Richard Louv's Last Child In The Woods

As time has progressed, our society has increasingly accepted false reality. We can now each create the experience that we feel will appease our desires. Whether this be through picking a movie to watch, selecting a song to play, or striving to beat a video game, we have become masters of what is not truly present. This message perfectly embodies Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods, written in 2008. Writing to a pleasure-seeking, self-centered American society, Louv brings attention to the truth that we have lost interest and, therefore, respect for the natural world. In a melancholy and reminiscent tone, he writes in hope to begin a change, a return to a time where we were entertained by the world around us. Using paradox, polysyndeton, and parallel sentence structure as rhetorical strategies, Louv illustrates our gradual but definite separation from nature.
Louv relies heavily on paradox to strengthen his argument. He establishes a commonplace scenario found throughout America in the minds of his readers: the long, drawn out car drives
When reflecting on the past image of his generation's childhood, Louv aspires to truly slow his readers down and to fully grab their attention. "We were fascinated with roadkill, and we counted cows and horses and coyotes and shaving-cream signs, " he recalls. Louv deliberately establishes these images in his readers' heads, in a succession-like manner. To his audience, these pictures pass through the mind as he lists them simultaneously, almost as if we are driving by this sequence of events, while looking out the window of a car. By doing this, Louv hopes to define and give life to specific instances of the respect for nature that we once had. By focusing on memories, he shows us the current state of our nation: we have forsaken the natural world as a source of subtle but long-lasting inspiration for, electric stimulation of our