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(2018
midterm assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2018 #2a: Short Essay (Passage) (index) |
LITR 4328 |
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Annie Tran
Escape into Nature
"Crossing a bare common
[treeless town square], in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky,
without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have
enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear [<sublime]. In
the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough [old skin],
and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual
youth. Within these plantations of God [the woods], a decorum and sanctity
reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should
tire of them in a thousand years.
This passage reflects the fullest measure of my comprehension of the sublime.
I frequently visited this text while I was struggling to understand such an
unfamiliar term. Emerson’s experience in nature captures the essence of
the sublime in the way that I experience nature. Now, I know a word that
describes that experience. I, too, have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration
looking at the twilight sky untainted by city lights, watching a thunderstorm
roll in, or standing at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. I am filled with a
sense of awe as I face the sheer beauty of these things in nature.
As I survey nature, I am brought to the brink of fear. I am made aware of
a bigger power and design when I look beyond the reactions of nuclear fusion
that cause the stars to shine, beyond the reactions of charged particles that
cause lightning, and beyond the erosion that caused the depth and width of the
Grand Canyon. I feel tiny compared to the magnificence of God’s created
world, which fills me with the sense of the sublime. I am filled with the
terror that there is such an infinite Being, yet I appreciate the beauty of His
glory in nature.
I agree with Emerson about the effects of the woods (or nature) on the man’s
age. A stroll in nature cannot literally turn back the hands of time;
however, I feel that I can, if only for a moment, cast off the weight of
realities that did not burden me as a child. Nature provides a way for me
to escape the trappings of modern life post-Industrialization. I do not
want to get lost in the Waste Land. I find solitude and freedom from the
solitary life amid a decaying culture of modern society.
