Director, Environmental Studies
Professor of English

STUDY QUESTIONS
Wendell Berry, “The Gift of Good Land ”
The Gift of Good Land . San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981. 267-281

1. What are his two tasks? (267)

2. What does Berry think is lacking in traditional Christianity? (267)

3. What are his arguments against Lynn White's article? (268-9)

4. Why does he focus on the story of the Promised Land? According to Berry , what is the relationship between this story and the American notion of manifest destiny? What, for Berry , is the ecological message of the story? (269-274)

5. What is the meaning and significance of "all Creation exists as a bond"? (273)

6. "Charity is...also a practical virtue." (274) What does he mean, and what does this virtue require?

7. What is the "The ability to be good"? (275) What is required?

8. What kind of thing is stewardship? What does it require? (275)

9. According to Berry , why has the Judeo-Christian tradition not provided a concrete notion of right livelihood? (276-277). Do you think this is true? If it is, why do you think Christianity has not provided it?

10. Berry says that Industrial Revolution replaced the traditional principle of good work with a new secularized version of the heroic tradition. (277) What does he mean, why does he say it, and what is wrong with this new heroic tradition?

11. What, for Berry , is true materialism, and what is the opposite of industrial heroism? (278-279)

12. How should we try to solve problems? (279ff)

13. "Application is the most important work." (280) In what way? What does it involve?

14. "The regulation of abomination is a modern governmental exercise that never succeeds." (281) What does he mean? Why does he say it?

15. "To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation." What does he mean? Why does he say it?

16. In this essay, what is Berry urging the reader to do? What would be required to do that? What would keep a reader from doing that? Does the essay motivate you to do that? Why or why not?

17. How are Berry ’s views in this article related to bioregionalism? How do his views differ from those of writers we have studied so far, either opposed ideas or distinctive development of them?

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