Save the Planet?

     One of the phrases that we hear all of the time and have been hearing for several years now is:  Save the Planet.  The human race feels that it has become so powerful and almighty that we could actually destroy the planet.  We think that we may actually be able to end the life cycle of the earth.  The simple truth is that this planet has been here long before humans have.  It will be here long after we are all dead.  Humans are basically insignificant parasites on the planet.  Nature has proven time and again that it can get rid of humans when it wants to.  This is not to say that I don't care about the environment, I'm just not conceited enough to think that I'm saving the planet.  I just don't want all of my trash around cluttering it up and choking out the human race.
     In the last several stories we have read, To Build a Fire, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Open Boat, we have seen man defeated by nature.  The most interesting thing to realize about these men's defeats is that nature wasn't even trying.  Nature is a force that is indifferent to man.  It just simply exists.  When we hear "man versus nature", it is never the other way around.  Nature is not out to get man.  Nature simply doesn't care what happens to man.  Man is constantly trying to control nature and bend it to his will.  This is never going to happen.  We build houses on hillsides so that they can slide to the bottom after a good rain.  We build cities below sea-level and expect little walls to hold back the force of nature.  When nature decides it wants to do some damage and send that rain to cause that mudslide or send that hurricane to destroy that city below sea-level.  Men rebuild the city and the houses in the same place, having learned absolutely nothing.  For an example a little closer to home, we only have to look at Xenia.  Every few years a tornado wipes out large portions of the town and they keep rebuilding.
     Nature will always win.  It may seem that man occasionally gets a little bit of control but all it takes is one storm, one tornado or one good rain to undo all that he has done.  That is the nature of nature.  One of my favorite lines from The Open Boat comes as the correspondent thinks he is going to drown:  "Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature" (Page 618).  There is nothing that can be done about it once nature decides that your number is up.  So remember, the next time someone tells you that they are saving the planet, you can just chuckle knowing that they are really just worried about their own butt.

Hemingway and London

     I have always found the life of Ernest Hemingway to be one of the most interesting and exciting lives one could live.  To have traveled to the places he's been and do the things he has done, I always thought that reading his work must also be very exciting.  So, years ago, I read a few of his novels.  To be honest, they bored the hell out of me.  His shorter works are excellent, however.  One of my favorites has always been Hills Like White Elephants, but Snows of Kilimanjaro is also one that I enjoy.
     Snows of Kilimanjaro is a bit of a sad story.  Harry spends a great deal of time, while he's dying from an infection, thinking about the many stories that he never wrote.  He had meant to write them, but always figured that there would be time later on in life.  Now he was going to die having never written the rest of his stories.  He also spends a good deal of time insulting his wife, mostly for being wealthy.  The whole time, he feels death creeping up on him like the hyena watching the camp and staying just beyond view.  Despite his wife's constant reassurance that the plane will show up and he will be fine, he knows that he is going to die.  The reader also knows it.  Even the little illusion at the end where it looks like he might make it through doesn't fool anyone.  There was far too much foreshadowing of death for the story to end any other way.
     In Jack London's To Build a Fire, there is also a good amount of foreshadowing as well as forewarning of impending doom.  It is stated almost from the beginning that the man walking through the snow at colder than fifty degrees below zero is not experienced enough in this type of cold.  That certainly proves to be the case.  I had read this story before as well, but it had been so long ago that I couldn't remember a great deal of the details.  I was just happy that he didn't kill the dog.  Of course, I found the dog to be a lot smarter than he was, which is often the case anyway.