Traveling with Fuller and Thoreau The mid 1800’s was a time of continued physical exploration of the landscape of America, and an era of opportunity for an intimate inspection of the land; areas sometimes found by the traveler with the assistance of Travel Journals and maps. These detailed records, reflected a destination, and also allowed an intellectual travel of the mind. In Margaret Fuller’s, “Summer on the Lake,” and Henry David Thoreau, “Cape Cod,” we experience both their physical, and internal travels, and how each author relates, both physically and mentally, to the natural landscape; the similarities, the differences, and what elucidated each, to seek their journeys. The observed, physical differences of the natural landscapes will be compared, followed by a deeper encounter with Thoreau, as to why, and to whom, his more desolate and dark descriptions of the natural landscape, reached a distinctive, psychological appeal, and how these two views relate to contemporary America. Just the title, “Summer on the Lake,” creates a refreshing image of glistening water and sunshine, surrounded by evergreens and the voices of children at play, right? As well it should, for that is what the author, Margaret Fuller, had intended to experience as she traveled that summer of 1843, to the Great Lakes. Margaret describes the many travel books and journals she studied to prepare for her trip. “Murray’s travels I read, and was charmed by their accuracy and clear broad tone.” (Fuller p.27) Yes, she was “charmed” by another’s words; another’s description of a place she had yet to travel. She Schoener 2 was expecting to find beauty an... ... middle of paper ... ...cape of America, it is even more so today. The major difference is that we are able to learn from authors like Thoreau and Fuller, not to just read the words, but to “see” what they are saying, and to use that knowledge to envision a landscape that is not just in a travel book, or on a sandy beach, but one that is truly ubiquitous. References: Emerson, RW. The Portable Emerson. Viking Edition:1981 Fuller, Margaret. Summer on the Lakes. Reprint 2010 Thoreau, HD. The Portable Thoreau. Viking-Penguin Edition 1977 Thoreau, HD. Cape Cod. Dover Publications. 2004 Encyclopedia Britannica, online “Transcendentalism” 2010 Abrams: Class notes: 10-4 through 10-25 Note: RE: Fuller. My text was missing the intro-page 7. I used several other editions found online to gather information, therefore, my page numbers may not relate correctly to any one edition.
The lake itself plays a major role throughout the story, as it mirrors the characters almost exactly. For example, the lake is described as being “fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans” (125). The characters are also described as being “greasy” or “dangerous” several times, which ties the lake and the characters together through their similarities. The narrator explains, “We were bad. At night we went up to Greasy Lake” (124). This demonstrates the importance that the surroundings in which the main characters’ choose to be in is extremely important to the image that they reflect. At the beginning of the story, these characters’ images and specifically being “bad” is essentially all that mattered to them. “We wore torn up leather jackets…drank gin and grape juice…sniffed glue and ether and what somebody claimed was cocaine” (124). They went out of their ...
In his journal, Thoreau muses upon twenty years of changes in New England’s land and beasts. He lists the differences in plants and animals, comparing them to past accounts and descriptions. He questions if the growing human presence has resulted in “a maimed and imperfect nature.” Cronon believes that this is an important question to consider. He points out that although changes do happen in nature, it is not so easy to determine how they changed. He is also not sure if Thoreau’s description of “a maimed and imperfect nature” is the correct way to refer to ecology, since it is by its essence, a fluid system of changes and reactions. Cronon does not deny the impact of
Thoreau, Henry D. Walden, or Life in the Woods. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. N. pag. Print.
Henry David Thoreau is among many other early American transcendentalist thinkers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson. Thoreau wrote many pieces and accomplished much in his lifetime; including the time he spent in the wilderness near the Walden Pond observing only the essential facts of life to further understand life as a whole. Many would quote him for his tremendous contributions to early American thought and his outstanding thoughts, “Even to call him a Transcendentalist is to underplay the carefully observed and circumstantial style of much of his writing and the sense of physical participation on which the style is based,” (Dougherty). One of the many things that Thoreau did and journalized in his famous writing Walden was his adventure from
Thus, the connection with nature, describes Richard Higgins on Thoreau, was through “[f]ive characteristic [that] were with his eye, his heart, his muse, and his soul” (HIGGINS 35). Thoreau was delighted with nature and trees in particular, for they were his friends whose appearance and demeanor spoke to him. Similarly, Fuller finds this connection, but is more overwhelmed than is Thoreau. Fuller, speaking on Niagara Falls, writes that “(a)fter awhile it so drew me into itself as to inspire and undefined dread, such as I never knew before, such as may be felt when death is about to usher us into a new existence” (Fuller 4). Nature speaking on different grounds and through different, but yet connected senses, and through the conscious and unconsciousness only add to the experience of becoming one with nature. Fuller further observes the connection that nature has with humans. She observes that when she expresses, “The tall trees bent and whispered all around, as if to hail with sheltering love the men who had come to dwell among them” (Fuller 24). As the trees spoke Thoreau and Fuller listened, as their moment became one with nature their soul became
This longing for fullness and wholeness transcends time and is found in both Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller’s works, albeit in different ways. Summer on the Lakes was written during a period of hiatus and reflection in Fuller’s life. There is a sense of seeking and desiring new experiences that permeates this work, a need to experience new things in order to continually learn and grow as a person. Part of this desire could come from her views on the rights of women to be recognized as whole citizens and people in America in the nineteenth century; also imparted in her discourse is her longing for women to simply want more for themselves. In the following passage, Fuller describes the girls and women in an Oregon farming town. She lament...
In the over 150 years since its publication, much critical attention has been paid to Henry David Thoreau’s most popular work, Walden. Having been so heavily critiqued, much recent critical work on Thoreau “gives greater attention to Thoreau’s unpublished work after Walden” (Meehan 300). Despite the superabundance of writing on this book, certain parts of it have been left relatively ignored. The chapter “House-Warming,” situated at the dawn of winter, has been treated thus. It might be that the reason for this lack of focus on this chapter is its transitory nature, as its primary purpose seems is to serve as a link between the autumn and the winter. As any writer will profess, such a transition in the narrative is indispensable. This transition is not only one that relates to the narrative, but also to Thoreau’s philosophy regarding the essentials of life. As Walden is often called an experiment by both critics and its author, “House-Warming” is especially worthy of attention as it shows us Thoreau not only performing experiments, but it also represents a turning point in the experiment that is Walden. “House-Warming” then exists both to showcase a philosophical adaptation on Thoreau’s part and a narrative transition, and also to preclude the magnification of his interest in scientific observation and experimentation over the course of the closing chapters.
Botkin, Daniel B. "The Depth of Walden Pond: Thoreau As a Guide to Solving Twenty-First
Clearing and wilderness, law and freedom, civilization and nature, fact and dream: these oppositions reverberate throughout American writing. And they a...
Thoreau’s tone varies throughout the work. In some places he is mystical and lyrical, as in the blue ice description in “Ponds.” He can be hardheaded and practical, as in the accounting details of “Economy.” Sometimes he seems to be writing a diary,recording the day’s events; other times he widens his scope to include the whole cosmos and all eternity. In some places his style is neutral and observational, in other places powerfully prophetic or didactic, as in the chapter “Conclusion.”
For Thoreau, additional technological advancement distracted man from connecting with nature. Although his examples of the newspaper and railroads seem almost laughable now, these were serious concerns for his time. The newspaper was a source of mental clutter, argued Thoreau who claimed, “I never read any memorable accidents in the newspaper” (Walden, 2002). To Thoreau, once one had read about one particular circumstance of accident, whether it is a house fire or murder, that was enough. The newspapers were nothing more than a distracting source of millions of applications of these same principles. The “petty fears and petty pleasures” which are portrayed in the news “are but the shadow of reality” (Walden 2004).
In Thoreau’s Walden, or Life in the Woods he uses various metaphors to convey the idea that to get to the varying experiences and trails of nature you only have to go outside. Thoreau goes out into the woods to live and examine nature, but is only a little ways away from civilization. He describes all the things he sees there and all of the experiences he has there. Some of the most interesting are the war between red and black ants, and the chase Thoreau has with the loon. Thoreau uses these to contrast the violent and the peaceful happens surrounding nature.
Silence swept over the entire group as we began our trek. Nothing could be heard except the crunch of gravel underneath our feet and the occasional explanatory interjections by our professor regarding the surrounding plants and rocks. Huge formations of serpentinite created a wall on one side of the trail, and on the other side the mountains were covered in blankets of coastal scrub. After a few minutes every bush and rock looked the same to me and I could not identify with Mr. Marx’s admiration for the beauty of that area. Even with the surprising deer sightings and geological features around me, I could only think about the end of the hike.
In the 19th century, America went through the most life changing events. From the Civil War, to immigration, to urbanization, the nation began to quickly transform into the great land we now know it as. Somewhere between the suffering and the development that occurred during the 1800’s, two legendary poets emerged. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson brought a new sense of realism and naturalism to the American people. Both of their works were inspired by the modifications that the war created. Yet, Whitman and Dickinson’s poems could not be any more different. As the introduction perfectly stated, “Walk Whitman promulgated an expansive, gregarious open form fit for the “open road” of American life; Emily Dickinson’s tight, elliptical verses reflect a sense of psychological interior where meanings are made and unmade: “internal difference, where the meanings are” (Norton 9). Although the two poets had a diverse set of literature, they both represented aspects of the American culture through their topics and styles of writing.
During the height of the Industrial Revolution, passionate authors and poets published many pieces of literature that emphasizes the importance of nature. This era's literature reveals the reality of the identity of America, its people and culture. By closely studying American Romanticism through its novels, short stories, and poems, I learned that American culture is extremely abstract. It is always changing due to the fact that nothing ever stays the same, whether it be one’s location, perspective, knowledge, etc. Two assignments in my portfolio that provides evidence of my understanding are the American Romanticism Progress Check Revision and the Against Nature Essay Revision. These two assignments are about two different philosophical attitudes: