So when I was preparing to write the short analytical essay, I didn't think I needed to start until Thursday afternoon, because it was a short analytical essay. And I guess "don't assume", but I figured it would be like 3-4 pages like the rest of the papers had been.... well... I looked at the syllabus and saw that it was supposed to be 5-6 pages, and got a little scared because it was Thursday night and the paper was due in the morning. So I realize I should always start my papers earlier than that, but I forgot about it during the week, esp. since we didn't talk about it in class because we got so deep into our discussions. So anyway in my frantic attempts to crank out 6 comprehensible pages by morning I read over Moore's Poem the Octopus, and highlighted a bunch of quotes to use in my paper. Starting the paper was definitely the hardest part, because I didn't exactly know how to define nature, esp. since it is such a broad topic, and many of the definitions fit the poem... So I eventually picked a few definitions and began writing. I came up with a few ideas of what nature could be defined as but they don't really make sense by themselves and it was hard to pick one to write about.
One definition was the earth and all of it's inhabitants, the objects that make up the world. This definition is hard to explain because we see a tree and say that it is IN nature not that it is nature, but if it is in nature, what is nature? the tree is in the world, is the world nature? And also we say that the forest is nature, etc.. some environments etc.. we call nature, we call the forest a part of nature, but what is the entire nature. And if the forest made up of trees is a part of nature than aren't the trees a part of nature not just in nature..... So you see it is hard to define nature and explain it just on the surface level, the "easiest" part of nature to define has already become really complicated. (try writing about that at 2am... I know I did that to myself... :) )
Another definition of nature is that is is an entity that is a part of the earth and watches over 'nature' or the plants and animals and environments... mother nature. That it is something with feeling and ability to make decisions and have emotions. But this doesn't really make sense either, how can a tree cry? But it is a common idea that nature is and entity with its own decisions and emotions, it is often described in mythology and storytelling, as something like a person.
Yet another definition of nature is the balance between good and evil, and imaginative and reality. People often talk of nature in terms of good vs. evil. and sometimes even describe it as human nature as our instinctive survival skills that is blind to morals.
There are so many aspects of nature and so many definitions it is hard just to narrow it down, an then you through in Moore's work "an octopus" and it could be representing almost any one of these definitions, which makes it hard to write a paper on which one it could be representing.
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Oh yes, I know exactly how you feel. I wrote on "An Octopus" and I didn't start until Thursday night either. It also doesn't help that "An Octopus" is very unclear as to what's going on and that it's mostly left to interpretation. One thing that clarified things for me was the Structuring Arguments worksheet we went over in class, that used as an example, "that things show up in 'An Octopus' according to their biological taxonomy, first inorganic materials, then plants, then invertebrates, etc."
Wow i am so glad i didn't do Moore (well i was going to write my essay on her poems because i thought it would be the easiest one to write one but ya that was a big mistake so i switched to Eliot). But if i had to define "nature," i would say nature is everything around us that was here before civilization started coming out with things (i really don't know if that makes any sense).
Like i understand what you mean by is tree nature or is it part of nature. I think a tree is nature (now just because they are so hard to find especially in cities), but a tree is just a part of nature, and a lot of trees make nature.
Your post made me realize that I completely forgot the most central part of that prompt... I didn't explicitly define nature in my essay, but I talked about how the very geological idea of nature interacts with the more organic side. I guess I could define nature in my rewrite as a combination of two things: elemental forces like the wind and the mountain, or more organic, delicate things like the trees and the animals. I feel like Moore's poem is so saturated with nature imagery that you could come up with just about any definition for nature and argue for it, but the difficult part is sorting through all that imagery and organizing it.
Man I'm really jealous. It's beyond me to write quickly, so I have to start writing a few days before the assignments due, or I'll be up all night. This essay was bad for me though, because I didn't have free time to start until two days before, and it took all of wednesday just to begin to comprehend "Jerboa." I circled all the words and phrases that stuck out at me, marked all the areas I didn't understand, and made notes in the margins to help me understand. Needless to say, the text of the poem were almost undecipherable by the time I was done marking it up. And I still barely understand the poem. In comparison to trying to make sense of Marianne Moore, writing the five pages was almost enjoyable.
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