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
Now people want the excitement and high pay of the city during the daytime and the calm and quiet of the country at night, Fairlie says. The only problem this gets them into is that everybody wants this at the same time and the result is the traffic jam. Some people spend large parts of their lives in rooms on wheels (cars) while others are jammed up against one another in public transport. 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. It is hard to believe that he means this. Fairlie is far too familiar with the tortures of the commuter's life to convince the reader that somehow he avoided the "lunacy" of urban/suburban life. What Fairlie is really saying is that we human beings are the sort of creatures who "want it all", namely the sophisticated life of the urban worker and the relaxed life of the country gentleman. 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 li
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Approximate Word count = 1072
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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