Garden of Eden ch.14 (Lost Illusions) Caitlin McClafferty

Garden of Eden ch.14 (Lost Illusions): In Chapter 14, Evan Eisenberg uses the concept of Arcadia to describe the "middle ground" that Americans tried to maintain. While "Eden" represents the wild, "Arcadia" is to symbolize the dream of the small farmer having a landscape that is half-wild and half-tamed. The chapter discusses the realization that the New World was not infinite or invincible. Eisenberg talked about the collision between the romanticized vision of nature, and the reality of the 19th and 20th centuries. 

“By building walls against the wild, we have also built walls against the songs that once taught us how to live in it." -Eisenburg

Eisenberg uses Greek mythology in this chapter, specifically the conflict between Pan and Apollo. Eisenberg talks about the "Death of Pan" which is an ancient myth. In this chapter, Pan dies when the American wilderness is fully fenced, surveyed, and silenced by the noise of industry. Eisenberg argues that early Americans viewed the wilderness not as something to be preserved but as a "storehouse" provided by God. Because the continent seemed so infinite, the illusion was that we could never truly exhaust its resources. This led to a culture of waste and rapid expansion. To Emerson, being a Transcendentalist meant believing that the most important truths in the universe cannot be found through logic, science, or the five senses alone. He believed we need to look deeper, and that they "transcend" the physical world and are only felt through intuition and the individual soul. By the end of the chapter, the "illusion" is fully lost. Nature is no longer seen as a sacred temple (The Mountain of God) but as a natural resource. We stopped seeing ourselves as part of the ecosystem and started seeing ourselves as its managers. Eisenberg talks about how there is nothing wrong with wanting to find a middle ground but that the error is in thinking that once we find that middle ground we are safe. He discusses how the world is constantly changing and developing and so the middle ground must be found repeatedly.


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