Charles Siebert, who has personally engaged himself within the human elephant crises, found his meaning of wilderness with the help of his research of that crisis. During his time studying, observing the crises, and pondering about the bigger ecological issues, Siebert found wilderness to be much larger then he thought. Siebert made a keen observation which helps define what he feels wilderness is by claiming “saving them will require finally getting past ourselves; it will demand the ultimate act of deep interspecies empathy”(537). Siebert chose to use the word, interspecies, as of way of saying that humans need to be considerate of other species besides ourselves, which in essence can describe what wilderness is. Interspecies empathy means that wilderness as a whole is the species that humans co-habitat with.. David Abram’s definition of wilderness relates to Siebert’s definition that wilderness is a group of other species, although Abram’s theory on wilderness is different. Abram, during one of his trips to Indonesia, shares an experience that parallels Siebert’s. Abram describes wilderness to the reader in the passage, “Fireflies! It was in Indonesia, you see, that I was first introduced to the world of insects, and there that I first learned of the great influence that insects- such diminutive entities- could have upon the human senses”(3). The phrase, great influence, is important in making the connection between Siebert’s theory and Abram’s. This shows that Abram also finds importance in such primitive animals, considering them to be a part of the vast wilderness, or group of species that humans live with. Jon Krakauer, also makes an observation about his character, Mr. McCandless’, view of wilderness that is analogous to Siebert’s theory of wilderness being a group of species. One of the records recovered from McCandless’s journal shows the connection between him and the animals he hunts and lives with. McCandless, after hunting and killing a moose, reconsiders his actions. McCandless journal entry to the response of his actions states “Deliberate Living; Conscious attention to the basics of life, and a constant attention to your immediate environment and its’ concerns…” (352). Krakauer chose this quote from McCandless because it shows the important relationship between man and the other animals. McCandless makes it clear by stating, “constant attention to your immediate environment”, that wilderness, by his definition, is the animals he has hunted and lived with throughout his journey. Krakauer’s personal definition is different than Siebert’s, but this quote, that McCandless makes, portrays the other species humans live with as the definition of wilderness. While Siebert’s definition has aspects in common with the other two authors’, it is Abram who tends to believe that wilderness is not a group of animals but something else.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Body Paragraph Revised
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