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Edward Abbey's Eco-Defense

1246 Words5 Pages

Nature is one of the few natural wonders that remain, nevertheless, the greed of man proceeds to manipulate and destroy it for their own gain. There is, however, a man who is calling out this evil, this such man is essayist and nature activist Edward Abbey, who wrote “Eco-Defense,” published in 1988 in the One Life at a Time, and argues that the every man in America should protect the environment through Eco-defense. Abbey’s explanation is to take the protection of the environment into your own hands. Now the end result of this is illegal, from the way that Abbey leads up to the decision, in which he states that there is no better solution to fighting back. Then causing the destruction of equipment used to chop down trees. Although Edward …show more content…

To support his idea of how the environment is in danger from political corruption and corporate greed, he is complaining that they are not to be trusted. From using language that has a more negative tone than positive when describing politicians and corporations, he makes clever analogies between two scenarios, and descriptions of politicians and corporate CEO’s. The anagolgies are comprised very well with Aristotelian Appeals to persuade the every man over to his side. By explaining that if your house was being raided you would take any means of action to defend it. According to Abbey, “If a stranger batters your door down with an axe, threatens your family and yourself with deadly weapons, and proceeds to loot your home of whatever he wants...In such a situation the householder has both the right and the obligation to defend himself, his family and his property by whatever means necessary...Self-defense against attack is the one ” (542). With this idea in mind, he explained in the rest of the essay that the American wilderness is in such a scenario. As it is threatened by corporations that are “assaulting” or “invading” the environment with their bulldozers, chainsaws, and dynamite (Abbey). With this language used, it causes an Appeal to Pathos from evoking an emotional response from the readers, which is also shown in the language he uses throughout the essay from saying that the corporations are “three-pieced-suited gangsters” and “bandits” (Abbey). These terms imply that they are thieves and bullies that do not care who gets in their way and will take what they

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