Free Essay: The Grip of Nature in The Penguin Book of First World War Stories by Korte Barbara

Often in rational arguments, opinions differ in regard to what nature really is, the attachment that people have to nature, and how nature unconditionally tells destiny. To writers who explore realism in their work, it is almost impossible to miss the touch that nature has to their work. Characteristically, each of these surreal writers understands the concept of nature through varied avenues. In her work The Penguin Book of First World War Stories, Korte Barbara outlines a surreal understanding of how humans and nature could be inseparable. In the plot, the writer gives a brief definition of the relationship between nature and human through the assertions of her characters that the relationship is a little spring of exceedingly pure water (255). All through the story, Korte symbolically exploits this stunning relationship. This paper exploits a range of aspects such as symbolism and the mysterious characterization to critically analyze nature in the reading. Ultimately, the paper seeks to create an even better understanding of the reading, albeit through a different avenue.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Along the story, it is evident that Korte exploits both direct and indirect mention of nature. Either way, the mention of nature expounds a different concept all together. It is notable that Korte, in more than one occasion in the reading, employs symbolism to create a broader understanding of nature. The aspects of nature that have effectively been mentioned in the reading are such like water, forest, stones, shells among others. The question then stands on how the writer synchronizes all these diversified aspects of nature with realism; with the human interaction with each other as well as the interaction that nature has with humans. To synchronize all these aspects of nature, the plot clearly depicts the attachment of nature to the past, present and future of humans.

Presently, nature is employed to depict the struggles of humanity. From the reading, it is evident that humans are pulled by different forces. Each force drives people into a different direction and ultimately into destiny. Evident in the reading is the force of conflicts in ideology. At the beginning of the reading, the protagonist is exposed to an ideological dilemma. As the protagonist is sees despise out of her judgment about gender. In her life, the protagonist believed that men stood at a better chance of surviving the turbulent tides of the world. To this effect, she asserts that I wished I was a man in reference to how she would solve the problems that she faced if only she had the energy of a man in her (243). Apparently, the natural problems in the current situation can barely be solved even with the nature itself. Normally, people have no choice of what gender they might want to be, nature does so. In the reading, nature explicitly forecasts the future by giving the trends of interconnectivity.

In Kortes work, however, at some point too, nature exhibits very exclusive symbolic meanings. To understand the pinch of nature in literature, one is obliged to understand that the web of life that nature avails to people is dynamic. All the aspects of existence are interconnected and a movement out of one aspect does not guarantee a better life in the other aspect of life. Am off! are the stern words that Miss Ogilivy tells her two sisters when she notices that she cannot bear the life that she was exposed to in their home at. These words effectively depict the need that was boiling in her; to get out of that troubled home. Sarah and Fanny made Miss Ogilivy to regret her life with them. In her mind, she believed that moving out of their home would avail a better life to her eventually.

Characteristically, private islands (the destiny of the protagonist) are known to bear a range of admirable characteristics. Her arrival on the Devon Island depicts just as predicted. However, the reading is fast to remind the reader that life in the island had its own share of challenges. Notably, Miss Ogilivys are not solved even with her movement on to a new context. In fact, her first encounter with nature depicts destruction. In the protagonists imagination, she sees a cave that does not look similar to the one she left in her first encounter. At the end of the reading, the protagonist dies at the cave. This is a symbolism of continuity in human struggles with nature even with the change of context. Simply, nature has a grip on the people, it does not matter which context in which the involvement is based.

There a lot of natural aspects that literally could admirable. Symbolically however, some of these components however symbolize terror and death. In the reading, stones have been employed to explain the two opposing sides of nature. Miss Ogilivy firstly comes into contact with beautiful round stones. At one point, she throws away the stones to hit other bigger stones to depict strength. This epic moves on beautifully until a man joins in to explain the dark side of the stones. He remarks that our forts, very old, very weak. And the round- headed ones have terrible weapons. Their weapons are not made of good stones like ours, but of some dark, devilish substance (253). This sentiment critically depicts how it is not only humans that differ in understanding basic concept of their understanding of their intact issues such as gender.

Conclusively, it takes a deep understanding to fathom the two sides of nature. In literature, nature is uniquely placed to serve humans with a magnificent oracle due to individual expression as well as the quality of connectivity. As depicted in the symbolic relationship between nature and reality by Korte, people can only plug themselves to into the broader sense of nature through critical meditation and soft rumination. It is such endeavors that people steer towards nature that brings them deeply into the network. It is after the creation of an intact network with nature that people begin to explore hallmarks that are unique both to themselves and the different facets of nature. In the reading, Miss Ogilivy depicts a different perception of the facets of nature. The same happens to the other different characters that critically bear a different perception to natural facets. Finally, from the reading, it is notable that a depiction the aspect of nature in realism could be through the lens of direct mention or through a range of avenues such as symbolism.

Work Cited

Korte, Barbara. The Penguin Book of First World War. New York: Penguin Books, 2007