Essay 7

FINAL DRAFT

Madeline

English 9

Mr. Salsich

November 10, 2009

Clinging to Nothing:

An Essay about Loren Eiseley's "The Brown Wasps"

Change is terrifying. It is a natural instinct to prefer the warmth and comfort of something familiar to the murky fog of the unknown. So, when well-known things change, humans and animals cling to the leftovers, as a means of escaping the frightening adjustments in our lives. In Loren Eiseley's "The Brown Wasps," the author discusses this instinct through observations and personal experience, and Eiseley's essay reminded me of something that happened to me when I was young.

TS To me, the theme of Loren Eiseley's essay "The Brown Wasps" is change, and how change affects life. SD Whether it be due to natural causes or human disturbances, the world around us is always changing. CM Seasons continue to flow in their eternal cycle of death and regrowth; bulldozers and backhoes are always present, reshaping fields into parking lots. CM In fact, the natural world can "[modify] its appearances so fast that everything takes on an aspect of illusion," because nothing ever stays the same for more than a moment. SD "The Brown Wasps" also shows the unwillingness of humans and animals to accept change, and how this aversion causes us to "cling to a time and place because without them [we] are lost." CM In his essay, Eiseley seems to be suggesting that living things are scared of change, so they try to find familiarity wherever they can, just as the lost field mouse tried to dig "a remembered field" in a flower pot, or as the pigeons of the El "returned [to the abandoned train station] because the hubbub of the wreckers had convinced them that [their] river [of food and life] was about to flow once more." CM Living things fear change because they instinctively fear the unknown, so when inevitable changes occur, creatures of all sizes desperately search among the frightening new to find a fragment of the comforting, well-known old. SD Change also evokes feelings of sadness and sentimentality, shown when Eiseley returns to his childhood home to find the tree that had "been growing in [his] mind" for all those years was gone. CM When things we expect disappear, we humans feel lost, abandoned, because it seems as though all we know has been stripped off and taken away. CM Change affected Eiseley so much that he suddenly felt as though he can't depend on anything anymore, as though the world was rolling forward, but he was being left behind; change devastated him. CS The foundation of "The Brown Wasps" is the idea that the world will never stop its metamorphosis from one thing to the next, and this lack of stability creates a human and animal need for a place that is known, a place that never changes, a safe haven amidst chaos.

TS The theme of change in "The Brown Wasps" reminded me of something that happened to me when I was in fourth grade. SD A new gymnasium was being built at my school, and in order to clear the land, construction workers cut down two towering maple trees on the school grounds, and my classmates and I were deeply upset. CM We found the change cruelly unnecessary,and we fervently chanted, "Down with construction! Up with trees!" until we were scolded by our teacher. CM My friends and I had played in the shade of those trees every recess, hunting for pillbugs and leaping from root to root, and as I watched out the classroom window as my beautiful tree-friends were destroyed, I remember feeling pain and anger, because memories, my memories, were being destroyed along with them. SD Just as the wasps cling to their hives and the homeless men cling to their benches in Eiseley's essay, I tried to cling to my trees, but I failed. CM When the trees were gone, their strong, majestic branches having been reduced to feeble wood chips, I felt helpless, abandoned by a change that I did not want. CM I "quiver[ed] with fear in the great open sun" when I went outside that day, because my maple trees were gone, and they could not wrap me in their cooling shade, just as the creatures of the field must have felt when their world of green weeds and wildflowers was replaced with harsh, "blazing concrete." SD Another similarity between "The Brown Wasps" and my childhood experience is the trees themselves. CM Our trees both stood for our childhoods, and they were both taken away from us. CM Eiseley was crushed when he returned to his home to find that he "was attached by a thread to a thing [, his tree,] that had never been there," and when my maple trees disappeared, I felt like a bridge attaching me to my memories had been washed away. CS The change that I experienced in fourth grade is similar to the changes the homeless men, wasps, mice, pigeons and the author himself experienced; an important, familiar thread was broken, and we were all left feeling lost.

When something changes, when something we know goes away, we are left with a gaping wound, a hole that was once filled, but is now empty. We search desperately to find the remains of something familiar, or to create an imitation of what we once knew. For both Loren Eiseley and myself, trees stood for stability and safety and the carefree days of childhood, and when our trees were taken away, we were both devastated. We were both left with the urgent longing for something else to cling to, for something else to protect us. The change was terrifying.