The power of nature: the thing that does not know you are there

Does lightning ever strike the same place twice? The old saying says never, so a building that has been hit should be safe. The Empire State Building in New York is hit by lightning roughly two dozen times a year. Lightning has no memory and no aim. It is not angry with the building; it does not know the building is there in any way that matters. Now three poems. A mountain that never moves. A storm that hits nothing. Weather that kills more men than the enemy does. In each one, the thing with all the power does not even know you are there. Each poem gives that blank power a different shape, starting with a mountain.

The claim: nature's power in this cluster is indifference, not malice. Indifference means not caring either way. Four moves show it. Move one: The Prelude. When the mountain rises over the boy, Wordsworth's language runs out: "a huge peak, black and huge". He can only repeat the word. And the mountain never touches him. Its power is measured in what it leaves in a mind: it becomes "a trouble to my dreams". Wordsworth says what moves through his mind for days afterwards: "huge and mighty forms, that do not live Like living men". They are not monsters with a grudge. A force that does not live the way people do cannot care about them either. Move two: Storm on the Island. Heaney opens on a claim of readiness, "We are prepared: we build our houses squat", so that the poem can take it apart. So what do the islanders say they fear, in the last line: the sea, the wind, or nothing? Nothing, or rather "a huge nothing": "it is a huge nothing that we fear". Heaney's islanders are up against empty air, a threat with no body, so preparation was never the point. Move three: Exposure. Owen gives the weather the weapon from the first line: "Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us ...". The human enemy never arrives, and the cold does the killing. Owen even ranks the two enemies: "Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence. Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow". The guns are there, and the weather is worse. Now a different question: why is a force that does not know you more frightening than one that hates you? Because you cannot bargain with a force like that, fight it or win it over. Hatred at least means somebody has noticed you. Indifference means nothing will ever respond. And the claim lands on Ozymandias: "The lone and level sands stretch far away." Nature does not fight the empire. It simply outlasts it, and flattens out.

So indifference is the strand. Nature's power in this cluster is not malice. That is exactly why an answer comparing the weather in each poem has nowhere to go, and an answer about what each poet decides the enemy is has everywhere to go.

One examiner's report names the trap with two of these poems: In Power and conflict many students who chose to compare Exposure with Storm on the Island then wrote about the weather in each but they were often less successful in trying to write about conflict in Northern Ireland. Notice where those answers struggled: not on the weather, but when they reached for Northern Ireland. The fix is to keep the comparison inside the poems, on what each poet decides the enemy is. In Exposure it is the cold, and the waiting; in Storm on the Island it is a huge nothing, fear itself.

Now a practice question to plan: compare how two poets present nature as something people cannot control. Three steps help. Decide what the enemy is in each poem before you write a word. Ask whether the force in each poem knows the people are there. Then find where each poem admits it cannot describe the thing. Have a go at this one before I show you: plan Exposure with Storm on the Island. Here is a plan. The claim: in both poems the enemy is an absence, and that is what makes nature unbeatable. Exposure: the enemy soldiers never come, the cold kills instead, and the refrain admits nothing happens. Storm on the Island: the islanders are ready for everything, and the enemy turns out to be a huge nothing. Neither force knows the people are there. And both poems end by admitting the thing cannot be named: nothing happens, and a huge nothing. The ending: Owen's absence kills slowly, and Heaney's frightens, so the comparison is about two kinds of nothing, not two kinds of weather. Two wrong turns to avoid. Writing about the weather in each poem gives you a list, not an argument. And bolting the Troubles onto Storm on the Island because you learned it leaves the poem behind.

One round of four questions to close the strand, ending on a poem we have not used. In one word, is nature's power in this cluster malice or indifference? Indifference. Nature's power never notices the people it overwhelms. Now Ozymandias: what stretches far away at the end? The lone and level sands, which outlast the empire far away without a fight. Try Heaney's island: what does it fear, in the last line? A huge nothing. Heaney's island fears an enemy with no body. One more: Bayonet Charge's yellow hare is caught in gunfire. Is nature the power there, or the victim? The victim. In Bayonet Charge the war harms nature, which turns the strand upside down: a useful contrast beside Exposure, where nature does the harming. Lightning strikes the same building again and again without knowing it is there. These poems give nature that same blank power, and the people in them feel every bit of it.

Name the enemy in two of these poems, a word apiece, and you're happy with this one; the thumb records it. Otherwise lean on the single-poem videos on Exposure and Storm on the Island, which make this one easier.

Next in the chapter: Identity and belonging: who you are when the place is taken away. Hopefully that's next in your feed, but if not, search for ScholaFly E L four oh, two one.

Every other video is on scholafly.com too, easy to search by video code or by keyword. Whatever you're revising, go there and have a look, or, watch the next video.