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44. Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Anthropocene Reviewed, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Humanity and the Environment
Health, Disease, and Society
Community and Equality
Technology and the Internet
Summary
Analysis
Green learns that the German translation of this book roughly means “How Have You Enjoyed the Anthropocene So Far?” He considers the question. On the one hand, he finds this era wonderful. He remembers watching movies every Wednesday in high school with his friend Todd and the joy this gave him. Still, at other times he feels like things are awful and that he’s ill-adapted for the era he lives in. He wonders how he’ll survive, only to remember that, in the end, he won’t survive, and he has to learn to accept that. In the meantime, he feels blessed to still be a part of the Earth.
Green knows that he can’t capture the entirety of the Anthropocene in one book, and so the postscript returns the focus to Green’s personal experience of the era. In spite of the dark sides of humanity that Green explores in many of his essays, he ultimately ends the book on a positive note, reflecting on how lucky he feels to be alive. While accepting his mortality, as well as how humans a species will have a limited temporal range, Green believes that it’s nevertheless important to celebrate the positive aspects of being human, which can endure beyond any individual person’s lifespan.
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