An Essay about a Place
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An Essay about a Place
PLACE AND CHARACTER
Now you will read an essay which deals with this topic: the effect of place on character. It is often difficult to separate character from setting, as you will learn later in this course. The physical context in which we are born, grow up, and live have an intense impact on who we are and how we live. Would you be the same person you are right now if you had grown up in an igloo, the mountains of Tibet, a desert, or a high rise in Hong Kong? Both the physical geography and the social context of our homes have an impact on us, whether we like it or not.
LANDSCAPE AND MEMORY
Landscape evokes memories in all of us. The noted naturalist Henry David Thoreau once wrote, "It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves." When we think of a place, many images and memories come to mind based on our own experiences. Imagine that you had, in fact, grown up in an apartment in Hong Kong. The word "city" would create an entirely different mental image for you than if the "city" you knew was Lethbridge, Alberta or Kelowna, British Columbia.
Landscape evokes memories in all of us. The noted naturalist Henry David Thoreau once wrote, "It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves." When we think of a place, many images and memories come to mind based on our own experiences. Imagine that you had, in fact, grown up in an apartment in Hong Kong. The word "city" would create an entirely different mental image for you than if the "city" you knew was Lethbridge, Alberta or Kelowna, British Columbia.
If you had never lived anywhere except the Swiss Alps, a "mountain" would conjure up a different picture than if you had grown up in Saskatchewan and had never seen a mountain higher than a few hundred meters. The context of our own experience will influence what images come to mind when we read. This, in turn, will affect our understanding of the text.