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 off
Charles Creekmore is more interested in what goes on in the city than in the ironies of urban life that are so difficult for Fairlie. He begins his picture of city life, however, with a picture that would make Fairlie laugh. 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). City life, Creekmore says, is the sort of thing that really should make a man lose his sanity. Then Creekmore looks at what a number of psychologists and sociologists have said about the reality (as opposed to the myth) of living in the city. An eminent psychologist, Jonathan Freedman, points out that while cities can be dangerous to the health of the inhabitants because of crowding, pollution, and so on, there are many more resources available to the city dwellers to care for their health. A group of sociologists found that social support networks were more numerous for those involved in city life than for people living in the country, Creekmore points out. 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. Creekmore's conclusion is surprising. When peo
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Approximate Word count = 1070
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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