Elemental Reflections: Nature and the Human Experience

690 Words3 Pages
II. Elemental Reflections: Nature and the Human Experience The elemental essays by MacAuley provided others and myself with a different aspect and look into the natural elements around us that we are constantly overlooking. For a majority of us biology majors, I thought these essays were nicely presented to help pull us out of our textbooks and to look at the bigger picture of these elements. The two elements that connected with me personally were the elemental essays on Night and on Stone. For the essay Night, the author provides the different aspects that are attributed to the night. Generally when someone thinks of nighttime they just think about it as the end of a day and moving on to the next day. However, in the essay it is demonstrated that night has various meanings and significances in our lives. MacAuley states that night provides a mysterious, and impenetrable depth of fear and darkness to an individual. He also demonstrates how various artists are able to portray night as a beautiful landscape and create the opposite feeling of fear. Throughout the essay the author references Van Gogh’s painting of the “Starry Night”, a famous painting that portrays the night as a mysterious beauty. This panting is one of my personal favorites because I feel it captures an aspect of night that many people over look. MacAuley also demonstrates that the night sky is not just simply dark and black. With the various artists, he demonstrates that the night sky is composed of various hues ranging from blue to purple and that it is rich and vivid in color. What is appealing to me is the contrast that MacAuley presents. He opens up the essay showing how night can be seen as a feared time full of predictions and mysteries, that for most people what they fear in night is the idea of not knowing what lies ahead. He contrasts this to how the nighttime can also be seen as
Open Document