1. Alexander Pope assumes an authoritative voice in “An Essay on Man.” These lines, beginning with “All nature is but art,” and ending with “whatever is, is right” are declarative statements in keeping with the general tone and theme of the poem. In “An Essay on Man,” Pope seeks to situate humankind in the natural order of the universe. Pope shows the potential and the limitations of human beings, encouraging an attitude of humility.By stating, “All nature is but art,” Pope affirms the ineffable beauty of nature: which is one thing that humankind certainly does not create. As much as human beings can interfere with nature or adjust nature for functional or aesthetic purposes, nature is “art” on another level: a creative, perhaps divine level. Pope then refers to “all chance, direction, which thou canst not see,” which reiterates the meaning of the previous line about nature being naught but art. Human beings cannot possibly understand the meaning behind creation, and should simply appreciate its beauty and inherent harmony.
Human beings do struggle with why there is evil in the world, and what the meaning of life might be. In these lines from “An Essay on Man,” Pope urges greater humility with regards to the human position. Human beings might not actually have the capacity to ever understand the meaning of life, or why evil exists. “One truth is clear,” claims the speaker: “whatever is right, is right.” In other words, if something exists, it exists for a reason and that reason might be far bigger than the human being can understand at this point in time. Pope urges acceptance and a willingness to surrender to a higher intelligence.
2. Also in “An Essay on Man,” Alexander Pope seems to pander to the racist tropes of his time, referring to the “poor Indian! Whose untutored mind / Sees god in clouds,...
While it seems initially that Pope buys into the colonialist mentality, reading this passage in the overall context of “An Essay on Man” shows that perhaps Pope actually sympathizes more with the Native American outlook than with the European.
“An Essay on Man” urges humility overall, on a perspective that does not necessarily elevate the human being above nature but actually shows how human beings are just one small part of creation. In these lines, Pope seems to show that the Native American worldview is more akin to reality: in that the Native American sees God in nature. The Christian, on the other hand, are disrupters, people who “thirst for Gold,” and thereby rape nature for its economic expediency rather than recognize the inherent value in its sheer beauty and spirituality.
The Native American worldview is one that may seem simplistic to the Christian, who has a litany of written texts claimed to be the word of God. Yet the Native American possesses the whole of nature: from the weather and the sunlight to every leaf on every tree in the “depth of woods.” Far from denouncing the indigenous worldview, Pope actually seems to be celebrating it in “An Essay on Man.”
3. The birth of America occurred within a specific historical framework and was contingent upon Enlightenment philosophy. When Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, he did so not out of nowhere, but within the overall context of Enlightenment theory. The Declaration of Independence is frequently considered a political document, but in fact it is also a precursor of Romanticism in literature and…
