Henry David Thoreau's Relationship With Nature

Ever since Eve was fated to bite the forsaken fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, the human race has forever been damned. Once living in the “sublime” paradise that was the Garden of Eden, living as one with the nature surrounding them, Adam and Eve were shunned into the cold, dark world. Yet men have always had an enduring relationship with the nature surrounding them. This relationship has become the subject of numerous literary works throughout the years. Henry David Thoreau, a pioneer Transcendentalist, discussed nature and man’s interaction with it in Walden in 1854. In 1962, writer and scientist Rachel Carson brought up the interaction between man and nature once again in her book Silent Spring. As to be expected over the course of over

Even the subtle and varied diction Thoreau uses in sentences such as, “Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men” (Thoreau 279) is quite impactful. Inside of using the phrase, “live life,” Thoreau chooses the word “play” to make life seem like some sort of game. The juxtaposition between young and old further serves to show that even an innocent child can find purpose in this game, however the adult is blind to such purpose and thus seeks to fulfill his purpose needs somewhere else than nature. Carson similarly slides in clever word choice such as describing man’s relationship with nature as “man’s war against nature” (Carson 801). The word “war” was used to elicit a fearful response from those reading Carson’s essay during her time. At the time of the 1960s, anxiety was riding high as the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union meant that the threat of global nuclear warfare was always eminent. And although she does not explicitly mention the war, she refers to “Strontium 90” (Carson 800) to further produce the fear response she is looking for. Beyond their superior word choice, they both also focus on how man seems to set his own faster speed to life relative to the