A Crossroads of Man, Technology, and Nature

Ayten Salahi
AP-1
94598962
618

We live in a world in which human beings have been given the power to destroy nearly everything that once was, or will ever be. We have manufactured weapons of unfathomable devastation, and we have designed innumerable plots to do none other than defeat our fellow human beings. We are a powerful species, and consequently, we are held responsible for the deterioration of our world. Such corrosion of a once pristine and primitive life has been delivered by the hand of our ever-strengthening technological advancements, and our ever-weakening regard for nature. William Stafford’s “Traveling Through the Dark” tells the brief and mundane tale of one such intersection of technology, nature, and mankind. Stafford uses the unexceptional story of a drive down Wilson River road to discreetly convey the intrusion of an increasingly technological world upon both nature and mankind’s moral cognition.

“Traveling Through the Dark” is written in a deceptively straight-forward style, and Stafford’s complex, didactic message is thus shrouded beneath a superficial layer of colloquial diction and simple poetic structures. The reader is meant to believe that Stafford’s blunt wording says it all—that his poem does nothing more than tell the story of a man pushing road kill out of the road and into the river. Yet underneath this façade of simplicity, there is life, depth, purpose, and symbolism in every living and nonliving creature of “Traveling Through the Dark.” Stafford breathes life into each entity within his work, and he does so by personifying them—the dead doe, the car, the wilderness, and himself— with individuals powers that operate exclusively from the others. Each creature has a distinct power that the others neither have nor can control.

The relationship between the narrator’s car and the narrator can be described as the relationship between a predator and its prey. The car is depicted as a beast that can aim its parking lights, purr its steady engine, and exhale its warm exhaust—a predator who snaps his head towards his prey, aims his focus—the headlights—purrs in anticipation—the engine—and releases a warm breath just before he strikes. The prey, the narrator, does nothing but stand “in the glare of the warm exhaust”—unsuspecting and helpless. This car, this predator, symbolizes technology’s unwavering hold on the human race. Although we may believe we are in control of where technology will take us, we are powerless without said technology, and are therefore at its feet.

In contrast, the “heap, [the] doe, [the] recent killing” is personified with a very different strength. This “heap” of lifelessness is revived as Stafford apprehensively describes the dead doe as no longer merely a “heap,” but as a “her.” Immediately after acknowledging that this “recent killing” was in fact a female deer, the narrator uncomfortably recognizes that “she [is] large in the belly.” This interaction exemplifies the quintessential male response to a saddening and uncomfortable situation, and in such symbolizes an instantaneous moral response to the death of a pregnant female deer. This response symbolizes the eternal power of nature and its link to both death and the conscience—a power that forced the initially indifferent narrator to hesitate beside that mountain road, and to “think hard for all of us.”

The fourth stanza embodies the collision of each of these entities: man, technology, and nature. Here, the narrator is literally surrounded by each force. He is underneath a spotlight, being targeted by the warm, red exhaust of the purring predator, and being judged by the reclusive, listening wilderness. There, he could “hear the wilderness listening.” There, he “thought hard for us all.” There, he pushed the doe “over the edge and into the river.”

Love in the Time of Cholera

For my end of the year assignment, I have chosen to read Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. For some reason, I was instantly drawn to the novel simply by its title--possibly because I am fascinated by global health and the societal effects of disease permeation.

However, I was not entirely sold until I read the first five pages of the novel; I was instantly mesmerized by Marquez's brilliant turns-of-phrase and beautiful language flow. His descriptions of mundane, seemingly uninteresting subjects such as aging evole into an entity that is not "the unequivocal sign of the final decay, but a happy return to childhood." Such diction evokes a sense of reinvention and creativity that I know will provide me with an all new perspective upon these mundane things as I read further into the mind of Marquez.

The Hidden Nora (and I Really Hate Torvold)

Throughout my reading of Ibson’s A Doll’s House, I constantly found myself wondering, “Is this a joke? Or can a married couple seriously be this blaringly obnoxious, fake, condesending, and overall dumb?” I found Torvold Helmer to be patronizing and—for lack of a stronger, more insulting term—frustating, and I genuinely could not stand his seemingly one-dimensional character. I knew him as “the working husband” that somehow manufactured pet names for his wife that made me gag and die a little bit inside. No, Torvold. She is not a squirrel. For that matter, she is neither your sky lark, nor your pet, nor your child. No, Torvold. You are not right about absolutely everything, regardless of what you have been told or what your arrogance has led you to believe. Torvold—my little song bird, my little squirrely squirrel prancing among the trees, and the butterflies, and the dandelions, and my projectile vomit—you’re an ungrateful, demeaning know-it-all, and I am glad Nora left you.
Now for Nora. I personally found Nora to be a much more interesting character whose motives , but not her maturity nor her behavior, place her among the company of classic literary characters as Antigone and perhaps even Hamlet. However, I am still endlessly curious as to one thing: was Nora playing dumb throughout the entire play? Did she knowingly live in a situation in which she was valued as nothing more than a pet or a child; and did she choose to ignore this situation because of her immaturity, or because of her hopes for a “miracle” and her blinded faith in Torvold’s love for her? I believe that Nora was well aware that she was not valued. I believe that she sole reason for which she felt the need to constantly rehash the fact the “Torvold loved her terribly” when she was amongst other company was to fool herself into believing such an idea. The love between a husband and a wife is one that must also exhibit a level of respect and selflessness, and it is anything but similar to the love between a father and a daughter, an owner and a pet, a teacher and a student. I believe that Nora excused the absence of this particular type of love because she absolutely felt the need to wait for Torvold. She proved her love for him by committing forgery to save his life, and she was waiting for the miraculous act she was sure she would receive—all in due time. And when this miraculous event should take place—when Nora’s act of love and desperation is finally to be recognized and reciprocated with another act love from Torvold—Torvold’s condescension and scolding arrives in its place. And in that moment, the thinnest sliver of all that was holding the real, restrained, and independent Nora buried beneath the façade of a pathetic, doting housewife was broken, and Nora left Torvold.

She left her home and her husband, and children and her maid, her false pretense and her old life. She left to search for independence, and perhaps even for true love. She left to search for respect, and to rid herself of the unfullfilling, empty life she once led.

Antigone, Creon, and the Unachievable Golden Mean

Mankind is often found guilty of overstepping his boundaries. He justifies arrogance, pride, and recklessness by associating these tragic character flaws with the heroism of adventurousness, authority, and courage. But not all men are bound by the same definition of immorality, or pride, or imprudence. Not all men are homogeneously identified with the same methods of wrongdoing. However, the story of Antigone illustrates the single most universal folly of all men and women, and that is mankind’s strong tendency towards the extremes.

We have Antigone, and we have Creon.

Antigone embodies the image of a strong-willed female unbound by the constraints of ancient Greece’s social mores—an individual so driven by a personal code of morality and integrity that she is able to consciously defy the word of ancient Greece’s highest royal order. Yet she is so strong in her convictions that she seems to give off an arrogant, “holier than thou” attitude. She not only criticizes but also rejects Ismene’s unwillingness to accompany her in her mission to bury Polyneices, even though Ismene agrees to keep her secret. This criticism illustrates a certain haughtiness about Antigone—one that denotes that if the level of your passionate morality and courageous defiance is not equal to that of Antigone, you are not truly moral, nor courageous, nor passionate, nor defiant. And that is where Antigone oversteps her boundaries as a mere mortal—she is in no position to be passing judgment upon the decisions of others, especially not those who are attempting to maintain a certain level of balance in their respect for both personal and social morals. One may even argue that Antigone’s foolish boldness and pretentiousness—her tragic character flaws—ultimately determined her grim fate.

Creon, on the other hand, embodies a rather polar image. Rather than signifying a man whose character and morality are based upon personal ethics, Creon chooses to uphold values that are more important in his eyes: authoritative power and the reputation of his country. His decision to deny Polyneices proper burial rights is immoral by not only religious values but also by intuitive ethics. Creon’s rejection of these values indicates that he is fearless as to the repercussions of his actions—he does not fear the wrath of the gods and goes so far as to accuse the oracle of being corrupt and rejecting his word as well. Creon is thus unable to find a definitive middle ground between the maintenance of a respectable/powerful rule and the maintenance of personal morality for its own sake. Of course, this conceitedness comes full circle, taking the lives of both his wife and his son.

A major theme of most ancient Greek literature is the concept of a Golden Mean, which is defined as the desirable middle of two extremes, one of excess and one of deficiency. Neither Antigone nor Creon is able to locate this Golden Mean, and I am forced to wonder whether or not that inability to find the Golden Mean was the single-most crucial factor that led to their respective downfalls.

The Frivolous Life of Ivan Ilych

A frivolous life is one that lacks fulfillment; it is a life without profound human emotion, or insatiable curiosity, or risk. A meaningless life is one that is mediocre—average, dull, and routine. Such is a life of complacency and regret; such is the life of Ivan Ilych

The Death of Ivan Ilych addresses the oncoming death and genuine lack of life of the husband, the father, the statesman: Ivan Ilych. In his blinded human eyes, he believes he has it all: a steady job, a wife, a family, a game of bridge, and normalcy—bland, unexceptional normalcy. In all of his life, he felt nothing but mere contentedness. He dispensed no compassion or love, and in return he received none. So what is a life that is full of trivial pleasures and superficial happiness? What is a life that is filled with inordinate amounts of nothingness? It is selfish. It is empty. It is nothing.

With his three final days of life, Ivan Ilych began to drown in the realization that such was the life he had lead, and he suffered. He suffered for every ounce of intangible happiness and love that he chose to substitute with tangible goods and materialistic joys. He struggled and writhed with frustration as he searched for the purpose behind his life—a purpose that he was unable to find until his dying hours on earth. It was only in those hours that Ivan Ilych discovered the frivolousness of a life devoid of love, and it was in those final hours that Ivan’s pain and fear ceased to exist. In such, one must assume that with his realization of an overwhelming desire for compassion, pity, and love came the end of his pain. And honestly, I am forced to believe that had Ivan Ilych lived a life of profound purpose—of love and family and trust and consideration—he would have transitively been able to leave this world without kicking and screaming, without shouting and suffering, without pain and fear. Compassion was what he craved in his dying days; and yet he failed to dispense that compassion throughout his life. Forgiveness was what he needed with his last breathe; and yet he failed to dispense that forgiveness, that love, throughout his own life. Yet with this inner reconciliation and recognition that his life had not been one worth continuing to fight for—that his life had been wholly devoid of the divine gifts of love and human connection—he was able to leave this world peacefully. If only he had recognized this absence for his dying moments, Ivan Ilych may have been spared a terrible grief and torturous knowledge that he had lived a life of frivolous pleasures and superficiality.