DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Before taking this course, we generally felt that literature could go as far as to save the earth, but it could indeed spark change. Through the readings we did throughout the semester such as John FelstinerJohn MuirRachel CarsonEdward Abbey, and talking to an environmentalist, we have concluded this to be mostly true. We decided to interview wildlife preservationist Margo Olson because of her connections to the environmental movement. The goal of our course is to determine whether or not literature can save the environment-- our hypothesis has been that it can spark motivation within readers to take action, and it can make positive change through this. Since we are those readers and it applies to our own lives, we felt it appropriate to speak to someone local who works to preserve the environment, right nearby. However, before interviewing Margo, we read several pieces of literature, which helped us formulate this hypothesis.


We began our course with an exerpt from Can Poetry Save the Earth by John Felstiner. This served as an opening to ideas as to how the written word relates to the natural world, throughout history as well as today.


Next we read several essays of John Muir's from Essential Muir, a compilation by Fred D. White. His writings portray his immense love for the landscape and all it holds. His work impassions one to want to go into nature and feel the glory he seems to have felt, and this feeling, we decided, can inspire one to want to protect such glory.


Then we read Silent Spring, a novel that we already knew had indeed had an immense impact on the environmental movement, but we did not yet know in what ways. By reading the book we were able to examine Rachel Carson's persuasive tactics. While we did feel she was beating us over the head with her evidence by the end, history shows it to have been an effective agent in spurring change.


We then moved into fiction writing with Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang, a novel about an eclectic group of nature-lovers who terrorize the establishment in the name of the environment. On top of being a very enjoyable read, we felt it was also persuasive in the environmental movement because of it's history, as the novel inspired radical environmental activism with the creation of groups like Earth First!, and later the Earth Liberation Front. The novel showed us an interesting extreme that some have gone to in order to make change, and was itself a clear agent of change.


We concluded our course with what was, for most, a rereading of Dr. Seuss's The Lorax. If literature is to save the environment, it must have a strong impact on it's readers; since we are easily molded by the things around us as we grow, a children's book is a perfect way to utilize that impact on young minds. We found that the extreme prevalence of environmental themes in the story had affected many of us who grew up with it, so we were able to conclude that literature certainly had influenced our views.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.