Going Against Nature with T.C. Boyle

Jessica Arroyo English 116 11 April 2012 Life is hard. There ar dickens topics we take away to succeed in emotional state. We need to understand that personality is a key p congealer in life, and that it has a greater power over us than we do it. We cannot control disposition, nor can we impact what it has in wargonhousing for us. If temper, much(prenominal)(prenominal) as the weather, decides theres deprivation to be a storm this week oddity, healthful the best we can do is prep are for it. If nature creates us in bingle mode, who are we to go against it and try to qualify our species? If nature decides its deviation to slam a commit into the earth, we are helpless in the matter.Going against nature, or even questioning its methods, has its consequences and the characters of the short stories indite by T. C. Boyle seem to know this all excessively well. Nature is a greater power who demands great respect. It is not a choice in matter, but rather a forced way of lif e that we relieve oneself no means to alter, which Boyle convincingly conveys through his stories. In the story The speedy Passage of Animals, T. C. Boyle takes us on a giving adventure (91) in which a new relationship is intended to flourish by a romantic weekend getaway.The nature of the male, Zach, is to impress the young late(a)ly disassociate woman, Ontario. Though they are already dating, he is s manger courting her in hopes to shape up impress her by taking her to hike the trails and cross-country travel and then sit at the bar at the lodge till it was time to go to bed(84), by sharing the experiences with the greatest thing they have in common, their have it off for nature. Of course, there is more than(prenominal) in it for Zach than exactly enjoying the beauty nature has, he intends on fulfilling the unspoken promise percolating downstairs the simple monosyllable of her assentgoing to bed (84).Zach is using her love of nature to his fullest advantage. Nature is not something to be taken advantage of, as it is not something to be questioned or controlled. Zach, being the dominate risk-taker (79) that he believes himself to be is ab verboten to get a unscathed new taste of what nature has to offer when take advantage of for personal gain. Though Zach claims that the main agent for their trip is to explore and enjoy their common interest of nature at the sizeable Timber Lodge it is just a cover for what he really has in mind, which is going to bed with Ontario. T. C.Boyles diction throughout the beginning of the story foreshadows this unspoken (84) intention of Zach by placing details such as the soft sexy scratch of her voice shot from his eardrums right to his branching (80), and the reference of her sweater with the reindeer prancing across her breasts (81), he foreshadows the consequences of these provoking thoughts by directly come throughing them with the dangers of the sleet dark (80) path they were on. In presentation his domin ance and risk taking skills, Zach chooses not to prepare in event they get caught in a storm on the way to the Lodge.He likewise presses nature even further by choosing to take the spine road even though there was a winter storm observe out of the Southern Sierrasand he knew that it would be closed as presently as the eldest snow hit (74). All he could sound off about was getting there as fast as he could. He was eer in a hurry. Especially tonight. Especially with her (74). Zach experiences his first prick of worry (81) when he spots a sign that state Cars required with Chains (81). Perversely (95) nature enhances his worries by letting the snow paint the road with such intensity it was as if some cosmic hand had swept on ahead with a two-lane paintbrush (81). notwithstanding the skidding of the tires and the snow coming down as if it wasnt going to break short till May (88), Ontario maintains full confidence in Zach. She wasnt thoroughgoing(a) out the windshield into th e white fury of the headlights, but watching him as if they were cruising down the Coast Highway under a ripe diffuse sun (83).But even with the confidence of his potential mate, his risk taking skills, and attitude nature still manages to turn things around on him when the car skids into a boulder and lands itself in a glistening white ditch that undulated gracefully away from the hidden surface of the road (85). Zach is now completely all in the nature with Ontario, which was where he really and truly wanted to be (85). However, it is now that all of his unpreparedness be interjects apparent. He didnt have a dig in the truckno shovel, and no chains (86).No knife or hatchet, or anything to cut with (87). Nothing of any use to encourage them in getting the tires up and out of the ditch. All of their feeble attempts hardly gave the rear wheels a moments purchase which just resulted in shoving the front end in deeper (88). Nature successfully pulls this egotistical, risk taking , prideful, prevalent male down to feel less a risk taker and more a fool, callow, rash, without foresight of calculation, the sort of blighted ndividual whose genetic infirmities get swallowed up in the food chain before he can sick and pass them on to vitiate the species (86). As nature pulls Zach further and further down, deepening his misery by torrential snow and all the worries that come with leaving your car out in the middle of the wilderness (such as if the yahoos come out and strip it (92) ) in an attempt to hike to the Big Timber Lodge which was still a long thirteen miles (93) away, Ontario is extraordinarily cheerful (91).But given how miserable Zach was (91) because of the crash, he was able to pull the affirmatory outlook of Ontario down to his pessimistic level. By the end of their hike, Zach finds himself grouped into the fated and unprepared (95) sight which nature tackles with full force. His trip was ruined, as well as his time with Ontario. When they finall y reach the lodge, later on being save from the dusty by the man in the goggles(96) on a snowmobile (96), Ontario corrects Zachs request of a room to two rooms (98). In Dogology T. C.Boyle introduces us to Cynthia, or C. f. , Captial C, lowercase f (44) as she prefers to be called. She is a young woman who has finished grad school and attempting to challenge (35) the misconceptions people have about dogs. The world posts dogs as beneath them common, pedestrian, no more exotic than the housefly or the Norway rat (35). C. f. was obsessed with changing the worlds view of dogs despite the fact that the graduate committee rejected her thesis (35). creation have domestic dogs. This results in two types of dogs the wild and the domesticated.Cynthia challenges the methods of nature, by nerve-wracking to change herself into a member of the pack. She committed herself to doing things as the pack would, make a point of wearing the same things continuously for weeks on end in the expecta tion that her scent would invest them, and the scent of the pack too (40). She hoped to gain their confidence (40) by smelling like them, running with them reminding herself to always keep her head down and go quadrupedal whenever possible (35) this was how she was going to hear, smell and see as the dogs did (35).Nature did not intend for Cynthia to take on the life of the dog. She was born human, and yet what she was doing, or attempting to do, was nothing short of reorder her senses so that she could think like a dog and interpret the whole worldnot just the human worldas dogs did (35). Cynthia is subject to the consequences of challenging nature by converting yourself to a different species of the world. Though married, Cynthia commits her age to accomplishing the rhythm of dogdom (40), ignoring the needs and the wants of her husband.She throws her neighborhood into an uproar (41) to the point where theyre going to have her committed (51). Her husband locked her out (50) of th e house, leaving her to be with the dogs after a confrontation in which hed kicked her (49) out of the foiling of her research(49) which he plainly saw as bullshit (49). He wanted her back home, back in the den, and that was his right (49), however Cynthia had opposite am numberions. Truly, she was accomplished being left alone(49) to enjoy the unalloyed posy in life where the sun blessed her body as she lay streched out among the pack.However, to the average citizen it may seem all a bit too costly to sacrifice the lives we live and relationships we have all for an intellect of something so common (35). In Chicxulub we are faced with the worst scenario a parent can imagine a late night audio call, when we least expect it, stating there has been an accident (135) involving our own fille, or in this story their daughter, Madeline Biehn of 1337 Laurel Drive (135).We are rushed through a flury of emotions while paralleling the catastrophic events of Tunguska (133) and Chicxulub ( 136), a meteor (133) and asteroid (136) that had impact with the hide out with such force that they were able to flatten seven hundred straightforward miles of Siberian forest (133) and make at least seventy-five pct of all known species extinguished (136). The most recent of the two, Tunguska (133) was nearly a hundred years ago (133).No one was expecting it, as no one expects a phone call in the middle of the night axiom your child has been in a car accident. It seems nature has an awful need to demonstrate its authority every now and again, reminding us that we, and all our workings and worries and attachments, are so utterly inconsequential (139). The chances of these catastrophic events are noble-minded they are about as likely as dying in an auto accident in the next ten months, however they are not unheard of. There is nothing we can do if one of these events were to take place in our lifetime.It doesnt matter if you spend your life preparing for such a catastrophic even t, such as the most recent dooms day preparers, or you buy your daughter a Honda Civic, the safest thing on four wheels (134). If nature has a plan it willing enact and follow through with its intentions. In fact the narrator clearly states his point. Youd let out get down on your knees and pray to your gods because each year this big spinning globe we ride intersects the orbits of some twenty million asteroids (134). Sometimes, nature perversely (95) likes to hand out wake up calls.We find out after the slow striptease of death (142) as the sheet draws back (142) from the gurney where the supposed dead Madeline is to be, that their daughter is not in the hospital (143). Their daughter is exactly where she is supposed to be asleep in her room (143). It was a mistaken identity because Madeline loaned her ID to her second-best friend, Kristi Cherwin (143). The narrator of the story, rushing still with the euphoria realizes that this is not his daughter, and in fact not the Chicxulu b of his lifetime.However he is left with a regenerate perspective that the rock is coming, the new Chicxulub, hurtling through the dark and the cold to remake our fate (144). So it is through the stories that we have a renewed sense that nature is much more than a companion in life. Much more than just the flowers, and trees we pass by as we are cruising down the Coast Highway under a ripe subtle sun (83), much more powerful than our tactics of prevention such as our Honda Civic (134), or our will to undue to the simplification of our domesticated house pets.Nature has created the ways that we live in today. We are merely the players on its game board, inconsequential (139), insignificant. Nature does not bend to our will, but rather, we will bend to its will. Otherwise, we will be subjected to the wrath and fury of mother-nature itself.Works Cited Boyle, T. C. Tooth and Claw. New York Viking, 2006. Blio. com. Blio. 2006. Web. 11 April. 2012.