Director, Environmental Studies
Professor of English

STUDY QUESTIONS

Wendell Berry, “A Native Hill” part 1

At Home on the Earth, 45-50

1. What are the basic characteristics of the account of “The Battle of the Fire-Brands?” What does Berry say this represents about American culture?

2. What does Berry mean when he says “Their reckless violence has glamorized all our trivilialities and evils. Their aggressions have simplified our complexities and problems” (47)?

3. How does Berry compare Native Americans with the men in the fire-brand story? Why does Berry say that the men’s behavior was “neither natural nor civilized”?

4. What does Berry mean when he says the men were “placeless people” and “We still have not, in any meaningful way, arrived in America” (48, 49)? Are you “placeless?” If so, how do you react to Berry’s judgment of you? Is such a judgment valid? Is it significant?

5. How does Berry distinguish a path from a road? What does he mean when he says a road “translates place into space”? In what sense is a freeway is “a pure abstraction” (50)? Do you agree that commerce and pleasure are “abstractions” that are the “poles of our national life?” What is wrong with commerce and pleasure? He then says the freeway “is the form of speed, dissatisfaction, and anxiety”? Is it the “crudest possible valuation of life in this world?” Why have we had such a strong tendency to build roads?

6. This essay (actually, a section of a longer essay) focuses on a critique of Euro-American culture. Summarize the main points of his critique. Which do you agree with and which do you find questionable or wrong? Do you think his points are important (they can be right but insignificant)? What similarities and differences do you see between Berry’s critique of Euro-American culture and those found in Momaday and Silko?

7. You will read another section of “Native Hill” in which Berry presents a personal experience that suggests his ideal. But he does discuss certain aspects of his ideal in terms of the path. In what ways is that ideal similar to and different from the ideals presented by those Momaday and Silko? Do you agree with that ideal?

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