June
1108
04/06/2018
VALUE THE NATURE
Natural resources depletion, loss of biodiversity, deforestation, and loss of habitat that
affect animals, humans and mostly our world bring disasters and tragedies to the Earth that
existed before us and even make us home. Gary Snyder (1930) is well known as an American
“man of letters” poet, who shows naturalism and romanticism through poems to explain that
people should be one and embrace nature, and to acknowledge nature over civilisation,
society and values imagination and emotion over rationality. From that, Snyder has expressed
his words into “Mother Earth: Her Whales”, “For the Children” and “Control Burn” to
protect nature. Snyder addresses humans should protect nature through imagery, antithesis,
and allusion because nature’s beauty is something that should be maintained from generation
to generation.
Snyder motivates people to protect nature in order to keep the stability of breathtaking
images of living things that he uses imagery in “Mother Earth: Her Whales”. This poem was
written after a United Nations conferences on the Human Environment to blame the world’s
development political, which shows humans taking more and more resources out of
limitation, for destroying the Earth. From that, he uses well-known issues in countries,
including Brazil for abusing the jungle, Japan for killing whales and China for deforestations.
In addition, Snyder (1974) writes, “The grasses are working in the sun. Turn it green / Turn it
sweet. That we may eat. / Grow our meat.”. He indicates how the grasses “working” by
supplying the energy from the sun to do photosynthesis, and “turn” green and sweet for other
organisms to consume, including humans and animals. He uses imagery to show a beautiful
image to the readers of how trees work to produce a food chain to “grow” the animals’ meat
resources. Hence, create a contrast to how humans damage nature with the beautiful vision of
living things’ movement. This shows the strength of beauty, which how nature provides the
meal for human, that people should protect nature for maintaining this magnificent image. In
addition, he also uses antithesis to defend the beauty by warning humans for what they’ve
been doing.
To expand the ideas of how people should defend nature, Snyder warns people
abstractly by using antithesis in “For The Children”. He has written this poem to answer the
poem from Turtle Island, called “What You Should Know to be a Poet”, discussing about
how nature, animals, and humans relate to each other. Henceforth, he reflects on what human
are doing to the Earth nowadays. Lead to where he considers that human should be
acknowledged to their surroundings and understand deepen to nature rather than the lifestyle.
Following that, Snyder (1974) wrote about a statistic, “the steep climb / of everything, going
up, / up, as we all / go down.” Thus, Snyder reveals the numbers of living things are
increasing then to contrast the line above, he uses antithesis to show human resources’ are
decreasing, which due to the disasters and shortages human, that mostly prevent by those
organisms. He shows the importance of nature towards humans to explain the reasons to
protect it. Therefore, he uses antithesis to describe the contrast of the surrounding to learn
about the current environment of nature, it helps to prevent damaging the Earth and build up
the beauty for next generation. He also uses allusion to state how much people should
maintain the environment attraction.
He reflects on humans’ management on preserving nature’s beauty, Snyder uses
allusion in “Control Burn”. In this poem, he reveals the ideas of how North American forest
on the West Coast of the United State was being protected by Native American tribes from
his studies in the university. That the tribes would burn manzanita bushes in the past to keep
strong and tall trees standing and growing. However, in the second stanza Snyder (1969)
wrote that “Now, manzanita, / (a find bush in its right) / crowds up under the new trees /
mixed up with logging slash / and a fire can wipe out all. / Fire is an old story.” He uses
allusion to state that how the management of these arboreal spaces of human is lacking.
Thereby, it reduces the growth of strong and tall trees, which Native American tribes had
protected fade into dust, and destroyed the green attractiveness of the Earth. In addition, he
determines to send out the message for people to be aware and intends to state how much
nature need to ensure that they would not be destructed and maintained the ecosystem survive
for the next generation.
Regarding Snyder’s poems, it is clear that he determines to deliver messages to people
for protecting nature in order to manage the beauty to next generation. That he uses imagery,
which shows how beautiful the environment is to human, to encourages to humans to
conserve it. Thereafter, he creates the contradiction of how the number of organisms being
destroyed is increasing to humans’ resources decreasing by using antithesis. Lastly, he clearly
states how nature should be taken care of more to preserve its beauty through allusion. From
that, nature is an important part of human-beings that human should assure and sustain its
beauty for the future youth.
References
Snyder, Gary (1974). Mother earth: her whales. In Turtle Island (p.47). New York: New
Directions.
Snyder, Gary (1975). For the children. In Turtle Island (p.86). New York: New Directions.
Snyder, Gary (1969). Control burn. In Turtle Island (p.19). New York: New Directions.
