Skunked

Louise Erdrich's "Skunk Dreams" I found to be very confusing at the start, but as it went on some themes began to reacure and rereading certain part helped the ideas to be more easily defined. I found that the prominent themes of this essay were:

1. Nature and her change of view as to what it is
2. The ability of dreams to leave people wondering what is real or what to believe
3. How to progress through obstacles and man's foolishness in confronting them

Growing up in the warm western plains of North Dakota, Erdrich's view of nature was of the agricultural advancements and the openness of the area. As she had internally grown up to know it, nature was the change induced by man, through "advancements" in marketing and roadways that left land barren of its origional growth and wildlife. But despite this had its own beauty of vastness, with the open sky and as she says the endless horizon stretching across the land. Older, she has the dramatice change of scenery to the colder forests of New Hampshire. The change can be tough and for her the claustrophobia of being trapped on the inside, without the freedom of openness, wanting to go outside. Yet after some time she found that this area had its own vastness in the expanse of the woods and the area they encompass and finally had the feeling of being outside. But she never forgot the horizon.

This idea of being outside continues into the dream theme. The concept of never knowing if you are in a dream, or not. Are you the man dreaming himself a skunk, or the skunk dreaming himself a man. The complex idea that we may be trapped inside our dreams. When she happens to have stumbled upon the fence she had seen years earlier hundreds of miles away, in a dream, she wonders if "I had dreamed of this place...or it had dreamed me." Though the answer is unknown, this example does show that there is a connection between dreams, and what is real, like a link between two worlds, one dream and one reality, and one thing I like about this essay is the unknowing if she dreams her trip into the park and the obstacle she must overcome.

Obstacles are a part of life that every being, be it human, animal, plant, or nature, must overcome. As she quotes Adam Phillips "'Whithout obstacles...the notion of development is inconceivable. There would be nothing to master.'" But mankind often thinks of itself as the master of obstacles. Always finding a way to advance by dodging around the boulder in front of instead of taking it on directly. As in agriculture where instead of going through the hard work of growing and harvesting with the help of nature to guide the growth, we use herbicides and pesticides with machinery that allow us to avoid these problems. The skunk, as Erdrich says, is ready to fearlessly face its obstacles bravely even if it may seem arrogant.  We take pride in our ability to think creatively to give other solutions while trying to hide our cowardess of confronting problem head-on like the skunk, but in doing so we neglect to notice the foolish consequences of our not-so-direct course of action. As with the example of skunks in New Hampshire, we applaude our ability to get them out by moving them into the nearby state, but fail to recognize the lack of accomplishment as people from the otherside just bring them back over. We overthink things and miss the simplicity of how a skunk takes on its life.

After taking some time to stop and think, thisk seemingly complex essay makes much more sense than I origionally noticed and the ideas become clear as it connects nature, and dreams to the obstacles that they present in our lives.

Two Thoughts on Two Towers

On the fateful day that came nearly a decade ago, this nation found itself stunned by one of the most tragic incidents it had seen in many years. As the first tower was hit and began to fall, people saw this as a horrible accident that would bring grief to families everywhere. When the second tower was hit soon after, people no longer saw this as an accident, but a threat, and while the families who had lost loved ones to this act of terrorism would still grieve, people would begin to think and feel other beliefs and feelings almost as strong. Some feared for their safety, and others questioned the ability of the government to protect them. Many, like Susan Sontag felt anger, both at the government for being to high thinking of of itself to be hit so off guard, and at the people who committed this . Yet much fewer, including John Updike, used this to see the glory of this nation and find its ability to recover from this tragedy. These two share these opinions in essays, and it is interesting to see how their views are also expressed in the voice of their writing.

Sontag shows her feelings of frustration by writing insults with sarcasm toward the U.S. government, mocking its labeling of the kamikaze plane hijackers as cowards in their attacks on civilization, by calling the U.S. a coward by fighting from the sky, bombing Iraq, but out of harms way from any retaliation. She claims that these terrorists are in fact not cowards, but brave in that they, morality set aside, are willing to kill themselves for what they believe in. She then criticizes the government as trying to make things seem less bleak than they really are and convince people that they are strong, and that congressmen are happy to follow the President. She uses this voice of writing to help fire up the reader into agreeing with her and seeing the follies of the government.

Updike has a much calmer voice in his writing and he uses this to let the reader better see his faith in the glory and ability to rebuild that he believes the U.S. has. He does this with an elegant use of vocabulary that defines the horrors through metaphors and ends his essay by instilling hope in the thoughts of the reader. He does not try to hide the horrors, but rather to explain that despite this horror, the United States has the strength to pull through and renew itself.

It is interesting to see the difference in the writings these two writers have and how their feelings are shown in the voice of their writing.