¶ … Empathy
Nature and Values: Empathy
How does this poem encourage us to develop empathy? Feel empathy? Realize empathy in our lives?
A empathy" (noun) 1. Identification with and understanding of another's situation, feelings, and motives. 2. The attribution of one's own feelings to an object.
I want to tell what the forests were like.
I will have to speak in a forgotten language.
In an increasingly urbanized and technologically sophisticated world, human beings are losing their connection with nature and the natural world. In this poem, the speaker expresses a desire to be one with nature, to connect with an earlier, presumably purer past, so he or she can tell what the forests were 'like,' what stories they have to tell the present day. This language of the natural world and intense identification with the forest on the part of the speaker requires him to speak in a foreign, 'forgotten' language. The poem encourages the reader to feel empathy with the natural, non-human parts of the past, to desire to speak the language of the trees along with the speaker by identifying with the human speaker's sense of longing and loss.
Ironically, so much of American ideology about the human relationship with the environment encourages individuals to see humanity as working to dominate nature. American ideology conceptualizes Americans as solitary, rugged individualists, fighting the forces of the earth. This poem suggests achieving 'oneness' with nature is more desirable and fulfilling. People must begin to feel a greater a commonality with things 'not like us,' such as the trees, to preserve the environment for the next generation. Only by finding such a sense of commonality with the natural world, with both the trees and with other 'unlike' people can any 'individual' feel whole and integrated with the larger world.
Through telling and hearing stories, we understand the perspective of other people. This is another reason why the speaker of the poem longs to speak in the forgotten language of the trees -- the trees have stories, voices now unheard today. The trees speak in a collective voice that has been lost, and although the speaker has not recovered their language, through yearning to recover their wisdom, he at least acknowledges his or her own incompleteness, and need for others.
