Category Archives: Ecocentrism

A Disappointing Debacle

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At what point did America forget about our environmental crisis? In the recent political campaigns for the presidential office, it is almost as though it is not an issue anymore. I thought that we had woken up, that something, since 2008 might had changed, but even in the wake of our highest heat wave in recent history, one that will go down as the longest and hottest heat waves in U.S. history, neither of the front running candidates have mentioned their strategy for our future. Not once was the environment or more specifically global warming, mentioned in any of the presidential debates this year. This is the first time that climate change has not made it into a presidential debate in roughly ten years.

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A Connection Between Robert Frost and Henry Thoreau

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For the blog this week I am going to further a point I raised in class about the Woodchuck  found in the opening paragraph of the chapter Higher Laws. The Drumlin Woodchuck by Robert Frost calls attention to a Woodchuck as well. The Drumlin Woodchuck is a poem associated with nature, wilderness, and retreating from the influence of man. According to an article by Fritz Oehlschlaeger titled Two Woodchucks, or Frost and Thoreau on the Art of the Burrow the; “admiration for Walden(by Frost) is well known, and numerous critics have suggested both general and specific parallels between the works of Thoreau and Frost.” While this admiration adds a layer of depth when reading Frosts poems as they can be connected to the ideas of Thoreau, it is interesting to look at the poem A Drumlin Woodchuck as an explicit nod to the Walden, where the Frosts poem can be seen as a response. Oehlschlaeger claims to have discovered this original relationship between these “two woodchucks”, and suggests that Frost uses the name Thoreau through a pun; “so instinctively thorough”(line  31). The usage here is claimed to be a pun By Oehlschlaeger, and this analogy seems apt.

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A Spiritual Awakening: Thoreau

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Excerpt from Henry D. Thoreau, Walden

“It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men.  Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.  Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. . . . We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.  I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.  It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do.  To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.  Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.  If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.” Continue reading →

The River of Life

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I would like to talk about a short passage from Walden, written by Henry David Thoreau. At the tail end of the chapter “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”, Thoreau talks about the relevance of time and the value of intellect as we see it. I gave my first attempt at close reading on my own and this is what I came up with.

In the beginning of the paragraph, Thoreau starts by writing, “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.” Thoreau compares our perception of time to the flowing water of a stream, unidirectional and never repeating itself. Each glance at the moving water in a stream offers a unique visual image that can be recalled from our memory, but never duplicated exactly. Similarly, our perception of time causes continual change which prevents us from recreating the past, forcing us to rely on memories to revisit those past moments.

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