Wk5 disc

Walden Questions to Consider

"Economy"

Focus on Thoreau's practical concerns: What, for Thoreau, is wrong with the daily life of his contemporaries? What were

his motives for going to Walden? What led him to write a book?

Are Thoreau's criticisms of his society applicable to ours? What does Thoreau mean that students ought, quite literally,

to build their own colleges?

Compare Thoreau's list of materials for his house at Walden with Benjamin Franklin's list of virtues in The

Autobiography. Is there evidence in "Economy" that Thoreau is constructing an analogy, or is he writing a how-to-book

in the tradition of Franklin? Note: A literary analogy is a comparison in which the subject is compared point by point to

something far different, usually with the idea of clarifying the subject by comparing it to something familiar. Analogies

can provide insights and also imply that the similarities already present between the two subjects can mean even more

similarities. Anne Bradstreet's "The Author to Her Book" contains an analogy that compares the book to a child.

"Where I Lived and What I Lived For"

Consider again the analogies in Walden: Analogy becomes a method of introspection and religious meditation for

Thoreau. Scholar Stanley Cavell in The Senses of Walden suggests that Thoreau's work is a scripture. Think about how

authors we've read acheived authority, or self-assurance, by their relationship to scripture, especially the Bible. Does

Thoreau achive litarry authority by going back to what he sees as the very source of creation, in nature, at Walden?

Thoreau's experience at Walden becomes a record of his way of seeing the world; as it does for Emerson, the process of

learning for Thoreau involves making the analogies he discovers as a result of going to the woods. In Thoreau's very

ability to create the analogy, he has the experience; transcendentalism can this be seen as the first American spiritual

movement based on a theory of language. That theory is Emerson's as well as Thoreau's, but Thoreau is able to find the

analogies he wants in the life he is living on an hourly, daily, and seasonal basis at the pond.

Crucial to considering Walden as scripture are the frequent references Thoreau makes to Eastern religious experience.

He writes that every morning "I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best

things I did." How can bathing in the pond be a religious exercise? (He seems to mean that it is a spiritual experience,

not just part of his routine that he follows religiously). Bathing in the pond for Thoreau suggests his daily immersion in th

emeaning of the experience of the pond. To jump into it suggests his daily attempt to understand it. It cleanses, it

renews, it wakes him up -- "to reawaken and keep awake, not be mechanical aids, but by infinite expectation of the

dawn." Bathing in Walden becomes an interim "mechanical aid"; when he becomes able to keep himself awake without

the pond, he won't need it anymore.

How does Thoreau's meditation differ from Puritan meditation? Thoreau, like Franklin, attempts to transcend the world

of literal limits and find in the rhythm of the physical world an analogy in that work to spiritual life and feeling at one

with the universe, or Nature. He attempts to transcend the limits of material existence.

"The Pond in Winter" and "Spring"

Thoreau makes the analogy between sounding the depths of a pond and "sounding" the depths of the human mind. His

"depth" of knowldege of the pond prepares him for an even deeper dive into his own imagination, his own

consciousness.

"Spring" heralds Thoreau's new life at the pond and the new light in the writer. He discovers that "the day is an epitome

of the year"; the small scale of Walden Pond (and ultimately of Walden, as book or scripture) is what makes it useful as

analogy. He concludes, at the end of "Spring," that "we need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life

pasturing freely where we never wander." Getting outside our own limits, trying to transcend the narrowness of our

own experience, can give us the vision of larger life, of some life "pasturing freely where we naver wander." The

exploration of life by means of analogy possesses a spiritual dimension that logic does not.

Thoreau leaves the pond because he has learned its lessons. When the person becomes enlightened, the vehicle of

enlightenment (for Thoreau, the pond) is no longer necessary. The basic idea in Walden, then, is that of self-expression,

Thoreau's attempt to find a way to make visible and concrete his sense of who he is. His greates fear, as he expresses it

in the concluding chapter, is that his "expression may not be extra-vagant enough."

It is hard, of course, to be extravagant ourselves, because it means wandering outside of the limits of everything we

have learned as received knowledge, prescribed feelings, and "right" and "wrong" ways to think.

The Lessons of Thoreau's Walden

Two crucial questions Thoreau raises in Walden are: How much is enough? and How do I know what I want?

How much is enough?

"Economy"

1. Thoreau begins a long assessment of what, and how much of it, a person really needs to live. What are

the four necessities of life? Eventually he reduces this list to one basic necessity. What is it, and how do

the other three contribute to it?

2. How much of each of these necessities does Thoreau think we need? How much is too much?

3. Thoreau describes how he built his own cabin. Does it conform to his own advice on how much shelter

we need?

4. When a person has more than enough of something, our culture considers it a good thing to share that

abundance with others through philanthropy (charity). What does Thoreau think about philanthropy, and

why? Do you agree or disagree, and why?

5. Give modern examples of these Thoreauvian criticisms of materialistic excess:

a. "The head monkey in Paris puts on a traveler’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the

same."

b. "And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be

the house that has got him."

c. "The consequence is, that while he [the college student] is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and

Say [economists studied in college], he runs his father in debt irretrievably."

6. Thoreau says, "the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life, which is required to be

exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run."

a. One example of this idea is Thoreau's argument that he could travel faster by foot than by

railroad. Would Thoreau's argument work today for railroad travel? For automobile travel (if you

had to buy a new car first)? For airplane travel?

"Where I Lived, and What I Lived For"

1. Thoreau complains, "Our life is frittered away by detail." What do you think he means by this? Give

examples from your life.

2. Thoreau advises us to "Simplify, simplify". What modern inventions, new in Thoreau's day, does he

question the value of? What inventions new in your day would you question the value of (televion, for

example)?

"Spring"

Most of us feel guilty about our past errors, and we also worry about preparing for the future. But Thoreau says,

"We should be blessed if we lived in the present always." Explain why Thoreau thinks that we should focus

more on the present.

How do I know what I want?

Walden Questions to Consider

"Economy"

Focus on Thoreau's practical concerns: What, for Thoreau, is wrong with the daily life of his contemporaries? What were

his motives for going to Walden? What led him to write a book?

Are Thoreau's criticisms of his society applicable to ours? What does Thoreau mean that students ought, quite literally,

to build their own colleges?

Compare Thoreau's list of materials for his house at Walden with Benjamin Franklin's list of virtues in The

Autobiography. Is there evidence in "Economy" that Thoreau is constructing an analogy, or is he writing a how-to-book

in the tradition of Franklin? Note: A literary analogy is a comparison in which the subject is compared point by point to

something far different, usually with the idea of clarifying the subject by comparing it to something familiar. Analogies

can provide insights and also imply that the similarities already present between the two subjects can mean even more

similarities. Anne Bradstreet's "The Author to Her Book" contains an analogy that compares the book to a child.

"Where I Lived and What I Lived For"

Consider again the analogies in Walden: Analogy becomes a method of introspection and religious meditation for

Thoreau. Scholar Stanley Cavell in The Senses of Walden suggests that Thoreau's work is a scripture. Think about how

authors we've read acheived authority, or self-assurance, by their relationship to scripture, especially the Bible. Does

Thoreau achive litarry authority by going back to what he sees as the very source of creation, in nature, at Walden?

Thoreau's experience at Walden becomes a record of his way of seeing the world; as it does for Emerson, the process of

learning for Thoreau involves making the analogies he discovers as a result of going to the woods. In Thoreau's very

ability to create the analogy, he has the experience; transcendentalism can this be seen as the first American spiritual

movement based on a theory of language. That theory is Emerson's as well as Thoreau's, but Thoreau is able to find the

analogies he wants in the life he is living on an hourly, daily, and seasonal basis at the pond.

Crucial to considering Walden as scripture are the frequent references Thoreau makes to Eastern religious experience.

He writes that every morning "I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best

things I did." How can bathing in the pond be a religious exercise? (He seems to mean that it is a spiritual experience,

not just part of his routine that he follows religiously). Bathing in the pond for Thoreau suggests his daily immersion in th

emeaning of the experience of the pond. To jump into it suggests his daily attempt to understand it. It cleanses, it

renews, it wakes him up -- "to reawaken and keep awake, not be mechanical aids, but by infinite expectation of the

dawn." Bathing in Walden becomes an interim "mechanical aid"; when he becomes able to keep himself awake without

the pond, he won't need it anymore.

How does Thoreau's meditation differ from Puritan meditation? Thoreau, like Franklin, attempts to transcend the world

of literal limits and find in the rhythm of the physical world an analogy in that work to spiritual life and feeling at one

with the universe, or Nature. He attempts to transcend the limits of material existence.

"The Pond in Winter" and "Spring"

Thoreau makes the analogy between sounding the depths of a pond and "sounding" the depths of the human mind. His

"depth" of knowldege of the pond prepares him for an even deeper dive into his own imagination, his own

consciousness.

"Spring" heralds Thoreau's new life at the pond and the new light in the writer. He discovers that "the day is an epitome

of the year"; the small scale of Walden Pond (and ultimately of Walden, as book or scripture) is what makes it useful as

analogy. He concludes, at the end of "Spring," that "we need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life

pasturing freely where we never wander." Getting outside our own limits, trying to transcend the narrowness of our

own experience, can give us the vision of larger life, of some life "pasturing freely where we naver wander." The

exploration of life by means of analogy possesses a spiritual dimension that logic does not.

Thoreau leaves the pond because he has learned its lessons. When the person becomes enlightened, the vehicle of

enlightenment (for Thoreau, the pond) is no longer necessary. The basic idea in Walden, then, is that of self-expression,

Thoreau's attempt to find a way to make visible and concrete his sense of who he is. His greates fear, as he expresses it

in the concluding chapter, is that his "expression may not be extra-vagant enough."

It is hard, of course, to be extravagant ourselves, because it means wandering outside of the limits of everything we

have learned as received knowledge, prescribed feelings, and "right" and "wrong" ways to think.