Connecting Mankind to Nature in Out of Africa.
In Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa, the writer describes the land as if they were living in a paradise. The two main reasons for this are: the land, animals and natives complement each other; and, the natives and animals when given the choice between freedom and oppression, they would rather die than live without freedom. Dinesen proposes that Africa is a pastoral landscape in which men exist in a truer form than they do in Europe. This philosophy emerges from the "pastoral school" consistent with many nineteenth century writers and painters, who believed that man exists in his most godlike form when he has a strong connection to nature. It is through this philosophy that Dinesen is able to show the effects of the locale on the narrative and characters.
First, the land, animals and natives complement each other as though they were living in a paradise. In Part I, Chapter I, the author introduces a setting of tremendous beauty: " combined to create a landscape .There was no fat on it and no luxuriance anywhere; it was Africa distilled like the strong and refined essence of a continent . or a heroic and romantic air whole wood were faintly vibrating .Everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequalled nobility " " : Here I am, where I ought to be " (p.3-4). She also describes the mountains: "The hill country is tremendously big, picturesque and mysterious; varied with long valleys, thickets, green slopes and rocky crags " (p.6). The landscape of the narrator's African home is shown to have had a tremendous effect on her due to the length at which her descriptions go. Dinesen alludes to the Bible and the story of the Garden of Eden when she talks about snakes: " Only to the godly man this beauty and gracefulness are in themselves loathsome, they smell from perdition, and remind him of the fall of man. Something within him makes him run away from the snake as from the devil, and that is what is called the voice of conscience .