Stacey and Jessica’s Class Notes
November 8, 2010
Thoreau’s Walden: Thoreau’s use of language
Thoreau’s idealism that’s linked to realism- [realism is] less obvious [in] Emerson.
Thoreau’s “wildness” changing conception of the wild in a version of America when cities are changing .
Thoreau and other transcendentalist connecting to the wild.
“Civil Disobedience”
To emphasize the idealism and this idea of absolute morality at the heart of Thoreau’s philosophy.
Walden as a text is based around the idea of higher laws.
All allegiance to higher laws, individual ability to understand these laws.
Look to something intuitive rather than societal code to live.
Gandhi’s jailhouse writing concluded with an idea from “civil disobedience”- this idea of the power of
thought and it can’t be imprisoned.
Social activist and preachers have attributed this thought to Thoreau over the last 100 years or so.
What’s unique about Thoreau- trying to find a way to live in a concrete surrounding.
Our access to higher law is linked to economy.- it’s linked to a way of living he’s trying to outline.
Alcott helped Thoreau build [his cabin at] Walden [Pond] in late June.
Thoreau taught himself ways to serve the land, also made 150 maps of the land.
He made a career as a surveyor before going to Walden. The idea of him being a surveyor: rich term and
vocation
A surveyor is someone who scales the land, vertical & height distance . they use a plumb line to get to the
depth of the pond.
Thoreau is not only living off of the land, he’s measuring the depth too. Linked to his being very precise
and thorough. Once Walden and his journals are published people began to notice his precision in writing.
His cabin (labeled D on the map) is now called “Thoreau’s cove”
Louis Agassiz –foremost naturalist at the time. In the mid 1850’s Thoreau’s hired by him.
Structure of Walden
Martin Bickman: natural society, desire to preserve and rescue the world
Dual purpose for Thoreau- insert himself into the world and pressure it : another impulse to record it.
Examples: economy, where I lived…
Economy-Set structure- but when comparing it to self that changes. To preserve something but control the
atmosphere it’s found in.
Where I lived- indicates a kind of openness, a sense that the self is being immersed in the landscape.
Thoreau resides as a writer on the precipice on the literal and figurative. This allows him to be in this
paradoxical position. He’s thriving on taking common language & turning it on its head.
Volatile truths-continual flow/flux and natural truths
Truth of our own presence- we’re convinced we’re living, breathing subjects, it’s just as true as this flux
Thoreau is acknowledging that these two things constantly pulling us in two directions
Example- higher laws: higher nature, lower nature
Have to be aware our conscious and rise above the lower nature
The pond is the metaphysical and metaphorical
Actual ways he’s ties the intellectual & physical, use of language in order to carry out his metaphysical
and metaphorical plan.
Ex. Of abstract spirituality’s: economy pg. 56
Talking about philanthropist- alluding to a historical narrative
Philanthropy comes & saves the uncivilized – alluding to physical underbelly of philanthropy. Also
implying he’s talking about a different disease [dis-ease]: ie. Materialistic anxiety, instead encouraging
simplicity
Thesis for Walden- top of pg. 218
“I fear… convinced”
Something has to happen to language in order for it to live up to these higher laws. Have to make words
Extravagant.
Literal ex.- his going to live in the woods: pushing boundaries, playing with daily experience
Thoreau’s transcendental eye experience grounded on a literal experience in the woods.
This Transcendental eye is being reflected in the pond itself.
The eye – “nevertheless, of all the characters…..yore” (quote on pg. 132)
2 things about Walden: it’s a source of youth and purity. It is permanent; he is the source of change. On
the other hand Walden is being personified.
Gradually he becomes dispursed across this scene. It’s no longer about him, it’s about seeing this eternal
source of life & he is the source of change.
The “I” that he is is completely dispersed into the nature “Walden is it you” pg.132
Wildness
Mental experiment as well as a physical one.
“uncertain space that you can learn to inhabit” – literal space or mental space.
Group work:
Shirey A. Pezua
In “Visitors” Thoreau admires the Canadian woodchopper, going so far as to describe him as an
ideal man, however he does think the woodchopper is defective in one manner. What is his problem
with the woodchopper and why does he think this way?
The problem is that he is content doing his job and not wanting to expand in intellect/Nature.
Thoreau is trying to make him as a Transcendentalist model. He is part of nature but not as an American
Scholar. He is not doing it from a higher place/higher law.
Denise Martin and Albert Ephraim
What sort of persona narrates Walden? What is the relationship between Thoreau who lived in
Walden Woods from 1845 – 1847 and the literary persona?
Walden is narrated in the first person narration as is indicated by Thoreau in the essay Economy,
“In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained… We commonly do not know
that it is the first person that is speaking. I should not talk too much about myself if there were anybody
else whom I know as well. Unfortunately I am confined to this theme (first person narration) by the
narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last a simple
account of his own life” (5).
As a result we see that Thoreau is the major character within his work, as according to his simple
statement, “Yesterday I came here to live. My house makes me think of some mountain houses I have
seen” (319) and therefore Thoreau is seen as either a part of or sometimes close to the events he narrated.
Thoreau of Walden and the literary persona both identifies with Greek Mythology, and elements
of realism. One example is in the subtitle bean-field whereby Thoreau took on the role of a farmer but
identifies himself as Mathematicians when he states, “I thus with the farmers of New England devoted
husbandry. Not that I wanted beans to eat, for I am by Nature a Pythagorean.” (111) Subsequently he
strongly supported his argument by calculating the depth of Walden Pond, “I fathom it easily with a cod
line and stone weighing about a pound and a half…the greatest depth was exactly one hundred and two
feet” (192). Again this scientific knowledge is portrayed in his Journal 1845-46 when he describes his
house as “10 feet wide by 15 long” (332).
Chapter: Baker Farm, 5th Para.
After having found shelter from the pouring rain in the cabin of John Field, Henry David Thoreau exhibits
a few aspects of his literary persona to which are rarely referenced. His personal facade includes bigotry,
intolerance, misanthropy, and elitism.
Misanthropic persona:
Thoreau finds it important to describe his hosts by nationality: In the cabin “dwelt…John Field, an
Irishman [with his] round greasy face and bare breast wife…with the never absent mop in one hand, and
yet no effects of it visible anywhere” He describes the son as a “broad-faced boy” and the young child as
“wrinkled-face, Sibyl-like, cone-head infant” who sat upon his father’s knee as if he were “in the palace
of nobles…as is with the privilege of infancy” likened to “the last of a noble line and last of hope and
cynosure of the world” instead of “John Field’s poor and starving brat”. And of John Field’s wife,
Thoreau says In my estimation, Thoreau had no cause to speak of this family in this way except for his
distain for people.
Chapter: Baker Farm: last paragraph of chapter
Bigoted or intolerance persona:
Speaking of John Field, Thoreau said: “with his horizon all his own yet [he is] a poor man, born to be
poor, with his inherited Irish poverty…not to rise in this world… Thoreau is saying why can’t this poor
bastard have the same foresight as I, and recognize his poetic sense, and rise to meet his vast human
potentiality the same as I have done. Thoreau speaks of horizon in the transcendentalist sense referring to
the horizon of Man. This is referenced back to Emerson’s views on the horizon of Man in the essay
Nature, in chapter 3, Beauty. “There is a property in the horizon which no man has but whose eye can
integrate all the parts, that is, the poet”. And in the same chapter, Emerson said: “In the distant line of the
horizon, man beholds something as beautiful as his own Nature”; and, “The health of the eye seems to
demand a horizon we are never tired, so long as we can see far enough”. All of the above is implied, when
Thoreau, speaks in a derogatory fashion about John Field. Obviously Field is incapable of looking far
enough into his own Nature (because of his Irish heredity) to be like Thoreau.
Elitist persona:
In the case of mythology Thoreau’s persona somewhat takes the shape of an elitist, when he claims,
“Sometimes when I compared myself with other men methinks I am favored by the Gods” (Norton, 322).
Albert and Brian
How do the many metaphors Thoreau uses to describe the pond illuminate his concept of the ideal
self?
Based on several fragments of Walden
Pg. 129 “ In such a day…”
Pg. 128 “A Lake is…”
Pg. 124 “Pond rises and falls.”
Thoreau’s metaphors reflect the depth of the self, as he engages to describe the pond as a “mirror.” Just as
the Pond’s depth can be measured, man is looking to measure the depth of his own “nature.” (128)
Likewise, as nature, none specifically Walden Pond, remains unchanged by man’s disturbance. It is the
“I,” the changes towards the pertinent or rather searches for the pure earthly crystal that is unchanged in
the ideal self as well. Therefore, the Pond allows man to “reflect” upon its indestructible force, as “it is a
mirror which no stone can crack. ”(129) However, the Pond is “pure” and it will expose the frailties of
man in an instant.
Brendan and Stacey
Question 1
A. We dont think Thoreau is talking about himself but he is relinquishing control that a higher power
exists. He owns the will to hoe but accepts that the reason could be planted from a higher power
Our answer to question B. is…
B. Refer to page 111. It was a singular experience that the planting of beans for Thoreau are a metaphor
for his writing. Additionally the metaphor for hoeing and writing also can lie with the reader, because the
reader ultimately is intuiting Thoreau’s language.