Human's Perception Vs. the Theory of "struggle for Existence"

Human’s Perception Vs. The Theory of “Struggle for Existence”

As we all know, human beings are totally different from other animals. We have a higher wisdom and higher level of life, which means we do not live just by our own instincts. We can have a deeper thinking about life and make it more meaningful. Sometimes, it seems human beings are even capable of breaking the laws laid down by Mother Nature by creating their own laws. I think, however, attempts to break free from Nature Laws would eventually be proven meaningless. In this essay, I will discuss the two stories narrated in the poem Snake (D. H. Lawrence, 1923) and in a tale for children A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1955), using the theory of Struggle for Existence, part of the most powerful law for natural selection discovered by Charles Darwin, to evaluate the meaning of the behaviors of the human beings in these two stories. Using Darwin’s “Struggle for Existence” as a filter, behaviors in these two stories seem unnecessary and indeed, irrational. And the cause for such misbehaviors is the wrong perception towards the other species that share the same living environment with the human race.

The essay of “The Struggle for Existence”, part of Darwin’s book The Origin of Species, has listed two main principles that are relevant to this essay. The first principle states that, “Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving.” For the second principle, it states that “as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life,” which leads to the conclusion that “all organic beings are exposed to severe competition.”

In Marquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, it describes how the people in a village treat an old man with wings, who is perceived as an angel by the village people. At the beginning of the story, an old man with enormous wings is found lying in the mud in a family’s courtyard. Based on the fact that the old man carries a pair of wings, the neighbor woman “who knows everything about life and death” declares that “he is an angel,” and that “he must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down” (Marquez 400). And people in the village are convinced by this seemingly logical explanation. However, the priest disagrees and overrules the conclusion