In the Walden, the 2nd Chapter: Where I lived, Thoreau describes his house and the surroundings. But at the same time, he imagines the place that he has in his mind. Thoreau states that “Where I lived was as far off as many region viewed nightly by astronomers” (132); His house, forever new and unprofaned, is a part of the universe. In reference to this, he says his house has an auroral character and he often describes his house like a universe, star or sun. The sun obviously seems to have an important role in the book. As I already examined in the chapter 1, Thoreau calls his neighbors sleeper. In contradistinction to this sleeper, the sun appears in the book. As people usually get up in the morning, the sun also awakes human spirits from a permanent slumber. Thoreau insist that “every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal sympathy, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself” (132). The image of the sun converges on one point by using the words: poetic, divine, noble, …show more content…
Thus every beauty, holy, great thing and fine are often combined with the image of the sun or morning. The morning hour is the time that men spent their valuable life or the time of the creating. Therefore, it seems that his house has such a holy image, gives him tranquility and purifies him. His house becomes the starting point of searching for the dignity. In the 3rd chapter: Reading, Thoreau mentions Homer’s work, Iliad, and its value. According to him, refined works like a Homer, Aeschylus or Vergil, are “beautiful almost as the morning itself” (); and are “carved out of the breath of life itself” (). Here is the sun image again, however, the sun is not the place which purifies him but life itself in this chapter. After Thoreau lives in the place which gives him tranquility, he unify spirits into the place (i.e. the sun) and make human spirits pure as well as the sun. Also, he states as
In this passage from the famous text Walden, the author Henry David Thoreau, a naturalist and transcendentalist, gives an account of his experience while living in isolation at Walden pond for two years of his life. While in isolation, he sought to enjoy life away from the hustle and bustle of society and live more simplistically without concern of the small things in life.
Thoreau found himself at Walden - and lost himself on Ktaadn. Walden, a mile from town, was a benign experience in which he learned what he could do without, what was essential for life. Ktaadn, high and remote, taught him what he could not do without, what was essential life.
This excerpt from "Walden" by Henry D. Thoreau uses the literary element of word choice to express the importance of living simply and taking life slow. He uses bold and eloquent words to evoke a sense of peace and relaxation. He stresses the importance of living a life without unnecessary anxiety, for it causes nothing but stress. To understand and appreciate what is truly wonderful in life, we must forgo our rushing mindsets
He uses imagery to show how complicated people make life; how much of life is unnecessary. In turn, it evokes emotional responses from the readers. An example is, “ Hardly a man takes a half-hour’s nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, “what’s the news?” as if the rest of man kind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every half-hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After a night‘s sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. “Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe”-- and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.” (page 278). In this part of the text Thoreau explains the life of a man. In the end however, it turns into a sorrowful ending. What Thoreau was trying to say in this part of the text is that people could go experience things themselves instead of listening to stories. Instead of staying home and asking what is happening with the world, you could experience it yourself and that it is unnecessary to hear the stories in the
How people see one another vary in numerous ways, whether it be from actions or what is gathered through spoken conversations. When an intellectual meets someone for the first time, they tend to judge by appearance before they judge by how the person express their thoughts or ideas. In Thoreau’s excerpt, he emphasizes the importance of his philosophy, especially by making sure the reader is aware of his own feelings about it. He puts literary devices such as metaphors, personification, and imagery to construct his explanation for his philosophy as well as provide several attitudes to let the reader identify how he feels towards people and the value of their ideas.
Thoreau adopts an “I” in Walden as a persona, as a way to question different ways of living, and propose different concepts to his readers. His “I” is akin to a Dickinson poem, becoming the voice that guides the readers, but might not necessarily have been shared by the author himself. Schulz attempts to defame Thoreau literary persona by criticizing the fictional aspects of the story. “Read charitably, it is a kind of semi-fictional extended meditation featuring a character named Henry David Thoreau” (Pond Scum). Schulz fails to make the distinction between Thoreau the man and Thoreau the literary character. The “I” in the story is another side of Thoreau that he used to explore different aspects of the world. Thoreau was a vegetarian that ate meat, and a pacifist that endorsed violence. He questioned the concepts that have become associated with his name. Donovan Hahn of the New Republic says that Thoreau thought of Walden “as a poem...not nonfiction,” which is a genre and label that did not yet exist. Due to not being able to realize the split between Thoreau the man and his persona, Schulz misinterprets Thoreau’s investigation of life as that of a
Night is dangerous to all people and even in a fort-like hall, warriors sleep with “each man’s kit kept at hand” (1244). However, the morning relieves all endangered men by unveiling all hidden dangers and monsters. “The hall towered, gold-shingled and gabled, and the guest slept in it until the black raven with raucous glee announced Heaven’s joy, and a hurry of brightness overran the shadows” (1799-1803). The morning renders everyone relieved that light returns and casts them into a safe net of luminescence. Day symbolizes safety and reassurance in the book, an important proponent of everyone’s desire to feel secure. Without shouting or making any noise, light awakens the lands, frightens evil, and protects the unsheltered. Darkness hides danger, thieves, and evil in its black cloaks of hidden malice.
I awoke before the first rays of sunlight had passed through the dew-covered trees to the west today. It had rained the evening before, and the smell of wet leaves and grass was still lingering in the air.
Henry David Thoreau pens his book Walden during a revolutionary period of time known as American Romanticism. The literary movement of American Romanticism began roughly between the years of 1830 and 1860. It is believed to be a chapter of time in which those who had been dissatisfied by the Age of Reason were revolting through works of literature. All elements of Romanticism are in sharp, abrupt contrast to those types of ideas such as empirical observation and rationality. An online article describes American Romanticism in the following manner, “They celebrated imagination/intuition versus reason/calculation, spontaneity versus control, subjectivity and metaphysical musing versus objective fact, revolutionary energy versus tradition, individualism versus social conformity, democracy versus monarchy, and so on” (Strickland). In 1845 during that period of time, Thoreau decides to spend two years of his life in an experiment with Mother Nature in a cabin at Walden Pond. He tells exquisite tales of life in natural surroundings in his book, Walden, through a most primitive organic style. Walden is a key work of American Romanticism because of its embedded ideas of solitude, individualism, pantheism and intuition.
Robert Frost’s poem Desert Places (1936) begins to stimulate the reader’s visual senses in the first stanza. The poem begins, “Snow falling and night falling fast/ground almost covered in smooth snow,” (Frost, 1936; pg. 654, line 1&2. The sunlight motion suggests a “balance of upward and downward, rising and falling” (Harris, J. 2004), resplendent in nature and indirectly influences the reader spiritually and emotionally. Jane Kenyon’s Let Evening Come (1990), uses sunlight to project an image of a slow moving late afternoon sun, which will soon slip into the darkness of night.
Henry Thoreau uses specific rhetorical strategies in Walden to emanate his attitude towards life. With the use of many strategies Thoreau shows that life should be centered around Nature. People live their lives not ever taking a second glance of what Nature does and has done for humanity and Thoreau is trying to prove his point. Humanity owes Nature everything for without it humans would be nothing.
Fender, Stephen. Introduction. Walden. By Henry David Thoreau. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997. Print.
The opening paragraph is an incredibly vivid account of nights spent by “the stony shore” of Walden Pond. His description of the animals around the pond, the cool temperature, and the gentle sounds of lapping waves and rustling leaves all serve to remove the idea that nature is a wild and unkempt world of its own, and instead makes it seem much more serene and graceful. Any who thought of Thoreau as an insane outdoorsmen may have even found themselves repulsed by the monotony and constant bustle of city life and longing for the serenity felt by Thoreau. This
In the chapter The Village from the book Walden, Henry David Thoreau states that society loves to hear and spread gossip all around the town. Thoreau goes on to claim that because the citizens in the town are so focused on getting the next scandal, they have missed out on getting in touch with who they are and nature. He also subtly suggests that people should follow in the same footsteps as himself by removing themselves from society so that they can only focus on themselves and nature. I qualify this claim that gossip distracts society from finding their true selves because not all gossip is distracting or bad but I do agree with Thoreau on the fact that people get engulfed in gossip and become distracted from more important things in life.
When thinking about the transcendental period and/or about individuals reaching out and submerging themselves in nature, Henry David Thoreau and his book, Walden, are the first things that come to mind. Unknown to many, there are plenty of people who have braved the environment and called it their home during the past twenty years, for example: Chris McCandless and Richard Proenneke. Before diving into who the “modern Thoreaus” are, one must venture back and explore the footprint created by Henry Thoreau.