RA grading help
Thank you in advance! Your help is very greatly appreciated. Here is the source of the prompt, if it helps: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap25-frq-english-language-set-2.pdf
Many peoples throughout the course of human history, from the indigenous Americans living long before European exploration in the West to the followers of the transcendentalist movement led by Ralph Waldo Emerson, have identified the deeply meaningful, oftentimes spiritual, character of the natural environment. Raquel Vasquez Gilliland, a Mexican-American poet, reflected this sentiment in her 2023 opinion article in the New York Times encouraging readers to engage with the natural world amid an era of increased indoor activity and urbanization at the expense of natural environments. By asserting the ability of nature to tell stories, by highlighting the deep sensory beauty of nature, and by describing nature as a means of connection to the past, Gilliland calls her audience to spend greater amounts of their time in and among nature to experience the enlightenment and serenity it provides.
Gilliland begins her article by highlighting the story-telling ability possessed by nature. She starts by recounting stories of a dove her grandmother nursed back to health would “land in her hand after she called out to it,” or how her mother “would take a steak knife … to the sky to cut the rain away,” leaving her friends thinking that “it was magical how nature seemed to bend to their will.” Here, Gilliland uses anecdotes from her childhood to show her audience how even simple encounters with nature can bring one to the knowledge of a vast story of many interconnected organisms much bigger than oneself. Gilliland goes on to describe how she greatly values nature as an author, as “the idea of [her] first novel came tumbling to [her] when [she] was out on a walk,” describing the experience “as if a piece of the sky had been cut over” her. Gilliland uses another anecdote to show her readers how nature has the ability to foster one’s creativity and to thus enable them to discover and share their own stories. To summarize, Gilliland begins this article using anecdotes to encourage her readers to spend time in nature by showing how connection with nature alerts individuals to their own stories as well as to the broader, deeper story hidden within their surroundings.
Gilliland continues her article by highlighting the great degree of beauty one is exposed to by spending time in nature. She describes how after her failed attempts to grow produce on her land, she embraced the land’s potential for growing flowers, “breeding zinnias, cosmos, and dahlias,” and that the flowers, each “rich as a jewel,” attracts native insects “to feast where there was once nothing but a wasteland.” Gilliland uses the juxtaposition of the beauty of the flowers and their ability to draw insects to “feast” with her declaration of the land’s former appearance as a “wasteland” to demonstrate to her audience that cooperating with one’s natural environment has the potential to bring about a great beauty that would not have otherwise been possible. Gilliland goes on to describe how in order to combat periods of diminished creativity, she walks “barefoot on the earth, … allowing stories to feed the roots of her entire body,” or she visits her “lemon and lime basil, staining [her] fingers with their citrus scents.” Gilliland uses these imagery-heavy anecdotes to demonstrate to her readers that nature has the power to greatly enlighten us if we allow it to take over every aspect of our senses, not just visual but kinesthetic and olfactory stimulation as well. To conclude, Gilliland, in the middle of her article, seeks to encourage her audience to connect with nature to take advantage of its multi-sensory beauty that we cannot find elsewhere.
Gilliland finishes the article by highlighting how nature can connect us to our ancestry and to the past generations of humanity. Gilliand notes how as the seasons change, her “focus moves from leaves and blooms to the change in angle of the sunlight,” and about how “it has shifted over the entire lineage of humans, signaling to the trees to change from green to citrine.” She uses this appeal to our ancestors in order to show her readers how connecting with nature, by extension, connects us with the vast number of humans throughout history who have gone before us who have experienced the same awe-inspiring natural phenomena. She goes on to note how she believes that “the stories [her] grandmother still tells … have inklings of those the animals, trees, and rivers shared with our ancestors,” and that “paying attention to what the land has to say is how [she honors] this legacy.” Gilliland appeals to her grandmother and to our much earlier ancestors to further demonstrate to her audience that the passing down of the stories surrounding nature are an invaluable source of connection with generations past we could not have otherwise. To summarize, Gilliland seeks to encourage her readers to interact with nature because it provides for us a deep connection with our ancestors, about whom we know very little, other than that they experienced a similar connection to their natural environment.
In conclusion, by highlighting the ability of nature to convey stories, sensory beauty, and connection to our past, Gilliland, through the use of rhetorical strategies such as anecdotes, appeals to ancestral authority, juxtaposition, and imagery, encourages her audience to spend time in nature in order to grow as more enlightened individuals.