Strange Things About City Life
The differences between urbanites and country people are an old story in literature and commentary. Shakespeare often has a country bumpkin for audiences to laugh at in his plays. Children of all countries are told a bedtime story about the country mouse who comes to visit the city mouse. Common sayings often remind us of the ironies of life by contrasting rural and urban origins. It has been said in many languages that the eager country boy comes to the city to have a brilliant career for the express purpose of buying a nice house in the country in which to retire. In the two essays to be discussed in the following the authors contrast urban and rural life. Henry Fairlie (1924-1990) is British and writes in a manner that is often"tongue- in- cheek" to point to some of the amusing thing about the way that people take to city life. Underlying Fairlie's humor, however, is a longing for a vanished world in which there were sharp differences between city and country. Charles Creekmore (b.1945) brings a younger and much more American perspective to the same discussion. Where Fairlie appears to despair of the future of the human race which is jammed together into cities, Creekmore defends city life saying that it has more to o
He is lined up at a toll booth trying to get out of the city and one of the charming people who works there screams at him to "Grow up!" Creekmore begins his praise of the city on an unhappy note when he talks about this confrontation: "To me the incident has always summed up the essence of what cities are: hotbeds of small embarrassments, de-humanizing confrontations, monetary setbacks, angry people, and festering acts of God"(532). Fairlie seems to be saying that we would have a better world if the old boundary lines between city and country could be re-established. Some people spend large parts of their lives in rooms on wheels (cars) while others are jammed up against one another in public transport. He begins with some sarcastic observations about the fact that the only truly civilized creatures in the city are the rats who come out at 4 AM and lick their paws after a night of eating garbage. City life, Creekmore says, is the sort of thing that really should make a man lose his sanity. City life should drive you crazy, Creekmore says, but sociologist Leo Scrole in his Mental Health in the Metropolis: The Mid-Town Manhattan Study found that rates of mental illness are slightly higher in small towns. The fact is that the human being is a social creature and delights in human society even including the unpleasant aspects of social life. Underneath the surface differences between Fairlie and Creekmore as they view the urbanite, however, is a single purpose which is to use the opposed realities of urban/rural life to make some interesting points about the nature of human beings. He looks back with longing on a time when the captains of industry had their large mansions on the hill to look down on their factories and their workers too. The only problem this gets them into is that everybody wants this at the same time and the result is the traffic jam. City life is tough, but people feel good or even superior when they can live city life and survive. Creekmore's conclusion is surprising. All they do is complain about the place, but each complaint is an example of bragging. In his "The Idiocy of Urban Life" Henry Fairlie puts together a long list of what is silly, humiliating, and even dangerous about life in the city.
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Acceptance Essays
