My Final First Essay: Human Nature

Human Nature

Humanity has written of nature since the beginning of script. We’ve seen how a person stands in awe of nature’s massive mountains, finds peace in its silent serenity. From nature humans absorb power. Metaphorically they’ve compared it to trials and tribulations to help them understand life consequently making their self stronger. In the pieces we observed from class, Wallace Stevens’ “The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain,” John Krakauer’s Into the Wild, Jorge Luis Borges’ “Break of Day” and The Circular Ruins lie strong examples of this. My question is how does each piece relate to man’s search for meaning? At times one becomes confused by society, reality, civilization. In their confusion comes doubt and need for a solution of sanity and meaning. Through all the pieces is a connection in that the characters’ search for meaning is the search for one’s self. Furthermore, how did each of the men turn to solitude and nature to solve their confusion?

Wallace Stevens focuses on relating nature to the goals he wishes to achieve in life or with his poetry career. Through nature he describes his struggles in life that confuse him and what elation he might feel when he reaches ‘the top of the mountain’ i.e. the peak desire for his goals. Line eight states "[He] shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,..." To me, this line described the sometimes tedious or strenuous work people have to put forth when making their way to their goals. Line twelve focused more on the rewards you reap from hard work. It stated, "Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged." This is the point when your ultimate destination is finally in sight and you begin to see your struggle was all worth it. With symbols of nature Stevens found hope; that his goals were within reach.

Similarly, John Krakauer describes how a young man, Chris McCandless, searches for hope and strength by isolating himself in nature. As unprepared and spontaneous Chris’ excursion was, I understand why he might make such a journey. I believe, based off his personal constitution (NHR, 12), Chris was searching for some purity in the world along with some meaning. After experiencing several hardships in his life, for example, his parent’s rocky relationship, Chris imagined a soul flight would present the perfect remedy for his distresses. He thought himself to be quiet ignorantly invincible, but when he died out in nature he was where he wanted to be; finding himself and at peace. Nature gave Chris a place of solitude where he could just think without any unnecessary distraction. Through solitude he rolled silent evaluation over in his mind and hopefully found what he was looking for. In building this goal, aided by nature and influenced by linguists, Chris also found strength.

In Break of Day we see Jorge Luis Borges question and doubt the concept of existence. Recalling the conjectures of “Shopenhauer and Berkeley” (line eleven), the speaker of the poem fears that life is nothing but a dream by souls. He ponders that sleep is a threat of extinction to this dream and assumes that those who stay up all night are the small percentage that are keeping life, as we know it, alive until day begins again. The break of day is the point when all is safe again; there is one more day to live. Overall in the poem I see the speaker confused about the meaning of survival. He wants to know how we all came to pass and how the infinite works. Obviously these are unanswerable questions so he turns to nature for answers. In his confusion, he sees that dawn has brought a new day and although he does not know the purpose of going on, he knows that the cycle of life inevitably continues. With this thought, through his unanswered questions, he continues as well.

Between The Circular Ruins and “Break of Day” I saw a lot of connections. Perhaps this is because both works were written by Borges. Equally characters in the stories seem to be lost amongst their dreams and reality. Also, both of them metaphorically and literally use nature to answer their questions.

In The Circular Ruins, the main character retreats to dream up his son; the man who will take on his place and magical talents in the world. Several times when he cannot sleep to dream he flees to the jungle to tire himself. Also, many times he seeks guidance and inspiration from animals and the elements. The strongest example of this in the piece is his dreams of the statue of the colt-tiger, Fire. Fire offers him advice in creating his son. However, when his son is finally conceived after one-thousand and one nights the main character suddenly believes something of his entire existence; “that he, too, was appearance that another man was dreaming.” I don’t think this epiphany was a question that was intended to be answered. The main character sort of stumbled upon it. It may have been the question fate had anticipated him to answer all along. With it new questions of existence arise and a new search for meaning is born for Borges’ character. Which inevitably leads one to believe that man’s search for meaning is quite possibly always changing and never absolute.

In further analysis, I saw this ending of The Circular Ruins to be closely related to the end for Chris McCandless. Where the magical character of The Circular Ruins realized he was a projection of another man’s dream, in many ways McCandless was so as well. Through his life he followed the words of many philosophers religiously. So much he actually chose to heed their preaching and do as they did; he headed out into the wild. An example of a theorist that McCandless respected was Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau reflected very much on simple living in natural surroundings. This was a dream of his and McCandless projected it. Maybe Chris realized this as the sorcerer of The Circular Ruins had, but when he proceeded back to civilization is when he realized the river had again filled with its melted winter waters. Knowing he could not cross Chris returned to his abandoned bus and just let go. He accepted his fate of death soon there after. Correspondingly, the sorcerer realized his fate and instead of “taking refuge in the water” chose fire and just let go.

What is man’s search for meaning? In Wallace Stevens’ “The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain,” John Krakauer’s Into the Wild, Jorge Luis Borges’ “Break of Day” and The Circular Ruins their characters’ search for meaning is their search for self and the meaning of life. For answers, the men in each piece turned to nature. Through struggles, Wallace Stevens wanted to reach the top of his mountain or the peak of his goals. Chris McCandless wanted solitude from society and created it for himself deep in the woods of Alaska. Jorge Luis Borges found with each break of day existence continues and questioned what is the meaning of life when you are an appearance that another man is dreaming. With each man’s new discovery, new questions were provoked, concluding only some of their questions to be answered and only some meaning to be found. So, isn’t the meaning of life just to live? Where is the health in getting trapped to vicious cycles of questioning any purpose? Presume that man’s search for meaning is always changing and never conclusive; just live.