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Robert Louv's Essay Last Child In The Woods

784 Words4 Pages

As Lao Tzu once said, “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” Humans tend to get ahead of themselves when it comes to living our lives. We tend to get in a hurry, because we are so used to having our needs immediately satisfied. Our technology gives us a need for immediate gratification and this sometimes gets in the way of living life. Robert Louv explains this in his essay Last Child in the Woods. He explores the ways in which we have grown apart from nature, and closer to our technologies. So what is to be done? How can this disconnect be remedied? In some ways, it cannot be fixed. In a sense, our society may be too far gone. However, there are ways to get closer to the relationship we once had with nature. The connection between humans and nature is not altogether lost. Robert Louv uses rhetoric questioning, stories to invoke nostalgia, and a clearly biased perception of the connection between people and nature. First of all, Robert Louv spends time questioning how we live as a society and how we function in regards to technology and nature. “Why do so many Americans say they want their children to watch less TV, yet continue to expand the opportunities for them to watch it? More important, why do so many people …show more content…

“This was the landscape that we watched as children. It was our drive-by movie.” (Louv). Louv does not recognize the advantages of technology. At the touch of a button, we can experience things we could only imagine many years ago. Our technology garners new experiences and new ways of life. Without it, we would not have advanced as a species in the same ways that we have. So perhaps instead of simply condemning those who allow their children to watch television in the car, we should appreciate the laughter of a young person watching Sesame Street, lest we forget that it is indeed the little things that

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One rhetorical strategy about the separation between people and nature that Louv develops in his passage is technology is always increasing. Everyday big companies are coming up with bigger and better ideas than the ones they had the day before. Phones are constantly getting faster, video games are getting more real, and even televisions are getting bigger. Children and teenagers that were born after the technology boom don’t know what life is like without the world at their fingertips.

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In the passage Last Child in the Woods, the author Richard Louv delineates how this he is noticing how people forgot about the qualities of nature and are set on technology. Louv displays logos, paradox, and detailed explanations. Louv appeals to logos because he explains information about how corporations want to use nature as an advertising area. “Advertisers stamp their messages into wet sands.”

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The author Richard Louv wrote an essay on the connection of nature to humans in the modern world. He expands on the fact that technology has taken away our abilities to appreciate nature for it’s true beauty. Children growing up in today’s world aren’t having the resources to appreciate nature and it’s beauty because of technology, according to him. He gives examples of the changing technology in the world: cars, mobile devices, advertisements, you name it. In Last Child in the Woods, Louv uses rhetorical devices to display his thoughts through examples and evidence.

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