ENGL 1011 Textual Analysis of The Shipwreck and A White Heron

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Textual Analysis of The Shipwreck and A White Heron
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October 30, 2017
Introduction
Nature and human society has always been regarded as two entities, which are closely related to one another. In our daily lives, we know that nature could affect and even dictate our way of living, while we, as individuals and as a society, could also shape it, the way we like to. This scenario is almost always exemplified in our own conception of stories around us. Ever since the beginning of human communication, we’ve created and passed stories about individuals and humans, in relation to its environment. However, although this relationship might not exactly be straightforward and apparent, a closer inspection of our tales, legends, movies, and other pieces of art would show how interdependent nature and human society are. In this article, I would discuss two seminal works written by Sarah Orne Jewett and Henry David Thoreau, entitled A White Heron and The Shipwreck, respectively. More specifically, I would discuss how these two articles describe this relationship, in terms of how does nature affect and in turn, how we affect it through our own actions. In both of these articles, gruesome tales and recollection of events bought by natural phenomena have exemplified how dire nature could be especially when we don’t measure our actions carefully and act recklessly.
Nature and Human Society
In the article entitled The Shipwreck, Thoreau narrated the events that unfolded after an accident that happened with the ship carrying humans, after a fatal incident. While narating the kind of sight that he has seen firsthand he enumerated every gruesome detail, which could be seen in the area of the shipwreck. This includes instances where the author narrates how the bodies of the victims, young and old, have become mangled together, while showing no signs of life at all. Other instances where the authro used this kind of descriptions was when he descrbied how one of the dead body’s bone and muscle has becomes exposed exposed (p. 7) as well as how other bodies are dead, lying together in masses (p.6). However, although this clearly shows how nature could affect us in ways that we don’t expect, it furthered this idea by showing that even our greatest efforts and innovations are no match of the power of mother nature. This idea was exemplified by Thoreau in his narration about how the waves and the rocks could easily destroy our greatests feat during those times, which is the utilization of steel in order strenghten our creations. More specifically, this statement could be seen when he said “I saw that no material could withstand the power of the waves; that iron must go to pieces in such a case, and an iron vessel would be cracked up like an egg-shell on the rocks” (p. 9). In line with Jewett’s article, I believe that this relationship could also be seen although in more subtle ways as compared to how Thoreau portrayed it. Aside from this, Jewett has shown a much lighter perspec...