Raw materials : American national narrative and the therapy of nature.

Abstract

Historically, Americans have had extremely ambivalent feelings about their wilderness environment. These feelings have ranged from viewing the landscape as an earthly hell to experiencing it as a peaceful sanctuary. Changing ideas of wilderness have played a large part in shaping the notion of an American national character. Nature writers Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Annie Dillard look to the natural world for material for understanding themselves and a method for improving the relationship between Americans and the environment. They have contributed to the story of this national character by narrating their experiences with the American landscape and by acting as Jeremiads to the American people. For each of these Americans nature has provided a restorative energy that they have attempted to pass on to their readers. In this way nature has become a kind of therapy that these authors have offered to the nation as a cure for over-civilization and fragmentation. Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and Annie Dillard have used the stories left for them by those whose experiences with America might provide clues to the riddle of America and what it represents. Through their common experience with the simplicity, restoration, and vision found in the American landscape, Thoreau, Whitman, and Dillard have sought and found a refuge and a tonic for citizens of the New World.