Social and Ecological Awakening in Post Civil War United States - Essay Example

 Social and Ecological Awakening in Post Civil War United States Prior to the US Civil War, Americans felt that the country had an unlimited supply of resources. The land was plentiful and the majority of it was untapped wilderness, especially shortly after the war with Mexico, after which the nation stretched from sea to shining sea and was the country that we know it to be now. That was ditto for the animals, wildlife was abounding in those prairies and forests and for three centuries, the man had slaughtered the beasts if for no other reason than to obtain their fur, so the ladies and gentlemen of the East Coast and Europe could dress in the finest attire. The whole attitude was the nation was like a big bank account, constant withdrawals without any of the necessary worries of putting back. Fortunately, all of that began the change in the years between the Civil War and World War I (1865-1914). Is it odd that all periods of American literary history are balanced between its various wars? It would take another sixty years after the end of the period before the Environmental Protection Act to become law but at least the pendulum began to swing in the right direction. Americans would eventually pay a high price for their disregard of the environment but even in the late nineteenth century Mother Nature started to fight back and there were stewards who tried to make our forbearers aware. As usual, those in the literary world were at the forefront of this movement and it no surprise that the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had two major aesthetic movements, realism, and naturalism. Through their works, authors attempted to instill a sense of environmental awareness among their readers. It wasn't the first time that authors used their influence through entertainment. Because of his writings of such classics as Oliver Twist and Bleak House, Charles Dickens raised public awareness of British apathy and maltreatment toward those in poverty. He should probably be recognized as the one instrumental in the abolishment of the treadmill, poor houses, and other abject places of misery. Taking a cue from Dickens, American writers tried to entertain and educate as well. The Civil War had been long and arduous, killing many men on both sides. Although victorious in that blacks were finally granted their freedom, the country was embittered toward war. No more were there joyous shouts of “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight” or “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!”. The country was so skittish toward war that World War I had been going on for years before the US finally entered it. Writers like Stephen Crane with The Red Badge of Courage brought the gritty facts of death and dying in war home, as if many young men dead and maimed weren’t enough. The American landscape was also changing. For example, the lumbering American Bison, once plentiful in the plains and west, was hunted to near extinction by market hunters such as “Buffalo Bill” Cody. The famous showman claimed to slaughter as many as one hundred of the animals daily. That was ditto for the sperm whale. Prior to fossil fuels being discovered, the great creature was also almost wiped out in the late nineteenth century, hunted mainly for its oil. Although Herman Melville had written Moby Dick many years before his 1891 death, Melville wasn’t popular in his lifetime but a revival of his work, including sales of the before unknown Billy Budd, began to show the public just how cruel and needless that the hunts for the magnificent creature were. Although some countries like Japan still prize the great whales and actively hunt them, the international conscience has severely limited whale hunts. For example, the United States does not allow hunting them within its territorial waters (twelve nautical miles), except in certain cases for indigenous peoples like the Inuit. Another author of the period who raised environmental and social awareness was San Francisco born Jack London, who lived his entire life during the period (1876-1916). Coming of age during the Yukon gold rush of the 1890's, London, like many Westerners of the time period feared the Alaska territory would be raped and plundered like California had been during its own gold rush a half-century before. Thought of as "Seward's Folly" for three decades after its purchase, people went to Alaska in droves, in the hope of getting rich. Yet poverty forced him to join the rush and his adventures there caused him to eventually write Call of the Wild. Although London’s motives were more of a financial than environmental aspect, the vivid descriptions of our “last frontier” and his respect for the wolf are probably instrumental in the fact that Alaska, for the most part, remains unspoiled to this day. Yet a new rush is underway with oil and the state still face pressures to increase drilling, something that even London couldn’t foresee. With works like "The Scab", he also showed his empathy with the American labor movement of the early twentieth century, so that working conditions improved. Samuel Clements, also known as Mark Twain, is popularly thought of mainly as a humorist. Yet the man could also be dark and brooding and tried to raise social conscience in his lifetime. For example, in one of his writings, he observed: "Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities” (Solar). Although controversial in the modern day due to its seemingly racial overtones, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has to be included in any paper speaking of social consciousness. Those who read and study the novel understand the racial epithets in the book show the author’s contempt for such institutions as slavery and the maltreatment of Native Americans. Because Clements was one of this country’s premier “superstar” literary figures, he could be quite persuasive in helping to make his viewpoints concrete. . Another, who mainly lived and worked in the antebellum years, has a name that is almost synonymous with environmental issues. Henry David Thoreau wrote Walden in 1854 yet its impact of a life that did not need the inclusion of modern societal trappings resonated through the post-war years and many still nursing physical and emotional wounds found Thoreau’s words comforting. Indeed, some century and a half after his death, environmental groups still hold his works in high esteem. He was also a lifelong abolitionist and believed wholeheartedly in freedom for all people. Poets were also included in the roster of those authors who spoke of issues they considered important during that all-important fifty year period. Walt Whitman, both before and after the Civil War, spoke against slavery and the mistreatment of the African American population to such an extent that his writings cost him a job with the Federal Government. The ladies such as Emily Dickinson and the Bronte sisters also used their writings to influence social issues of the day as much as possible, including the new suffrage movement. After all, the reasoning among suffragettes was that why couldn’t women also be allowed the privilege of voting? Efforts to that effect finally led to the passage of the nineteenth amendment in the early twentieth century. His readings of the aforementioned authors and his own travels prompted future President Theodore Roosevelt to push for environmental change throughout his lifetime. Although Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872 by Grant, it was largely through Roosevelt’s efforts that the park was brought into public view and he personally dedicated the North Entrance in 1903, the first sitting president to travel that far west. Later, after the First World War, Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath helped raise awareness of over-farming the land and the resulting Dust Bowl effect of the Great Depression. Also, Upton Sinclair’s scathing review of the Chicago slaughterhouse industry, The Jungle, is probably referenced as a bible for every vegan and vegetarian throughout the world. So the early pioneers of the late nineteenth century helped pave the way for the tremendous social and environmental upheavals and one can’t help but wonder if they were all gathered around the Presidents with pride when the Civil Rights Act and the Environmental Protection Act were signed into law. Works Cited Some quotes that have inspired us..., Solar Haven, Nov 1, 2011, taken from http://www.solarhaven.org/Quotes.htm. Baym, Nina, 1865-1914 Making Connections, Norton Anthology of Modern Literature, Nov 24, 2011, taken from http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/naal7/contents/C/connections.asp. Read More