Loren Eisley's The Universe Itself

In the story The Universe Itself was Laughing author Loren Eisley undergoes a liminal process where he goes from respecting nature to learning that nature is a microcosm of the universe. Eisley’s cognitive was altered when he encountered a fox puppy who was digging through a piles of untidy trash. He realizes that the fox, an anomaly to his previous belief of viewing nature through a “upright human arrogance”, represented the universe in the liminal stages of creation. The author believed this because he said that the fox was “swinging in some fantastic fashion around to present its face, and the face was so small that the universe itself was laughing” much like the liminal stages of the universe. Also, he says that animals and people of nature