My Little Bit Of Country Essay

My Little Bit of Country

As humans we are always haunting the feeling of belonging. Not only the feeling of belonging to someone we love, but also figuring out the place where we feel home and safe. The feeling of belonging clarifies the ideal lifestyle for every individual. Some people find the feeling of belonging in a small suburb surrounded by an untamed nature. Others belong to a life surrounded by millions of people and skyscrapers. Once again, the feeling of belonging is a mindset that makes us value different kinds of lifestyles – a feeling that makes us diverge from each other. In the essay “My Little of Country” (2012) written by Susan Cheever, the thoughts about living and belonging to the city-life are being divulged to the reader.

The essayist is arguing from her point of view of living her ideal life in the big city. Throughout, the essay is composed from a strict personal point of view. The personal point of view and form of argumentation is being clarified from the beginning by the title “My Little Bit of Country”. The essay is following a chronological structure and is composed of two sections. The first section is representing the past where Cheever is recalling old memories from her childhood in New York City. The old memories of New York City are loaded with positive feelings, which appeals to the readers’ emotions. “My earliest memories are of summer mornings in Central Park with my father after he came home from fighting World War II” (P.1 –l. 1-4). By the use of this as an opening line, and the mentioning of her father fighting in World War II it clarifies her feelings, and the strong importance of the memories from the big city creates sympathy from the beginning.

Susan Cheever starts off in the first section by comparing herself with a yak trapped in the Central Park Zoo. “Something about him suggested a great acceptance of the world in which he found himself so far from his snowy native mountains and bubbling brooks” (p 1. – l. 24-27). By using the yak as an example to amplify her feelings and the situation when she is forced to go living on the country with her parents – her feeling of belonging in the city gets clarified. The use of an animal that is locked up in a place it does not belong to, appeals again to the readers emotions.

Susan Cheever’s argumentation is build up with a unilateral positive opinion of the city-life supported by the use of negatively and positively loaded contrasts. The contrasts illustrate her strong opinion of her ideal life in the city and the differences between the life in the country and in the city. The city is stated as a place of dreams – a safe place to be – a place where pieces of nature also exist. “Later in my life I heard Andy Warhol say that it was better to live in the city than the country because in the city he could find a little bit of country, but in the country there was no little bit of city” (p. 3 – l. 140 -149). Susan Cheever arguments that the city contains the best of both sides, and by that she refers to Central Park and The Central Park Zoo as the pieces of nature. In the same time this quotation also amplifies the meaning of the essay’s title, and how she feels that the city contains everything she needs to contain a successful life.

People often associate the nature with an idyllic and peaceful place where people escape to when things get rough, but in Susan Cheever’s essay nature and country are depicted with an ironic attitude. “When we went to visit my parents’ friends who had already made the move to Westchester or New Jersey, the so-called idyll of suburbia seemed a shabby comedown from Central Park” (p. 2 – l. 105-110). In the same way Cheever uses negatively loaded adjectives to depict the country as a dangerous and rough place to be contrasting to the city. “Why would I want to scrape around the rough, dangerous ice of a country lake when I could glide around the smooth ice” (p. 2 – l. 115-117).

The last section is representing the present. The use of both memories from the past and experiences from the present, amplifies her strong opinions and feelings toward the life on the country and in the city. In the last section Susan Cheever mentions how great an importance Central Park has had during her life, and how the park has turned into a tradition for special and memorable occasions. “For the past fifteen years, on New Years Eve we have we have gone to the Central Park (…) Our summer traditions happens on or around my birthday at the end of July” (p. 4 – l. 142-44 / 159-161). Her use of contrast, her unilateral opinions and experience-argumentation that appeals to the reader’s feelings, depicts the mindset of most modern people who lives their lives in the big city. In todays society most modern people no longer associate the country and the nature with a place where the human being belong. Still - belonging to either the lifestyle in the city or on the country is an individual feeling and choice. Furthermore it is a statement that the modern society - a result of the urbanization – has made great changes to the human mindset and values in life. The modern people have now adapted to the life in the big cities surrounded by millions of people and grey skyscrapers that either makes us feel more powerful and successful or small, alienated and alone in a big city as New York.