Tag Archives: Thoreau

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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Trains of Thought on Trains

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The passage starting in paragraph two on page 81 in the Norton Critical Edition of Walden by Thoreau clearly shows tension between nature and society as a train cuts through Walden Pond. However, I believe even Thoreau feels conflicted about the meeting of these two opposing forces.

The chapter is Sounds, and, early on, Thoreau establishes his intimate knowledge of this meeting ground by saying the men who work on the freight trains bow to him as to an old acquaintance. This seems to give Thoreau credibility in the eyes of the reader. Immediately before that Thoreau explains how he commonly walks the railroad causeway, using the word often, and he even says he is “related to society by this link.” The two key words that stand out here are often and related. Thoreau is careful to express the habitualness of this walk through the use of the word often and the descriptions of his mutual comfort with the men of the train. He then uses the word related, a word commonly used to describe a familial connection to refer to the track. I believe this paragraph shows Thoreau’s uses for the meeting of the two worlds and paints them in a positive light. Continue reading →

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 →

Thoreau’s Still Standing

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Last week we were assigned sections of Henry Thoreau’s Walden. His section on ‘Economy’ was interesting as a whole but there were a few pages and specific passages I thought still greatly apply to the world today. I wanted to take a further look at two of them.

First, Thoreau refers to the laborer as some one with “no time to be anything but a machine”.  This phrase could very well be applied to the working force today in a few different ways.  Although a ‘laborer’ in the time of Thoreau is very different than the ‘laborer’ of the 21st century, there is striking similarity between the lifestyles. Literally it can be applied because the majority of work is now done on/with machines. With the assembly line, laborers skill level is minimal. The laborer is one who is faceless to the consumer society. With the raging capitalism and mass production in corporations like Walmart, laborers are forced into factories where their face is irrelevant and their rate of production is all that matters. They are essentially a “machine”. If they break (get sick, injured, etc.) they can be easily replaced with a new part (employee) as there is no shortage of people entering the work force on a daily basis.

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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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The Awakening Hour

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“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself” (Thoreau 63).

In this paragraph, Thoreau describes his early morning bathing ritual in the pond. Referring to this as a religious exercise, he said that bathing in the pond each morning was one of the best things he did while living in Nature.

“Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again” (Confucius, The Great Learning).

While living in Nature, Thoreau was able to connect with the environment in ways that many people have never or will never experience. After living by the labor of only his hands for two years and two months, Thoreau was able to understand what Confucius meant by “renew thyself completely each day.” This can be interpreted both symbolically and physically. A bath is a physical renewal of oneself each morning. One is washed, clean and ready to start the day. It is also a symbolic renewal of oneself each morning. In this awakening hour one must renew his or herself to prepare for the day that lies ahead.

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