“Our Lonely Home in Nature” by Alan Lightman
“The New York Times”, May 2, 2014
A critical review of : “ Our Lonely Home in Nature”
We will carry out a critical review of the article “Our Lonely Home in Nature” written by Alan Lightman who is a physicist and teaches humanities at the M.I.T. This article was published in the New York Times, opinion pages on 2 May 2014 and is scheduled for republishing in today (May 23, 2014) edition too.
In the article, Lightman starts with a seemingly innocuous statement of the tornadoes in the South and the Midwest. He describes how the sea (or symbolically nature) has been our friend, our Gods, our source of beauty as epitomized be landscapes, our source of energy and yet it brings upon people wrath and pestilence. However during a two week sailing trip in the Aegean sea, alone but for his wife, he realized that all that roleplaying is on our part only. Nature does not even notice man, as it follows laws of cause and effect. It behaves as it has always done and consequently, whether we are killed or stay alive, it is a matter of complete indifference to Nature.
For our critical review, we will mainly concentrate on the emotive sentiments used and whether the author has been able to keep the article in the right spirit. We will examine sentences and words and see if there is wordiness. The layout of the article should be such that each thought should flow smoothly from one to the next. Has Lightman used any euphemisms which take away the vitality of a paragraph? Are certain paragraphs vague? Finally we will also check whether Lightman has succeeded in conveying his emotions to his readers. The text will also be examined for any weaknesses or logical fallacies in the reasoning provided by the author.
Lightman has a beautiful way of putting appropriate words in places, like the classic poets who used to do the very thing themselves. For example, in classic poetry, a stream or a brook always gurgles as water flows down its incline. Now, remove the word ‘gurgle’ or ‘bubble’ and replace it with the word ‘splashes’ or ‘splashing’. The net result may be a little more accurate but the splashing stream seems to lose its emotive appeal. The emotive appeal of the power of nature and our puniness in comparison, straight away strikes the eye from the illustration. I cannot think of any other illustration, which would have been more apt in the circumstances. However, Lightman sometimes ushers in a word, which is not required. For example, in the sentence “demonstrate once again the unimaginable power of nature” (Chapter 1). The word unimaginable is clearly superfluous. It does not help his cause. The paragraphs 2 and 3 also have an artificial ring to them since Lightman has used a lot of flowery words which are merely ornamental. For example in chapter 2, “Don’t we have a deep spiritual connection with the wind and the water and the land that Emerson and Wordsworth so lovingly described, that Turner and Constable painted in scenes of serenity and grandeur?”. Somehow, the words serenity and grandeur do not seem appropriate to the emotive image conjured up in totality, which Lightman seeks to form inside us.
But then Lightman seems to find form in chapter 4 and chapter 5. He plays with imagery as he mentions the many faces of havoc it has from time to time inflicted on the human race. I refer to the line “Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions happen without the slightest consideration for human inhabitants”. (Paragraph 4). He writes the fifth and sixth paragraphs very well. For the colossus that is nature can only be known at best when you
are sailing, all alone except for your partner and there is just the open sea at all sides which one can see, nothing else. Fear will strike everyone in such circumstances, not merely Lightman. For the author and his wife, the boat is their “lonely home in nature”, which is the title of the article. The title is a perfect match here and it will not surprise me if the article had been named from this scenario.
The next three paragraphs seem rather different from the line that what we have been feeling with the author. This is a structural weakness of the article. The author wants to illustrate the “don’t give a damn” outlook of nature. However, to do that he takes us from the ocean to Uranus Neptune and Mercury. What about the continental shelf? Something like the ocean –mysterious; visible only to a distance would have done the job better than the planets. Wordsworth’s poetry is unsuitable for this article as in “nature never did betray the heart that loved her.” (Chapter 9 ). The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner –the epic by Coleridge. The line “Water, Water everywhere but not a drop to drink” would have been a snug fit, but Lightman prefers Wordsworth to Coleridge, it seems.
Saving the best for the last, Lightman talks about the environment and throws our decades of reasoning upside down. We have existed in this earth and have caused environmental degradation and pollution just about anywhere. “Nature can survive far more than what we can do to it and is totally oblivious to whether homo sapiens lives or dies in the next hundred years. Our concern should be about protecting ourselves”. The sheer genius of this line makes up for the lapses earlier. Alan Lightman is right. Humans have the audacity to hold green festivals and talk about saving the planet. The truth is that the earth will live on and it is us who have to adapt maybe through evolution or mutation, and unless we do that, we will die. It is as simple as that.
References:
Lightman. A.(2014). The New York Times dated 02/05/2014. “Our lonely home in nature” Accessed on 23/05/2014. URL http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/03/opinion/our-lonely-home-in-nature.html
