Humanity has made great advances in technology over the last two centuries; but while this new technology may be amazing, it is not necessarily good. Cement forests and pathways have drowned out the earth's natural habitats and have forced many animals into extinction or endangerment. Humanity has taken a world that doesn't necessarily belong to them and altered it to fit their ever changing and demanding wants that are disguised as needs. Mankind was placed on Earth along with every other animal, so why is it excusable that we kill our fellow neighbors for sport and we bulldoze a rainforest until there is nothing left to show for the once great and vast habitat? We have drained this world's resources dry and nature is slowly suffocating underneath all of our "accomplishments." So the question that you must ask yourself is, what is mankind's purpose on Earth? Reaching the conclusion that humankind's purpose on Earth is unknown is quite a shock to the system. Fortunately, scholars and artists alike have been asking this same question for hundreds of years and each one has been able to find something new in their searches. Cormac McCarthy has attempted to do the same in his novel "The Crossing," where the relationship between man, nature and God is examined through the young, yet incredibly astute, eyes of a teenager by the name Billy. The main character Billy goes through an emotional journey throughout the novel as he crosses from one part of the country to another. The novel is split into four parts of and each part has a new journey as Billy searches for his purpose and place in the world. The first part of the novel is extremely important to the question of man's purpose because it explains Billy's purpose for leaving his home as a young teenager and basically disappearing from his family for a few years. It starts with Billy's connection to wolves. His family has passed down the knowledge of how to entrap a wolf for centuries. "Crouched in the broken shadow with the sun at his back and holding the trap at eye level against the morning sky he looked to be trying some older, more subtler instrument. Like a man bent at fixing himself someway in the world" (McCarthy 22). When Billy finally catches this wolf, who is lost and on her own, that he's been watching for a few weeks, he decides on a whim to release the wolf enough so that she can move again and he starts the jo