Into The Wild, 'God Bless America'

When an author starts to write a piece of literature, there are several conditions that influence the author, culture, nature, and everything in-between. With all pieces of writing, nature has some type of impact on the author therefore having an impact on American Literature. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, “God Bless America” written by Irving Berlin, Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster are all pieces of American Literature affected by nature. The seasons, precipitation, and geography, are different parts of nature that can influence pieces of literature.

The seasons are an aspect of nature that can influence American Literature, for instance, in Nature, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson

The Song “God Bless America” written by Irving Berlin and sung by thousands of Americans, has an amazing verse that shows just how much the geography of America influences American Literature. “From the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans white with foam, God bless America, My home, sweet home” (????). This verse encompasses nearly all of the geography in America, the mountains refer to both the Application and Rocky Mountains, the prairies can refer to actual prairies along with places that Americans will live and settle in the great land they have put themselves upon, while the oceans refer to both the Atlantic and Pacific on either side of the United States. Without the geography being talked about in this song the song would not mean as much as it does to Americans and would be a totally different song, for Thomas C. Foster writes in How to Read Literature like a Professor that, “geography is typically about humans inhabiting spaces, and at the same time the spaces inhabiting humans” (174). This excerpt from How to Read Literature like a Professor shows that no matter if you are a person or a piece of literature, geography has an impact just as people have an impact on geography, so “God Bless America” and Irving Berlin were both impacted by the geography of nature making nature influence American