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Pastoral vs. Wilderness

Throughout history there have been contradicting views about pastoral and wilderness landscapes. Pastoral landscapes contain cities and towns where wilderness landscapes contain nature and very few people. Many notable authors have had different feelings towards pastoral and wilderness settings; Henry David Thoreau was a die hard enthusiast for the wild where the Bible prefers pastoral settings. “There for the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man...” (Genesis), the Bible holds true to the belief that wilderness is evil and hard. Adam and Eve first lived in a garden (pastoral area) where life was easy and virtually free of thought or problem. After the original sin was committed the Lord God cast them out of the Garden of Eden and into the wilderness, where the “savage” beasts lay. This is a perfect example of the view of wilderness by the general public and the authors of the Bible prior to the mid nineteen hundreds. As punishment Adam and Eve were cast away from the ideal living conditions of the pastoral garden and forced to live in the untamed wilderness.

Another example of how society throughout time has viewed the wild in a ne

As my opening paragraph pointed out, Thoreau did not hold the same view as his neighbors. He actually held the opposite. In his mind, people which lived in the congested pastoral settings held less class and merit than the wild men of the west. “As a true patriot I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this country” (Thoreau). This quote reinforces Thoreau’s dislike of pastoral life, and the idea that people that live on the frontier and in the wild are happy, normal human beings.

This is a passage that illustrates Thoreau’s ideas of pastoral vs. wilderness settings. After reading this excerpt, it is quite obvious that Thoreau was an avid enthusiast of the wilderness. Thoreau believed that wilderness is the backbone of our culture. More importantly he believed that wilderness gives a man character as well as the raw materials, energy, ideas, and other entities that make our world inhabitable. The lines in the quotation that read “It is because the children of the empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were,” basically summarize Thoreau’s perspective of the influence of wilderness on human beings (Thoreau). Living in the wilderness would force a person to live a different life style than that of the city folk. It turns boys into men, and better prepares adults to tackle the trials and tribulations of life through the hard lessons the rugged country has taught them. Thoreau also believed that living in the wilderness was the only true way to live. He greatly disliked pastoral areas and would have rather lived in a more natural setting. However, Thoreau’s view of the wild was not held by everyone in his

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