Golden Age example essay topic

An age without work, worries or evil appeals to many people because it can be shaped into their own personal utopia. The Golden Age poses as the topic for many poems, stories, and other works of literature from many different cultures because of the way that it is easily shaped and molded to what the author and audience view it as. The Greek myth, The Four Ages, deals with the way the humans slowly learned more and the ages changed from the Golden Age, a peaceful time without work or worries, to the Iron Age where death, destruction and evil surrounded everything. Woodstock, by Joni Mitchell, describes her Golden Age, where all men would be one with nature and celebrations would ring out everywhere. "We were half a million strong / And everywhere there was song and celebration" (Mitchell ll.

25-26). Joni Mitchell's idea of the Golden Age shares common threads with many poems and short stories such as, Lake Isle of Innis free by William Butler Yeats, The Four Ages, the Greek Myth written by Ovid, and The World Is Too Much With Us; Late and Soon by William Wordsworth. The Golden Age is shown in many different ways, yet all these pieces of literature hold the subject of the Golden Age and share the ideas of wanting to be closer to nature, that people are destroying and taking advantage of what they have on earth, and that people should return to an age of innocence without knowledge, worries or war. The idea of being closer to nature plays a prevalent role in many of the poems and short stories dealing with the Golden Age. "The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; / The winds that will be howling at al hours, / And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; / For this, for everything we are out of tune" (Wordsworth ll. 6-9).

Many people picture the Golden Age as a time where nature is the only provider for people. It gives food, shelter, warmth, and above all life to everything. "And Earth, untroubled, / Unmarried by hoe or plowshare, brought forth all / That men had need for, and those men were happy" (Ovid ll. 14-16). Earth and nature providing all necessities for man seems too good to be true to many, yet there are a large group of authors and their audiences who believe that a time the earth does provide everything necessary for life would be wonderful.

People tend to abuse and neglect things that surround them in a day-to-day basis. "THE world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and Spending, we lay waste our powers: / Little we see in Nature that is ours" (Wordsworth ll. 1-3). Wordsworth expresses his opinions on how people use the earth without putting anything back into it when the earth really does not belong to them.

The people are "using" and "spending" the land and have become completely dependent on the products they are making from the destruction of the earth. The people do not realize how much damage they are causing to the earth, and will not realize until it is to late for them to correct. Wordsworth, and all of the other authors that were mentioned earlier, resent the damage that the destructive people are causing and wish to continue to live their lives the way that the Pagans did. "And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: / Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for honeybee, / And live alone in the bee-loud glade" (Yeats ll. 2-4) Yeats, like Wordsworth, would prefer to live amongst nature instead of around the destructive men. The Golden Age was basically a time of innocence.

There were no worries, no work, no fights and no wars. People had to do nothing more than support themselves with what they found on the earth, and with everything that the earth gave to them". Men were content at home, and had no towns / With moats and walls around them; and no trumpets / Blared out alarms; things like swords and helmets / Had not yet been heard of. No one needed soldiers.

/ People were unaggressive, and un anxious; / The years went by in peace" (Ovid ll. 9-14). During the Golden Age, everything was handed to the people from the earth. The only worry that the people who had lived in the Golden Age was finding the berries that they wanted to eat. (Ovid ll. 17-19) The innocence that the people had during the Golden Age was destroyed because of the newer and 'better' knowledge that they came up with.

The new knowledge led to harder lives, more work, fights and eventually war. It brought Evil into the world that was once a carefree and happy place. "And I dreamed I saw the bombers / Riding Shotgun in the sky / And they were turning into butterflies / About our Nation" (Mitchell ll. 27-30). The innocence that the Golden Age contained was poisoned by knowledge, which eventually overpowered and destroyed it. It is very plain to see that many people would prefer to live in a world with innocence and a lack of knowledge, but that would mean that people would need to give up all of the luxuries that they are so used to having.

The Golden Age is a variety of things to many people. It gives people the freedom to come up with their own ideas of what the perfect way of life would be. The Golden Age was never officially defined, and no one knows for sure if it existed or not, but it does give people hope that things could be perfect, or close to it, once again. The Among many, Mitchell, Yeats, Ovid and Wordsworth are only examples of authors that have added their own touches to what the Golden Age really was, if it even existed. Common themes that are usually involved when authors write about the Golden Age are people wanting to be closer to nature, the contempt that the author has for the mindless destruction of nature that inconsiderate people are causing, and how the author wants to return to a time of innocence before knowledge, work, worries, and wars.

The Golden Age provides some hope to people that life can be perfect if people would give up on the evils that surround them day-to-day. Unfortunately, the Golden Age will never be achieved again because people are not willing to give up the knowledge or the luxuries that they have.