NAAL: Thoreau
The Norton Anthology of American Literature
Volume B: American Literature, 1880-1865
Henry David Thoreau
Biography
Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, and spent most of his life in and around that town. Thoreau was an outspoken abolitionist, and during his lifetime his most widely read works were such antislavery tracts as Slavery in Massachusetts and A Plea for Captain John Brown. Most readers, though, remember Thoreau as a naturalist. His most famous book, Walden (1854), records the two years he spent living in a self-crafted cabin beside Emerson's Walden Pond. The Walden experiment reflected the greater philosophy of Thoreau's life: he believed that people should not be driven by materialistic desires but should live according to their needs, simplifying their life-styles rather than earning money to support lavish and ostentatious show. Thoreau worked from time to time in his father's pencil factory, but the dust from the graphite aggravated Thoreau's tuberculosis, and he died a few years after taking over the family business. After his death, passages about nature were culled from his journal writings and printed in magazines; the journals were published as a whole in 1906. To this day, Thoreau remains among the most important and challenging of American nature writers, philosophers, and social critics.
Explorations
Walden (1854) is widely regarded (and taught) as a sacrosanct text, an eloquent, detailed, passionate refusal of materialism and of emerging American middle-class values and a celebration of a rigorously simple life in harmony with the natural world. While such readings are persuasive, they can miss the playfulness and changefulness in the book and the evolving consciousness that it chronicles. Thoreau is a dynamic personality, not a curmudgeon, and Walden is in part the story of a mind in motion.
1. Review the long paragraph starting at the bottom of NAAL 1.1939 ("However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names"). Then turn to NAAL 1.1769 and review the two paragraphs beginning "I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle . . ." What relationship do you observe between these paragraphs? How would you compare their tone and central themes?
2. In those opening paragraphs, Thoreau refers to the New Testament as "an old book." How would you describe his rhetorical strategy here? What kind of audience was he writing to and for? What might the response be, and how might that response work to Thoreau's advantage? Can you find other moments in the opening chapters of Walden where he uses a similar technique?
3. Throughout Walden, some of Thoreau's famous wisecracks are about new technologies and communication systems--newspapers, telegraphs, railroads. In what spirit should we take these comments? Do you find any grain of truth or usefulness in them, in the midst of the Information Age?
4. Thoreau built his cabin on woods owned by Emerson; he used manufactured tools, milled boards, and printed books; he was only about a mile from the center of Concord and came in frequently, not only to visit and talk with his gifted neighbors but to dine with them and enjoy some of the pleasures of town life. And eventually, as he tells us, he left his cabin and moved back to Concord. Do these facts compromise Walden? Why or why not?
Volume B: American Literature, 1880-1865
Henry David Thoreau
Biography
Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, and spent most of his life in and around that town. Thoreau was an outspoken abolitionist, and during his lifetime his most widely read works were such antislavery tracts as Slavery in Massachusetts and A Plea for Captain John Brown. Most readers, though, remember Thoreau as a naturalist. His most famous book, Walden (1854), records the two years he spent living in a self-crafted cabin beside Emerson's Walden Pond. The Walden experiment reflected the greater philosophy of Thoreau's life: he believed that people should not be driven by materialistic desires but should live according to their needs, simplifying their life-styles rather than earning money to support lavish and ostentatious show. Thoreau worked from time to time in his father's pencil factory, but the dust from the graphite aggravated Thoreau's tuberculosis, and he died a few years after taking over the family business. After his death, passages about nature were culled from his journal writings and printed in magazines; the journals were published as a whole in 1906. To this day, Thoreau remains among the most important and challenging of American nature writers, philosophers, and social critics.
Explorations
Walden (1854) is widely regarded (and taught) as a sacrosanct text, an eloquent, detailed, passionate refusal of materialism and of emerging American middle-class values and a celebration of a rigorously simple life in harmony with the natural world. While such readings are persuasive, they can miss the playfulness and changefulness in the book and the evolving consciousness that it chronicles. Thoreau is a dynamic personality, not a curmudgeon, and Walden is in part the story of a mind in motion.
1. Review the long paragraph starting at the bottom of NAAL 1.1939 ("However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names"). Then turn to NAAL 1.1769 and review the two paragraphs beginning "I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle . . ." What relationship do you observe between these paragraphs? How would you compare their tone and central themes?
2. In those opening paragraphs, Thoreau refers to the New Testament as "an old book." How would you describe his rhetorical strategy here? What kind of audience was he writing to and for? What might the response be, and how might that response work to Thoreau's advantage? Can you find other moments in the opening chapters of Walden where he uses a similar technique?
3. Throughout Walden, some of Thoreau's famous wisecracks are about new technologies and communication systems--newspapers, telegraphs, railroads. In what spirit should we take these comments? Do you find any grain of truth or usefulness in them, in the midst of the Information Age?
4. Thoreau built his cabin on woods owned by Emerson; he used manufactured tools, milled boards, and printed books; he was only about a mile from the center of Concord and came in frequently, not only to visit and talk with his gifted neighbors but to dine with them and enjoy some of the pleasures of town life. And eventually, as he tells us, he left his cabin and moved back to Concord. Do these facts compromise Walden? Why or why not?
(Mittwoch, 17. Oktober 2007)
