PURPLE TYPHOONS
Excerpts from
Thoreau’s Walden
FROM
“WHERE I LIVED AND
WHAT I LIVED FOR”
SUMMARY
 Where I lived and What I lived For
 Thoreau left to the woods on the fourth of July 1845
 His house was not finished yet but it covered him from the rain.
 Thoreau wished to live deliberately
 He wanted to get away from society and live a life with no rules
 He wanted to live in nature and to front only the essential facts of life
 He wanted to realize that he has not lived and has to discover new things in life.
 Thoreau compared several things about his understanding of life such as: men lived
just like Ants. Another example he compered life with a German confederacy.
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Figurative Language
1. “Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its
boundaries forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is
bounded at any moment.” (Simile and metaphor)
He reflects about life, how we are full of many little unimportant things that mess
up our point or intention. We are lost, there is no trust, consistency, etc. Also, we
are very irregular, forever changing opinions, thoughts, actions, that eventually
lead to nothing but a misunderstanding of the self. It ends up happening that we
are tied up in all of our own little thoughts that not even us can understand
ourselves.
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE


2. “Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like
pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a
superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail.” (Simile and metaphor)


Again, he reflects on life in relation to the self, and to humanity. He expresses that humans live blinded, even
if we are supposed to be civilized, organized, coherent, we live like ants, like insignificant robots. Humans are
compared to pygmies, primitive, so we are so uncivilized that we do not even know what we are doing (fighting
with cranes). We only make mistakes because of this, and the worst part is that we could be stopping this pity that
we convey. We are focused on small insignificant things, instead of on what is important, and that is tarring us
apart.


Other figurative language:

“To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character.” (metaphor)

“The wind that passes over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains.” (simile)

“The morning wind forever blows” (hyperbole)

“We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.”
APHORISMS
 I say let your affairs be as two or three and not a hundred or a thousand; instead
of a million count half a dozen and keep your accounts and your thumbnails
 Keep your life simple Henry Thoreau explains that you shouldn’t have
accounts(which you can compare them to your work, Worries and relations of your
daily life) of thousands or hundred(complicated)but instead you should have them
on your thumbnails(simple and small)
 We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us
 We shouldn’t work and not enjoy our work done we should work and “ride” our
railroad.
FROM “SOUNDS”
SUMMARY
 “From sounds” deals with the idea of the narrator listening to
natures sounds. He believes that listening the sounds of the outer
world, exceeds the idea of thinking and working . He feels amused of
every single sound as he realizes his inner self and his inner soul.
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
 “A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true.”
 “I grew those seasons like corn in the night”
APHORISMS
 “I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who
were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre,
that my life itself was becoming amusement and never ceased to be
novel.”
 “The day advanced as if to light some work of mine, it was morning,
and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished.”
FROM “BRUTE NEIGHBORS”
SUMMARY
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
 “They fought with more pertinacity than bulldogs.”
 Whose mother had charge him to return with his shield or upon
it.
 Extended metaphor of the pointless of human war
 “On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without
any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so
resolutely.”
APHORISMS

“…now at noonday prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out.”

“The red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side they
engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so
resolutely.”

“It was evident that their battle-cry was Conquer or die.”

“I never learned which party was victorious nor the cause of the war; but felt for the rest of that day as if I
had had my feeling excited and honored by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and carriage of a human battle
before my door.”
FROM “THE POND IN
WINTER”
SUMMARY
 The narrator wakes up in the middle of the night wondering the answer of his
unknown question. What? How? When? Where? The next morning he takes his ax
and pail and goes in search of water. When he gets to the nearby pond he admires
its beauty and compares it to heaven. While doing that he notices some fishing men
and just wonders about what they were doing. He spotted a worm on the hook of a
fishing line and wondered how they got it because such climate kills all ground
warms. This led him to think how great was the life cycle. “The perch swallows the
grab worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the
pickerel…”
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
 Like the marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes its eyelids and
becomes more dormant for three months or more.
 His life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of the
naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist.
APHORISMS
 The night veils without doubt a part of this glorious creation; but
day comes to reveal to us great work, which extends from earth even
into the plains of the ether.
 Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
FROM “SPRING”
SUMMARY
 With the coming of April, the snow starts to melt from Walden Pond. The ice melts
from the sun shining from above. There is a canal which is covered with a field of ice
which is now being loosed by the heat of the day and the cracking stops. He compares
the changing of the two seasons, spring and winter. The change from storm in winter to
serene weather in spring, from dark hours to bright ones. The big blue sky giving light and
hope. It seemed as if nature was revealing his new life . He felt the world was being
created. He talks about beautiful flowers and plants that grow with the sunshine. The
narrator seems to be in love with this re birth or change. As the day came to evening, the
narrator explains the hawking of geese that flew low over the woods. He concludes that
every season has its own characteristics and beautiful things.
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
 “Walden appeared like an artificial pond for their amusement”
–simile
 “I looked out the window, and lo! Where yesterday was cold gray
ice there lay the transparent pond already calm and full of hope as in
summer evening.” –metaphor
SYMBOLISM
 Bird- it symbolizes freedom, and
 Spring- is a new start after the ice glacier
 Winter- dark, water covered with ice.
FROM THE “CONCLUSION”
SUMMARY
 Love your life
 You can have happy moments even when you live in a poor house.
 The sunlight will shine equally in a rich or poor house.
 The poorest people seem to live most independently.
 Things do not change, we change.
FROM THE “CONCLUSION”
SUMMARY
 If you are restricted in your range by poverty, you are compelled to
deal with the material.
 Money is not required to buy ones necessary of the soul.
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
SIMILE…
 “The life in us is like the water in the river”
 Our lives are forever, always moving on. As the water flows in
the river our lives also does.
METAPHOR…
 “The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly
as from the rich man’s abode.”
 The sun reflects the same in a poor house and in a rich house.
APHORISMS
 “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is
because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music
which he hears, however measured or far away.”
 Everyone should follow their own path, at their own pace. Don’t
try to rush.
 “If you have built castles in the sky, your work need not to be lost;
that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them…”
 Dream, and now perform your dream in your actions. Build your
dreams and achieve them.