The founding fathers of the United States cherished the pastoral landscape of the New World. Jefferson wanted to build small, rural, agricultural communities rather than large cities as in Europe. Native Americans showed their reverence for nature in their songs and stories. For over two centuries, the Edenic myth inspired the American writers. The central theme of American literature, broadly viewed, is the individual and his environment. Bryant, a New England poet, praises the beauty in nature in The Prairies, A Forest Hymn, etc. Emerson's Nature is a plea for living in harmony with nature. Thoreau demonstrates through his retreat to Waldenhow the basic needs of man could be met without damaging nature and its processes. Thorean is critical of technology and industry, which deform the landscape. Hawthorne, Melville, Cooper, Mark Twain, and others also celebrate the wilderness and the frontier. The demands of the civil war changed the American environment. Industries, urbanization, and mass consumption destroyed the older, simpler community life. The 20th century writers from Anderson to Ginsberg express their anguish over environmental degradation. Thoreau's Walden pond, Cooper's forests and plains, Hemingway's African jungles, and Frost's New England pastures are all variations on the same Edenic ideal.

The United States may be considered a vast experiment in building an utopia, a continental size garden, where initially Europeans of different nationalities sought refuge, peace and happiness. Thomas Jefferson and his compatriots desired to preserve the pastoral landscapeof the New World and build a new nation of small, rural, communities, quite unlike what they had left behind in Europe. The recurring themes of wilderness, frontier and the great outdoors are central tothe American imagination. Paradoxically, Americans are large consumers of resources and lovers ofnature at the same time. Similarly, it is ironical that Thomas Jefferson was dreaming of ushering in an Arcadia in America, when the Industrial Revolution was sweeping over Europe and knocking at the gates of the young nation.

The native Americans understood nature and man’s relationship to it quite well. For them natureand man are not antithetical, but complementary. Their tales are replete with dialogues between men and animals. Such interaction with nature enabled the Native Americans to live in harmony with nature like many other aboriginal people in other parts of the world.

The Green Tradition in American Literature, pastoral landscape, rural, agricultural communities, American writers, indianeconomiy, finance, resources, American environment, American imagination, Edenic ideal, Industries, urbanization, and mass consumption.