The Green World

Shakespeare’s Ophelia in Hamlet is in mourning, crazed about her dead father, Polonius, as well as her lover, Hamlet. He now seems a stranger to her. She must somehow deal with the fact that he killed her father, and she does this by visiting the garden to pick herbs and wildflowers.  So when Ophelia attempts to transcend her own misfortune, the garden’s beauty provides the only place where she feels safe. Ophelia dies, but a death made more meaningful because of the time she spent within “her garden walls.”

Shakespeare plants the seeds that the modern world must learn to nurture: the green world can be the balm for life’s tragic events. Like this Renaissance tragic heroine, we have a psychological need for the “fair quiet.” In other words, the green world offers us comforting shade.

The natural, or “green world,” is described by Northrop Frye as a place of magic, often used in Renaissance comedies where characters escape society’s trappings, where problems are solved and lives are put right.

So now comes our left-right divide over climate change. In the U.S. we do not seem to have the ability to face dichotomies with adult intention. We quarrel over competing positions, unable to see any merit in an opposing argument.

When I was in politics, someone who attempted to transcend left-right politics was described as being consumed by the “wimp factor.”

The world is not made of one defining argument, but of many competing principals, many of which only hold sway for a brief while.

It seems to me that we should respect the green world for the value it offers to humanity. After all, Genesis says that we were placed here to be stewards of God’s creation, not masters over it.