Adler and Drake, Environmental Variation, Stochastic Extinction, and Competitive Coexistence, 189).

"As darkness settled finally, the shine of the light, lifting from the sea in the south, changed to full gold. On the northern horizon a new light appeared; a small bluish gleam on the edge of the waters. These two lights were the furniture of the world." (Crane, The Open Boat, p.206, 151).

This story details a comprehensive theme of man’s survival and relationship to nature. The beginning line of the story indicates the men’s unawareness of the color of the sky and its impending storm because of trying to remain afloat. Given the notion of four men trying desperately to save themselves as well as keep their boat from capsizing, one gentleman refers to the likeness of life on a nearby shore by "two lights" and a small "bluish gleam" in the background placing the difference between land and shore, one being the sun and the other from a lighthouse. However, as the seamen travel onward, the correspondent rowing the boat begins to murmur his contempt for nature, wondering why he was allowed to go so far before envisioning "sand and trees."

"When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not main the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temple. Any visible expression of nature would surely be pelted with his jeers" (Crane, The Open Boat, p.208, 174).

Disgusted by the way nature has mishandled his life, through the works of slamming waves and damaging an already unsafe boat, the correspondent becomes angry and wishes the opportunity to fight back at nature, to show his ability to win the battle against the perilous sea. Viewing the beauty of nature as "a temple" his wish to destroy its beauty by throwing "bricks at the temple" becomes futile as he realizes he is only left with the mere idea of washing, and thus continues his tirade by attacking nature with contempt and sneers.

Mankind and nature often collide when elements are forced to perform in a manner that humankind perceives as only proficient enough for civilization; however, mankind often forgets that nature has a way of fighting back and does so with a vengeance. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and massive flooding are prime examples of nature fighting back against elements to help maintain its sustainability. The sentence, "The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances," by Jack London’s "To Build a Fire" (1910) presents a similarity in the actions of mankind’s excited ideas of taking on nature without reference to the outcome of how their exploitations could alter nature’s ecological balance.

For all seen to the human eye in the world, other worlds are unseen, much like the world of marine life and the stressors its environments face every day. Civilization tends to forget that nature allows mankind to settle and cultivate its land on its terms, not by the terms of human production. Stephen Crane said, "Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature" (213), and believes there is beauty within all forms of nature, even in death. When winter nears during the seasons, it is often observed as an onset of death, or viewed as a period of hibernation; life does not appear to grow and remains dormant beneath the Earth’s surface. However, in contrast, all organisms, above and below the Earth’s surface, continue to grow. Just because it is not being witnessed in an opened view does not mean it has ceased in growing. Lying dormant is a form of sleeping for plants; through the colder seasons certain species of plants rest, e.g., squirrels, raccoons, and cold-blooded hibernators like bees and earthworms (Thull, List of Animals that Hibernate, 2011), nourishing themselves on the nutrients that have been stored during the spring, summer, and fall seasons, to return refreshed and awakened into the world, once the nutrients of the winter season have melted away. This is the manner plants and animals adapt to their changing climates.

For example, "A Route of Evanescence" (Dickinson, 1879) and "To Autumn" (Keats, 1820), share similarities with nature’s background – the basis of how nature is observed by human emotion, visually and physically, is an important aspect in human perception and how an individual reacts to their surroundings in their daily lives. For example, the wording of Emily Dickinson’s ride through the countryside displays imagery relating to the beauty of nature, the surrounding elements and what they represent.

A Route of Evanescence

With a revolving Wheel –

A Resonance of Emerald –

A Rush of Cochineal –

And every Blossom on the Bush

Adjusts its tumbled Head –

The mail from Tunis, probably,

An easy Morning’s Ride (1-8).

While traveling through the countryside of once forgotten beautiful, lively, green fields the rider is overwhelmed when a rush of "death" comes into sight; the beauty of the flowers along the hillside are overcome by insects (e.g., Cochineal) eating away at their flesh. The blossoms and their beauty appear strained against the weighty presence of insects and seem to display an element of sadness, rather than one of joy; the celebration of flowers in bloom. The rider soon begins to believe perhaps a trip through the city’s scenic region would bring forth more pleasure to the mind’s eye without the thought of death weighing heavily on the heart. Although flowers were in full bloom, the presence of death conveyed a weighty sadness to the passenger in the carriage, possibly hoping a stroll through the city will prove to be more eventful. Simulating birth to the overburdening presence of insects eating away at the blossoms could carry a feeling of despair, or death. Passerby’s witnessing the unrelenting destruction of beauty would experience a feeling of sadness, much like someone bearing witness to a forest fire, and the destruction of many plant and animal habitats.

Keats (1820), shares a similarity of naturalistic elements through the description of summer harvests and the arrival of winter, wondering where the sounds of Spring have gone, in "To Autumn."

Stanza I:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells (1-10).

Keats talks about the abundance of ripened fruit with a continuance becoming overpowering for bees as bees are incapable of handling large masses of flowers because their cells are overflowing with honey.

Stanza II:

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozing hours by hours (11-22).

Stanza II describes a lazy harvester and tells a tale of death on the rise, the harvesting of summer is coming to a close, and as such a worker becomes lazy, crossing over a brook, to watch a cider press from the distance. The worker continues to watch without care to finish the process, and just hangs around lazily. With the harvest coming to an end Keats implies nature is tired and awaiting for the arrival of winter, so the earth and all of the elements can rest.

Comparing these elements to the changing of nature during the seasons allows an individual the opportunity to relish in the beauty of nature in itself. The essence of lying in wait as winter comes to feed the Earth, fading away as the new reawakening of new grass, flowers, and their many bright colors fleetingly meet the rebirth of many other species toiling the other various foundations of nature; leaving the countryside beautiful, wholesome, and exciting with the buzz of nature’s returning sounds.

Stanza III:

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, –

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the subtle-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne loft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallow twitter in the skies (21-33).

Following the theme of "To Autumn" (1820) it becomes clear the songs of autumn pertain to things that died or have moved on to other regions. "Soft-dying" embarks on the recurring journey of rebirth progressing to death over the seasons proving once more there is beauty in the dying. Not all things past reflect sadness but celebrate a rejoicing of things to come, such as the setting sun in a "rosy hue" over the fields being harvested. Although Keats embraces the joy of springtime through the evolving days of summer and fall, he also embraces the sadness of autumn coming to an end. Knowing Fall and Winter are encumbering nature; Keats prefers to share the sadness through word usages such as "bleating" lambs about to be slaughtered, or the mourning of the gnats in a "wailful choir." As Fall closes in so does the feeling of death; the look of doom within the many forces of nature bringing an overwhelming sense of sadness to the mind’s eye and the human heart. When birds begin to migrate and the chirping of crickets have ceased, nature knows winter is on the rise. All things must die, or hibernate, to rejoice in the rebirth of new things to come. Mankind must also respect the outer influences of nature as well; a rush to judgment can only lead to disaster.

Dickenson’s poem, "Because I could not stop for Death" (1863), brings a feeling of closeness combining each of the following stories about an individual’s life being overly consumed with too much activity to pay heed to time and "nature," even when time and nature precedes our lives to the eternal.

Because I could not stop for death –

He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality (1-4).

Although this poem directs attention to the speaker talking of her visit with death, from the grave, Death itself is embodied from life to the supernatural. The first stanza points out the narrator’s eventful life as she is too busy for death, so death "kindly" does what the she cannot – takes time to stop and wait, much like the theme in "To Build a Fire" (1910).

We slowly drove – He knew no haste

And I had put away

My labor and leisure too,

For His Civility – (5-8).

In the second stanza she puts aside her labor and freedom, or life, so she and Death can enjoy the slow stroll in carriage ride; she puts aside her desires out of the "civility" of Death taking time for her because her activities made her so busy. Death is also modified as a compassionate presence, one that is a courteous and gentle, guiding the narrator to eternity.

"To Autumn" (1820) and "A Route of Evanescence" (1879) also share a combination of enjoying the fruitfulness life. For example, "With a revolving Wheel / A Resonance of Emerald / A rush of Cochineal" speaks of a hummingbird. Evanescence explains life in an instant but is soon forgotten; however the effect of the moment of viewing the vibrant beauty of life is so intense and prolongs the memory of the rider’s joy of seeing the beauty of the hummingbird nature. It seemingly floats mid-air, its vibrant colors rushing together; then darts away. The usage of words opening with "R" proposes the ambiance of the hummingbird as it effortlessly glides from one blossom to the next.

"With a revolving Wheel" is the hummingbird's wings, which rotate rapidly. Hummingbirds are unlike any other bird and are able to perform feats other birds cannot. For example, a hummingbird can fly "forward, backward, hover, up, down, sideways, and mid-air for a short period of time (Wild Birds Unlimited, Hummingbirds).

"A Resonance of Emerald— / A Rush of Cochineal" (3-4), speaks of the green and bright red of the Hummingbird's stunning color.

"Every Blossom on the Bush / Adjusts its tumbled Head" shares the tale of the Hummingbird gathering nectar and pollinating blossoms (5-6).

"The mail from Tunis, probably/ An easy Morning's Ride" (7-8) represents the idea that "mail," a delivery from Tunis, would be as simple as a morning ride from South America to North America, carrying its pollen from one flower to another with ease.

Keats, "To Autumn" (1820), simplifies the feelings of enjoying the fruits of life, evoking images of trees and other vegetation heavily loaded with each particular variety of produce with beehives "o'erbrim" with the nectar of a riot of blossoms. "To Autumn" (1820) captures the essence of life but also embodies the coming of barrenness and death, the process of life.

Autumn signifies a prime of life in human and animal lives. Some instances of this are the ‘full-grown lambs’, the mourning of the gnats, the wind that comes and goes, and the day that is fading as darkness settles in. The coming season is winter, a part of the year that represents maturity and death I deeply recognized, however, death in this story does not symbolize a negative subtext of eternalizing life with the death of time. Keats offers a tale of love, gratitude, and pleasure because he appreciates the beauty and joy of ‘autumn’ or ripeness of the season as a part of life even though winter is coming. He implies "autumn" as a ladylike deity who is often seen on the barn floor with her hair "soft-lifted" by the breeze, or has often been known to be sleeping in the fields, or watching over the cider presses. In the third stanza Keats probes Autumn to listen to her own sounds of music by listening to the beautiful, "wailful choir" of gnats mourning along the "the river sallows," the soft rustling of trees lifted and dropped by the soft breeze, to the growing and soft bleating of the "full-grown lambs" as the crickets sing and the song of the migrating swallows fill the skies.

"Because I could not stop for Death" gently merges the reader with a tale of the narrator’s fate, and although bleak, the tale resembles a sense of gentleness rather than the harshness of a certain foreseeable end to the man in "To Build a Fire." The fourth stanza "Or rather – He passed Us – / The Dews quivering and chill – / For only Gossamer, my Gown – / My Tippet – only Tulle – " (13-16), becomes more cold and sinister as the narrators dress wear is not warm enough to protect her from the deepening chills of "the Dew." This line shares a likeness to that of the man in the Klondike wilderness, as death is reaching him, he, too, begins to feel the deepened chills of his body and he increasingly realizes his body fails to generate any warmth to help his fight for survival, and slowly comes to terms that his "time" on earth is coming to an end. Although Dickinson’s version of death is not as melancholy it still captures the essence of life passing by as described in the fourth stanza, "We passed the School, where Children strove / At Recess – in the Ring – We passed the Fields of Grazing Grain – we passed the Setting Sun" shares a simple reminder of the season of Autumn, much like Keats in "To Autumn," by embracing the maturity of the narrators time on Earth and having been given the opportunity to cherish her time spent enjoying the abundances and labours of her life as she prepares herself for her time coming to a close. Although the narrator does not explicitly say they enjoyed their presence on earth there is a definite fondness of recalling their existence enjoying the smaller things in life.

The fifth stanza describes a tale of chilliness and extraordinary clarity as the narrator rediscovers her home "A Swelling of the Ground / The Roof scarcely visible / The Cornice – in the Ground" (18-20) but then goes further to show her acknowledgement of the time that has passed over the "centuries" as she recalls the very moment she saw "Horses’ Heads" indicating the very day of her death and her eternal role of her immortal soul and though the grave as her home may not be idyllic, it makes the carriage ride worth it, for it leads to the final stanza, "Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet / Feels shorter than the Day / I first surmised the Horses’ Heads / Were toward Eternity," which ends with immortality. Much like "To Autumn," "The Open Boat," and "To Build a Fire," the likeness of time suddenly loses its meaning and feels no different than a normal day because once time is gone each story tells a tale of its characters realizing death is not just death, but the passing of time into eternity, drifting off into the infinite; time and nature will always triumph, defeating us all, in the end, as ultimately as death does.