Research Paper on:
Natural World and Being Human According to Barbara Kingsolver and Gary Snyder

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
regarding humanity as the pinnacle of a divinely ordained hierarchy to regarding humanity as being at the pinnacle of creation due to the ability to reason. But, in both instances,  humanity is placed above the natural world, and apart from it. Now, as environmental concerns proliferate, and the social fabric becomes stretched to the breaking point by a raft of  social ills, there are signs that a new construct is on the horizon. Writers, such as Gary Snyder and Barbara Kingsolver, environmentalists, and others, see a different paradigm as part  of the answer from the morass of problems that threaten ecological disaster. This paradigm sees humanity in a manner that is more akin to the balance found by Native Americans  before the coming of the Europeans, than it is to the Cartesian /Newtonian Enlightenment paradigm that has been prevalent for so long. Gary Snyder begins his essay "the Words:  Nature, Wild and Wilderness" with a thorough discussion of how nature, wild and wilderness are typically defined, forcing the reader to consider the connotations of each word. This leads into  a discussion of history and how perception toward nature can be quite different. Eventually, however, Snyder comes to the point where he considers the word "wild" and the place of  humans in the natural world. As Kingsolver does in her essay "High Tide in Tucson," Snyder considers the fact that humans are part of the animal kingdom. He writes, "Our  bodies are wild. The involuntary quick turn of the head at a shout, the vertigo at looking off a precipice, ...the quiet moments relaxing, staring, reflecting -- all universal response  of this mammal body" (16). He goes on to discuss the arguments against regarding humanity as full-fledged members of the animals kingdom, i.e. those arguments that still insist on