Nature as Literary Metaphor

E-226 Literature and Nature

In this essay I will look at the use of language and imagery in literary works where nature

writing is found. I will examine how authors like Henry David Thoreau, Herman

Melville, John Muir and Emily Dickinson describe nature and how they relate to nature

in their works, more specifically if they describe it accurately in a representational way

or metaphorically. In my discussion I will apply concepts of Laurence Buell and his

“dual accountability” in order to explain the paradoxes found in nature writing. In this

essay my main focus will be how the accuracy of nature writing is achieved in different

ways. In addition, I will look at how this creates alienation or familiarization, distance or

closeness between the reader and nature through the use of anthropomorphisms,

personification, gendering and “naturalization”.

Nature’s inexpressibility

“Nature” is a very vague concept and is widely used in many contexts, from human

nature to brute nature. What is natural and what is unnatural? Herman Melville tried to

be very precise in his depiction of nature, more specifically the marine nature, nature at

sea, in his monumental Moby Dick. Not only did he attempt to describe sea life in

specific detail, but also the whole nature of whaling did he venture to describe in

meticulous detail. This attempt to represent nature as truthfully as possible is a

problematic one as seen in the following passage from the novel, which could also be

regarded as a metaphor for the mysterious feelings we have for nature. It is a relationship

with mixed feelings of admiration and hesitant fear of the unknown:

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Almost forgetting for the moment all thoughts of Moby Dick, we now gazed at the wondrous phenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind. A vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream-color, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach. No perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable token of either sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the billows, an unearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life.

(Melville, Moby Dick, “Squid”, 261)

In this passage Melville tries to describe a sea creature identified as a gigantic squid.

Interestingly he makes use of words and phrases like “the secret seas”, “innumerable”,

“no perceptible face”, “blindly” and “unearthly”. Nature is almost portrayed as

something that cannot be described. The “secret seas” possess creatures with no human

feature, no firm body but “a vast pulpy mass” with no face and “no conceivable token of

either sensation or instinct”. Moreover it seems like this creature of the depths is a

“chance-like apparition of life”, it is part of the unpredictability of nature. In its extreme

paradoxical sense it appears to be almost “unnatural”, which complicates even further the

conception of what nature really is.

Henry David Thoreau also finds it difficult to portray nature at Walden Pond

accurately to his readers in Walden, although he depicts nature as truthfully as he can

throughout. Nevertheless he makes use of anthropomorphisms and religious imagery in

order to communicate the beauty of nature to the reader: “A lake is the landscape’s most

beautiful and expressive feature. It is the earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder

measures the depth of his own nature” (Walden, Chapter 9: “The Ponds”, 1866). Thoreau

makes use of anthropomorphic imagery to express the inexpressible.

The inexpressibility of nature and the impotency of language are expressed in

some of Emily Dickinson’s poems. Language is impotent in describing nature accurately

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to the reader because of the cultural constructs that bind language. Emily Dickinson

arrives at this conclusion in her poem “668”: “Nature is what we know/Yet have no art to

say/So impotent Our Wisdom is/To Her Simplicity”.

Dickinson’s poem expresses frustration because we cannot use language to

describe nature in perfect detail due to its insufficient means of representation. Her

attempt to make nature familiar through language fails. She can only experience nature

accurately through her senses, or intuition. To some extent we can say that nature, or the

meaning of it, is inexpressible. Melville and Thoreau would both perhaps agree to this.

The Idea of Accuracy

Nevertheless, nature writers do try to communicate their experience with nature in their

respective works. Thoreau does it in his detailed description of Walden Pond and

Melville through Ishmael in Moby Dick. Melville becomes almost scientific when he lets

Ishmael explains the tail of the whale:

The entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded sinews; but cut into it, and you find that three distinct strata compose it: - upper, middle, and lower. The fibres in the upper and lower layers, are long and horizontal; those of the middle one, very short, and running crosswise between the outside layers. This triune structure, as much as anything else, imparts power to the tail.

(Melville, Moby Dick, “The Tail”, 347)

Almost like a marine biologist Melville lets Ishmael cut through the sinews and skin of

the whale with words as his tools with a clinical precision in this passage. The accuracy

is extreme and Melville makes every layer of the tail “visible” to the reader without using

any metaphoric language of any kind. With the precision of a doctor he cuts through the

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skin in an attempt to portray the workings of the tail, as a pathologist would show how a

human organ works. Thoreau is rarely as “scientific” but he too attempts to describe

nature in the manner of a naturalist:

At length the sun’s rays have attained the right angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snow banks, and the sun dispersing the mist smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with incense, through which the traveler picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which they are bearing off.

(Thoreau, Walden, Chapter 17: “Spring”, 1927)

Both writers treat accuracy from two different viewpoints in these quotes, both the

“scientific” and the “poetic”. Melville presents the seascape with many poetic renderings

in Moby Dick and Thoreau displays “scientific” ways of presenting nature, especially in

the case of the temperatures of the lake.

Lawrence Buell’s coined the expression of “dual accountability” which is applied

“to matter and to discursive mentation” (Buell, “Representing the Environment”, 92),

where the narrative intention is to describe nature as accurately as possible, but

simultaneously construct its meaning or attribute a certain philosophy to it. Buell presents

the idea of “dual accountability” as a relation between representation and construction

where “literature’s referential dimension” (86), in which emphasis emphasize is on the

accuracy of representation, is interconnected with the “poesis, textuality, ideology, the

unconscious” (92) of the constructive element in literature.

The concern with representational accuracy, then, is found in both Melville’s

clinical precision and Thoreau’s poetic portrayal of spring at Walden Pond. Thoreau uses

quite neutral words like “warm” and “melt”, but he makes use of anthropomorphisms

such as “the sun smiles on a checkered landscape (…) smoking with incense”.

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Notwithstanding this stylized image, Thoreau both represents and constructs nature

because his ambition is to “put the reader or viewer in touch with the environment”

(Buell, “Representing the Environment”, 97). Basically, when discussing the idea of

accuracy in nature writing one needs to take in consideration the idea of “environmental

art as a deliberate dislocation of ordinary perception” (104), which essentially serves the

purpose of bringing the reader closer to the subject matter of the text.

Anthropomorphism

In the works in question the authors often ascribe human characteristics like evil and

good to animals and natural phenomena. It is especially interesting how Melville portrays

the sharks in Moby Dick. They are presented as malignant creatures with blood thirst and

represent the dark side of Darwinism, and may be compared to the way in which Thoreau

writes about the brutality of the ants (Walden, Chapter 12: “Brute Neighbors” 1888-).

The sharks seem to be presented as embodied evil:

They viciously snapped, not only at each other’s disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent around, and bit their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound. Nor was this all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these creatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be called the individual life had departed.

(Melville, Moby Dick, “The Shark Massacre”, 283)

In this carnage, where sharks flock around a whale corpse that hangs from the ship,

nature’s darker sides are depicted with vivid gruesome detail. Melville describes them as

vicious, acting in the unrestrained manner of a mob. Furthermore, he writes that there

seem to be a “Pantheistic vitality” that lurks “in their very joints and bones”, which could

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imply that they are part of the unpredictability of nature’s law. We could also observe the

amorality of nature in Dickinson’s poem “328” where she describes a bird: “A Bird came

down the Walk/He did not know I saw/He bit an Angleworm in halves/And ate the

fellow, raw” (Dickinson, “328”).

In another passage Melville describes a gigantic sperm whale that “lay rolling in the

water like the capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an Ethiopian hue,

glistening in the sun’s rays like a mirror” (“Stubb Kills A Whale”, 266). This use of

anthropomorphisms, like “the hull of a frigate” with an “Ethiopian hue” makes the sight

of the whale more familiar to us as readers, but how accurate is it? As with the

malevolence of the sharks, we can also picture a capsized frigate at sea, but does this

image bring us closer to nature? Melville continues to describe the whale as “a portly

burgher smoking his pipe of a warm afternoon” (“Stubb Kills A Whale”, 266). This is

yet another anthropomorphism of social life used to describe the tranquility of the whale.

Such a use of anthropomorphism is very problematic because it may complicate

the image we get of the whale. Melville’s use of images like “a frigate” or “a portly

burgher smoking his pipe” could distract and alienate the reader from the objective of the

passage, namely to describe a nature scene where a whale comes to the surface. Why

does he use these cultural-linguistic phrases? His intentions may produce different

reactions in the reader. On the one hand the reaction may involve a feeling of detachment

from the whale, but on the other hand the reaction may lead to familiarization and

identification with the whale. Melville creates a familiar image of “a portly burgher

smoking his pipe” which humanizes the whale and this essentially reinforces the drama a

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few passages later when the whale is attacked: “The red tide now poured from all sides

from the monster like brooks down a hill” (“Stubb Kills A Whale”, 269). A serene image

is suddenly turned into a bloody slaughter and Melville has created a violent opposition

between the initial presentation of the whale through anthropomorphism and then the

sudden manifestation of the whale as a “monster”. In a way we can assert that Melville

employs cultural-linguistic phrases in order to create a dynamics between closeness and

distance to the whale, which ultimately results in a violent reaction with the reader since

a familiarity is established prior to the forthcoming bloodshed.

In an excerpt from John Muir’s The Mountains of California Mount Ritter, located in

Yosemite National Park, is depicted with human features. As Muir makes his way

through “the yawning chasm of the foot” and onwards to “the mouth of a narrow

avalanche gully” where he encounters “the mountain face” (Muir, “The Range of Light”,

253). Muir applies much religious anthropomorphism like “cathedrals”, “turrets” and

“spires” as well (255-256): “Colossal spires 200 feet in height waved like supple

goldenrods chanting and bowing low as if in worship, while the whole mass of their long,

tremulous foliage was kindled into one continuous blaze of white sun-fire” (Muir, “The

Range of Light”, 260). Surely, this religious anthropomorphism had another impact on

contemporary readers in Muir’s time than in our times where religious references may

not “help” the reader to picture the landscape. This use of anthropomorphism may very

well distract and distance the modern reader from the subject matter.

Notwithstanding religious imagery Muir applies well-known anthropomorphisms

that has become worked into our language when we speak of nature, as in the “shoulder”

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or the “foot” of mountains. These kinds of anthropomorphism assist us in relating to

nature and this is how Melville, like Muir, tries to communicate the sight of a scene in

nature, be it a mountain or a whale. The poet, or the writer, uses a language to connect us

as readers to the subject matter. By using anthropomorphisms both Melville and Muir

make a connection between human culture and nature’s “massive picture” (Muir, “The

Range of Light”, 252).

Melville’s cultural-linguistic construct of the whale as a “frigate” is intended to

familiarize the reader who has never seen a whale, but knows how a capsized frigate

looks like because that may feel more familiar in society. In the same way Muir

represents the mountain as something human in order to make it familiar, but one could

also argue that he de-naturalizes it by humanizing it. In other words he makes the

mountain more of a cultural phenomena than a natural one, which may create an

unintended distance to the subject matter and the idea of presenting nature accurately.

Indeed, whether anthropomorphic language distracts or familiarizes the reader with

nature is essentially a question of connotation and interpretation.

Thoreau makes use of anthropomorphisms in Walden when he writes about on how the

leaves turn in the fall: “And gradually from week to week the character of each tree came

out, and it admired itself reflected in the smooth mirror of the lake. Each morning the

manager of this gallery substituted some new picture, distinguished by more brilliant or

harmonious coloring, for the old upon the walls” (Walden, Chapter 13: “House-

Warming”, 1893). Indeed, this is another example of how the author humanizes natural

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objects and grants them an identity, which displays unity with nature and a respect for it.

Thoreau feels close to the trees and eagerly observes the change in color of their leaves.

In Walden there are also examples of “naturalization” where Thoreau identifies

himself with nature and attributes natural phenomena to himself: “I grew in those seasons

like corn in the night” (Walden, Chapter 4: “Sounds”, 1827). This type of imagery works

in the opposite way of anthropomorphism, but has the same purpose of bringing the

nature and man closer. One could argue that there exists a paradoxical relation between

the distance and closeness created by “naturalization” as well, which even so leads to an

understanding of nature. However, “naturalization” takes nature as its point of departure;

it attributes nature to man and thus make the unity between them more striking. Nature is

where Thoreau feels like he belongs: “I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a

part of herself” (Walden, Chapter 5: “Solitude”, 1836). Indeed, human nature is

inevitably part of nature and through the means of language we try to relate to it and

express this relationship.

The Gendering of Nature

The gendering of nature is found in all our works of nature writing. This is another

example of how the poets try to connect nature with man and make it familiar. It is

especially obvious how Melville ascribes femininity to the sky and masculinity to the sea

in Moby Dick:

It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman’s look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong,

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lingering swells, as Samson’s chest in his sleep. Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and from the depths, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.

(Melville, Moby Dick, “The Symphony”, 490)

The feminine features are “pure and soft” as in “the snow-white wings of small,

unspeckled birds” or like the air which is filled with “gentle thoughts”. The masculine

features are “robust” and “murderous” as in violent and phallic references such as “man-

like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells” or “rushed mighty leviathans, sword-

fish, and sharks”. These are well-known divisions of femininity and masculinity. When

used in nature writing violence and malice are usually attributed to the male sex, whilst

maternity and tenderness is attributed to the female sex. In Dickinson’s poem we see

explicit examples of this where she speaks of nature as «the Gentlest Mother» who has

«Her Golden finger on Her lip/Wills Silence - Everywhere-» (Dickinson, “790”),

whereas and the masculinity is portrayed with something frightening and with sexual

undertones: «I dreaded that first Robin, so/But He is mastered, now, I’m some

accustomed to Him grown/He hurts a little though» (Dickinson, “348”).

If one could say that this division of femininity and masculinity is a sexual one as

well Thoreau has another example of gendered anthropomorphism which presents us

with different associations as he depicts nature as: “A ruddy and lusty old dame, who

delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all her children yet” (Walden,

Chapter 6: “Solitude”, 1841). Nature’s “lustiness” not withstanding, more than anything

else this line gives connotations of security and care of a grandmother. Nature is likened

to something we all associate with protection and nurture, and thus appreciate.

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Gendering as a literary technique works in both directions of familiarization and

detachment. As human beings we can relate to gendering and sexuality in nature and this

can make us familiar with the “gentility” of the female or the “robustness“ of the male.

On the other hand gendering bases itself on cultural stereotypes. These stereotypes are

one-dimensional and thus create a very one-dimensional view of nature. In spite of the

biologically and historically concept of the “brutality” of men and the “sweetness” of

women this may not necessarily bring one closer to a precise description of nature and its

phenomena.

Distance or closeness to nature

In my discussion I want to see if the use of anthropomorphisms in nature writing creates

a sense of closeness between nature and man. In the examples I have used above there

are attempts to make nature familiar, which often is the intention of anthropomorphism,

whether or not that familiarity relates to sweet or disturbing aspects of nature. Ahab

makes Moby-Dick into something evil, but as Starbuck tells him: “See! Moby Dick seeks

thee not. It is thou, thou, that madly seekest him!” (Moby Dick, “The Chase - Third

Day”, 516). Ahab makes Moby-Dick embody total malice and devotes his life to pursue

and kill it. In the end this leads to Ahab’s doom; he brings the rest of the Pequod’s crew

with him into the depth of the sea, except Ishmael whose life is spared so he can tell the

story of human monomania. Nature is what it is, namely nature, and we are part of it. We

need to acknowledge this or else will we feel detached from nature and disillusioned like

Ahab. In his chapter “Brute Neighbors” Thoreau recounts a scene of battling ants as if it

were a war report. There are “legions” of ants that cover the surrounding hills, which are

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“strewn with the dead and dying”. Thoreau likens the “internecine war” to a “battle”

between “red republicans” and “black imperialist” (Walden, Chapter 12: “Brute

Neighbors”, 1888). He ascribes human history and politics to the ants, which represent

the brutality of nature. Interestingly war is often called “barbaric” and “uncivilized” and

attributed to our natural, brutal instincts, but Thoreau employs cultural-linguistic

constructs of war to describe the ants’ actions. Thoreau makes the account of the battle

very vivid to us as he “enlarges” it into a human perspective by using

anthropomorphisms like “war” and “battlefield” or references to The Iliad and the Trojan

War. In a sense it can be regarded as “the macrocosm in the microcosm”. Thoreau’s

interpretation of the ants as brutally “battling” is similar to Ahab’s rage against Moby-

Dick as a malicious agent, although Ahab is literal and serious and Thoreau is humorous.

Descriptions like the one in “Brute Neighbors” is ultimately also an interpretation of

nature, where “linguistic inventiveness” (Brøgger, Handout, 10) makes the scene more

familiar and easier for the reader to understand.

We can never be free from our own interpretations; they can even capture us and

become our doom, like in the case of Ahab and the Pequod. Our conceptions of nature

are never objective. Everyone perceives the world differently, depending on individual

interests. A mountain could be a maternal god, a forest pond could be a mirror and a bird

could be an uncaring fellow. But does such a constructionist position introduced by Kant,

where everyone perceives the world subjectively, bring us closer to nature or does it

create a cultural-linguistic barrier between nature and us?

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The Neo-Platonic philosophy of essentialism, where the meaning of nature is immanently

given is presented in Emerson and to some degree in Thoreau. For some readers this

attribution of essentialist notions to natural phenomena could create a distance to the

nature descriptions.

In Moby Dick Ishmael tells of the closeness he feels with nature, through very

accurate and vivid imagery:

At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hearth-stone cats they purr against the gunwale; these are the times of dreamy quietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean’s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.

(Melville, Moby Dick, “The Gilder”, 449)

Ishmael expresses an awareness of the ambiguity of nature in this passage. Beneath the

surface, or “this velvet paw”, is concealed “a remorseless fang” which could also very

well be a good metaphor for nature itself, the unpredictability of its sudden storms,

catastrophes and disasters. The scene of a smooth sea is beautiful, but could in hours

change into a terrifying scene with storms or a gigantic squids that surface at sea. We do

not know what lies beneath the surface and we cannot easily predict nature. “I believe

that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark” (Walden, Chapter 5: “Solitude”,

1837), writes Thoreau and states human beings` fear of nature’s unpredictability.

One could argue that the ambiguity that Ishmael expresses in this passage is also a

result of a projection of his “interior landscape” onto nature, where the narrative

construction works as what Barry Lopez thinks of as “a kind of projection within a

person of a part of the exterior landscape” (Lopez, “Landscape and Narrative”, 65).

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Furthermore, Lopez may applaud the ambiguity of the passage, as he believes that “the

truth reveals itself most fully not in dogma but in the paradox, irony, and contradictions

distinguishing compelling narratives” (71).

Nevertheless what makes these passages so intriguing is that they create precision

in what they aim to describe. This precision creates closeness and may make the reader

acknowledge unity with nature though the familiarity created. Although cultural-

linguistic constructs are employed in achieving this exactness precision is the main

objective. Therefore is “linguistic inventiveness” often necessary as a literary technique

in order to achieve this precision.

Obviously, this kind of precision created by cultural-linguistic constructs may

cause both familiarity and alienation. Nature is not immanently good, or bad.

Nonetheless, it is a question of interpretation of nature and a sense of ambiguity is

expressed thematically. This ambiguity emphasizes the relationship between what Lopez

calls the “interior landscape” and the “exterior landscape” (65). In the end we could

conclude that both formative precision and thematic complexity helps creating closeness

through precision.

Conclusion

In my discussion on accuracy in nature writing I have looked at how writers like

Melville, Thoreau, Dickinson and Muir have tried to describe and present nature in

literature. Their attempts at precision are both scientific and poetic. Formatively speaking

precision creates closeness, which Buell refers to as “literature’s referential dimension”

(86) and is elementary in nature writing.

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My discussion has also involved great focus on the use of anthropomorphism in

nature writing. Seeing nature in human terms helps the reader to relate to what is being

presented in this kind of literature. Gendering, “naturalization” and anthropomorphisms

are means of bringing us as readers closer to an understanding and awareness of nature. It

is a way in which the writer brings the reader and the subject matter of the text closer to

each other through identification, but essentially it is a question of interpretation whether

this leads to distance or closeness.

Thematically we can speak of a certain lack of respect for nature that can lead to

alienation and distance when reading nature-related literature. The aim of accuracy in

nature writing focuses often on the project of awareness of nature as something we

should respect and acknowledge, like in the texts of Thoreau and Muir.

In order to overcome the “inexpressibility” of nature the author needs to make use

of “representation’s power to invent, stylize and dislocate” (Buell, “Representing the

Environment”, 99). This is the advantage of literary geniuses like Melville, Thoreau and

Dickinson. They attempt to create “harmony between the two landscapes” - the exterior

and the interior one (Lopez, “Landscape and Narrative”, 68). Ultimately, any nature

writing is interpretation. Through “linguistic inventiveness” (Brøgger, Handout, 10)

nature is depicted accurately, but also attributed with cultural constructs.

Nature writing has a dual function of representing accurately and constructing by

use of anthropomorphism and other cultural imagery because this creates awareness in

the reader and nature’s presence as well as its multiple and complex signification.

Bibliography

Brøgger, Fredrik Chr. Handout: “Theory of the Study of Nature Writing”, University of Tromsø, 2002

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Buell, Lawrence. “Representing the Environment”, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995

Dickinson, Emily. The Poems of Emily Dickinson, 1960, in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, fifth ed., vol. 1, gen. ed. Nina Baym, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1998

Lopez, Barry. “Landscape and Narrative”, Crossing Open Ground, Vintage, New York, 1978

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick, 1851, in Moby Dick by Herman Melville, ed. Charles Child Walcutt, Bantam Books, New York, 1981

Muir, John. “The Range of Light”, The Mountains of California, 1894, in The Wilderness Reader, ed. Frank Bergon, NAL, New York, 1980

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden, or Life in the Woods, 1854, in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, fifth ed., vol. 1, gen. ed. Nina Baym, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1998

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Nature as Literary Metaphor

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