Although Wendell Berry’s first book, a novel, appeared in 1960, he did not gain significant national attention until the publication of his nonfiction manifesto, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, in 1977. Since its publication, Berry has moved increasingly toward the prose of persuasion as he continues to sharpen his argument in support of a practical, continuous harmony between the human economy and Nature. His canon as a whole – the poems, essays, and novels – is an ongoing and thorough exploration of man’s use of and relationship to the land. Arguing that the health of a culture is linked to the health of its land, Berry focuses on agriculture, particularly the growing conflict between traditional farming (which espouses a harmonious cyclic vision) and modern agribusiness (which espouses a discordant linear vision). As a traditional farmer wedded to the land, Berry derives his ideas and images largely from his practical experiences and form his devotion to careful and responsible land stewardship. He also, in his nonfiction, turns to several agricultural (as well as a few literary) writers of the past and present to lend support to his arguments. Berry’s strong sense of Nature’s cycle is the basis for his imagery of departures and returns. As a crucial part of the cycle, death is prerequisite to life, and Berry shows the importance of understanding “that the land we live on and the lives we live are the gifts of death” (Home Economics 62). The power of Nature’s cycle is at once destructive and restorative; Berry teaches that by allying our human economy more with natural cyclic processes rather than with man-made linear – and ultimately destructive – ones, we and future generations can live with hope and assurance through the possibility of renewal. Traditional farming has taught Berry the concepts which inform his poems and essays (as well as his novels and short stories, which merit a separate study beyond the scope of this paper.) For example, he has learned, and continues to learn, the importance of understanding and acknowledging the primal, and ruling, character of a “place”; of looking to Nature for guidance, instruction, and justice; and of allying farming practices to Nature’s “Wheel” of birth, growth, maturity, death, and decay. This cycle and related motifs unify and connect his central themes, particularly death as a means of renewal. In Berry’s view, one of the cruxes in the agricultural crisis is that, whereas traditional farming seeks a natural balance between growth and decay, industrial farming, because of its pull toward mass production, stresses growth only (a linear inclination), which wears out the land and leads inevitably to infertility. Tracing our modern crisis to our past and to our present character and culture, Berry shows the ramifications of our abuse of Nature’s “gifts.”

Bobbie Ann Mason uses her fiction to portray the problems in American society. She devotes most of her time to average persons who are suffering from the rapid changes that society is going through. These characters at times seem lost and helpless, but ultimately they do not give up hope for a brighter future. Through social problems such as divorce, lack of communication, loss of identity and place, obsession with the past, submersion in rock music and TV, loss of ritual, proliferation of objects, lack of education, and the need to face mortality, these characters still seem to have hope and strength. There are serious problems to deal with, but there is also a future that can possibly bring better times if the problems can be solved successfully. But Mason's world is not completely pessimistic and not all of her characters are miserable. Many of them take advantage of the changes in society, and improve their lives. Also, there are still positive values left. They are not as obvious, but they are still there if a person takes the time to look. Not everything has changed for the worse. For example, Mason seems to suggest later marriages. Early marriages lead to discontentment and more than an abundance of problems, and most of Mason's characters who married younp. are very dissatisfied with their lives. Mason also stresses the fact that most people have the freedom of choice since people no longer have to behave in a certain manner, and society is more accepting than it once was. Mason also points out the peace and contentment that can be found with the land. She says as well that simplicity many times is preferable to the "technological advances" that have driven people to large cities where everyone seems the same, and she Insists that there are still small towns and contented people who inhabit them. Other positive qualities are the fact that we have the opportunity to receive an education, and we still have humor. We can look at the mistakes we have made and find humor in them as well as learn from them. Mason also seems to retain the hope that changes will keep occurring, that people still care enough to fight for a better, less problem-filled life. In subtle ways, Mason's fiction is optimistic.

Kentucky, following in the footsteps of her parent state, Virginia, has given to America some of her most distinguished statesmen. She gave to the Confederacy its only president, Jefferson Davis, and to the Federal Union its war president, Abraham Lincoln. Housed in a noble pile of imperishable granite, on its exact original site, near Hodgenville, the humble log cabin in which Lincoln was born is now preserved as a national shrine. At Fairview a towering obelisk marks the birthplace of Jefferson Davis. These two statesmen were born, one year between them, of the same pioneering stock. One moved north of the slavery line; the other went southward into the heart of the slave country. Thereafter their lives ran by contrasting, instead of by parallel, lines. But in temperament and in sentiment both remained forever Kentuckians at heart. [Cobb. Kentucky, p. 40] In the field of literature Kentucky has not been so outstanding, but far too little is known of the writers whom she has produced. In the field of descriptive narrative perhaps no more representative writer has sprung from Kentucky soil than the one chosen for this study. James Lane Allen has done for Kentucky, or rather a particular section of Kentucky, what Thomas Nelson Page has done for Virginia and George W. Cable for Louisiana. More than any other author he has made the Bluegrass region of Kentucky both known to his countrymen and Europeans. “Both in rendering incomparably the prodigal beauty of his homeland and in portraying the vanished types of antebellum days, Mr. Allen is a rare artist.” [International Encyclopedia]