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His main claim is that the western way of thinking about wilderness and nature as separate from humanity has led to environmental destruction and ethnic cleansing, In the beginning of the article, Dowel Introduces the way these different photographers have created a myth of “nature” through their strictures of places that are “absent of humans” to give society a distorted interpretation of what nature is or looks like. He continues his article by involving scientists and anthropologists and uses their understanding of nature and wilderness as another view of the topic at hand.
Later in the article, he references a man named William Croon and an essay he writes pertaining to this topic, and also incorporates a few Interviews that help his claim. Throughout the argument, Eddie addresses the audience in an open way. By including testimony, interviews, secondary sources, and a few rhetorical devices, Eddie effectively persuades the audience that nature and wilderness have been misinterpreted by the general population. To be able to give the reader a better idea of the main claim, Eddie utilizes testimonies as a support for his addressing of his argument.
Towards the middle of the article, Dowel Introduces a man named William Croon, an environmental historian, and speaks about the essay Croon had written about a similar topic, utilizing his ideas as a source to support his claim. Eddie expresses his reasoning of using Cordon’s essay as testimony when he introduces Croon and says hat he “has spent much of his intellectual career grappling with these conflicts. ” In a sense, the use of Cordon’s essay as a testimony assist Eddie in advancing his claim across to the audience.
Since both essays portray very similar topics, they give a sufficient amount of support for each other. Cordon’s essay helps Dowel In getting the reader to slowly understand what nature really is, how we have failed to depict nature, and how we should reevaluate our ideas on nature and wilderness. Based on who William Croon is, Eddie is given the opportunity of obtaining credibility for his argument by utilizing Cordon’s essay and allowing it to support his ideas clearly.
Along with the testimonies that Eddie uses to help advocate his deliverance of his argument, the interviews he conducts with different people also grant Eddie more credibility for his essay and argument. As a way to provide to these Ideas, he uses interviews to state his claim that nature is really everything we live in, not something we separate from ourselves and call nature. Dowdies interview with Patricia Cochran, a Yuppie native scientist in Alaska, implies Just that.
Cochran says to Eddie in the interview that they “have no word for ‘wilderness’, and “What you call ‘wilderness’ we call our back yard. ” This perfectly advocates Dowdies idea that everything we live In Is to introduce the same belief. Jacob Malls, a Showman hunter, states that what he lives in is “not wilderness to us. ” The same follows with each interview, each with the same or a similar response to whatever question Eddie asks. The use of the interviews in Dowdies article are possibly the most important aspect for Eddie to have his argument stated clearly.
This grants him a large amount of credibility because Eddie went out himself to conduct these interviews and dedicated his time to understanding how other people view this topic, helping him become more knowledgeable with his argument. Dowdies use of these interviews assist him very much in gaining credibility because of the first person point of view response that successfully supports his main claim. Next, similar to Dowdies use of testimonies to support his claim, secondary sources are also sufficient by continuing the basis of his argument.
One of the most important secondary source he uses in the essay are the multiple quotes scattered throughout it. What is so significant about these quotes is that each of them contain a sufficient amount of information that clearly advocate the ideas and continue the flow of the essay as a whole. Each quote is placed where it is to explain what exactly will be discussed in the paragraphs around or after the quote. What is helpful for Eddie is that they help the readers get a better understanding of the flow of ideas from reading the article and having the chance to look at each quote for assistance.
The audience is already into the argument due to the fact that Eddie uses the word “our” to be able to address everyone, including myself, and not point anyone out. With the quotes Eddie is able to address ideas more clearly. Each quote plays the role of something like a topic sentence, or very small summary of the upcoming passage. One thing that does not completely support Eddie is that each of the quotes do not introduce who said it or where it was found.
As much as these quotes do grant Eddie with a larger opportunity to clarify the ideas with his audience, the opportunity of knowing who said what could give him a lot more credibility for his essay. Lastly, Eddie uses some rhetorical devices to support his argument easier. The organization of his claims and use of the testimony help Justify his main claim. He explains that we all have a deluded sense of nature, which is very true considering the idea that we have decided to separate ourselves from a different location and choose to call that “nature. He also states that we should see nature as everything around us, and not separate ourselves from nature indefinitely. The addressing of the myth of land without human interaction also follows as a depiction of how we see places that are apparently “explored but never altered” to continuously implicate how we have come to believe that the “nature” we now is supposedly a true piece of nature for supposedly not having been touched physically by humans.
His approach towards the readers is also important with Dowdies argument. The audience does not feel attacked, but more welcome into the discussion. Eddie provides the audience with a chance to understand the claim from displaying his argument through different perspectives to offer a broader understanding of the basis of his claims and ideas. His work was also published in an Art and Politics magazine, giving an aspect of who his audience mainly is – other conservationists, students and environmentalists.
Through the use of testimony, interviews, secondary sources, and rhetorical devices, Eddie was successful in formal way, enough to where the audience is able to understand and possibly follow his beliefs. There was one quote that completely caught my attention from the excerpt. It said, “What counts as wilderness is not determined by the absence of people, but by the relationship between people and place”. To return to the main claim stated above, it is essential to realize that nature is not a place of its own, but rather every little thing we interact with every day.