Exercises

Directions: Insert any "working definition" you think this introductory paragraph needs:

Exercise #1:

Who Will We Become?

“A measure of success in this is all well enough and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run.” (Leopold 3). In the quotation above, Aldo Leopold is expressing the idea that if you strive to succeed you must take risks and try things that are new and intimidating, in order to succeed. In David Duncan’s novel The River Why, the protagonist Gus is stuck in his safety zone of being a fisherman and claims that, “every other thing on earth’s bulbous face (besides fishing) struck me as irrelevant, distracting, a waste of my time.” (Duncan 17). I f you do not immerse yourself in unfamiliar situations, life will stay the same and nothing exciting, new, or inspiring will cause you to evolve into a better or fulfilled person.

Written in 1983 The River Why is a coming of age novel in which Gus models the modern quest of an individual for self-meaning. Gus discovers the spiritual absence in his life, which leads him on a journey of self-discovery in which he achieves in developing his own feelings and ideas of spirituality, love and environmentalism. According to the author, Gus develops native intelligence by the end of the book. Insert Working Definitions here:

In The River Why Gus claims that, “in the end it all rides on how you look at things.” (Duncan 290). Throughout the majority of Gus’s adolescence, he existed as a faithless, selfish, ignorant boy but matures into a spiritual, loving environmentalist.

A Possible Answer:

Who Will We Become?

“A measure of success in this is all well enough and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run.” (Leopold 3). In the quotation above, Aldo Leopold is expressing the idea that if you strive to succeed you must take risks and try things that are new and intimidating, in order to succeed. In David Duncan’s novel The River Why, the protagonist Gus is stuck in his safety zone of being a fisherman and claims that, “every other thing on earth’s bulbous face (besides fishing) struck me as irrelevant, distracting, a waste of my time.” (Duncan 17). If you do not immerse yourself in unfamiliar situations, life will stay the same and nothing exciting, new, or inspiring will cause you to evolve into a better or fulfilled person.

Written in 1983 The River Why is a coming of age novel in which Gus models the modern quest of a person for self-meaning. Gus discovers the spiritual absence in his life, which leads him on a journey of self-discovery in which he achieves in developing his own feelings and ideas of spirituality, love and environmentalism. According to the author, Gus develops native intelligence by the end of the book. Native intelligence is described by the protagonist here in Duncan’s novel: “Native intelligence develops through an unspoken or soft-spoken relationship with these interwoven things: it evolves as the native involves himself in his region.” (Duncan 53). Someone with native intelligence is someone who has faith in the people and events that take place around them. The belief that “perception is fatal” is a key idea that can be seen in this text. It portrays that the way one looks at things shapes how one knows the world. In The River Why Gus claims that, “in the end it all rides on how you look at things.” (Duncan 290). In order to better understand the significance of this text ecocentrism also needs to be defined. Ecocentrism is a nature based and non-human way of looking at the world that scrutinizes man’s impact on the environment. Throughout the majority of Gus’s adolescence, he existed as a faithless, selfish, ignorant boy but matures into a spiritual, loving environmentalist.