Study Questions
1. In a speech
from the early 1940s,
the poet Ezra Pound dismissed Thoreau’s project in less than twenty-five words.
Pound viewed it as Thoreau’s:First intellectual reaction to mere
approach of industrialization: Thoreau
tried to see how little he need bother about other humanity. Would
you agree with Pound that the experiment Thoreau takes up at Walden
Pond demonstrates his indifference to other humans? Why or why not?
While Thoreau clearly voices some sharp criticism
of civilized life and industrialization, Pound is wrong in claiming
that Thoreau does not care about “other humanity” at all. Thoreau’s
retreat to Walden Pond is never framed as an attempt to flee humans,
and he explicitly points out that he visits Concord several times
a week, that he enjoys entertaining visitors in his shack, and that
he has had more guests at the pond than ever before. His friendly
chats with the Canadian woodcutter Alex Therien show his sociability,
and his domestic management lectures to John Field and Field’s family, though
they may be undiplomatic, come from Thoreau’s very committed desire
to pull him out of poverty. He never shows any signs of indifference
to humanity. On the contrary, his prophetic tone at the end of the
work displays a huge moral investment in the fate of his fellow
men.
2. Does Thoreau
show socialist tendencies, though he is writing before socialism
is a recognized idea?
Certainly Thoreau’s call to “simplify, simplify,
simplify” our lives contradicts the spirit of American conspicuous
consumption and modern capitalism. Thoreau would prefer us to patch
our old clothes instead of buying new ones, disdaining the latest
fashions dictated to us by advertisers and department stores. He
would have us eat rice on our front porch instead of going to fine
restaurants, and he would prefer to see us quit our well-paid jobs
in order to pursue our more rewarding development as humans. This
rejection of economic success, high social rank, and consumerism
is typical of the broad current of socialist thought that emerged
later in the nineteenth century. But in other respects, Thoreau
is no true socialist. He shows little solidarity with the poor and
underprivileged: though he sometimes stops to chat with them, he
never lets us forget that he is better educated and more advanced
than they, as when he refers to Therien’s “animal nature.” A socialist
must identify with the masses of workers, but Thoreau is a stubborn
individualist. Moreover, he underestimates the power of social circumstances
(such as discrimination against immigrants) in creating poverty,
as we clearly see when he blames John Field’s poverty on his being
Irish. He is not really an analyst of the wealth of nations, but
more of a prophet who uses economics as an allegory for self-reliance
and spiritual well being.
3. Thoreau makes
it very clear at the opening of Walden that his stay in the wilderness
was not a lifestyle choice but rather a temporary experiment, and
that “At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.” Does
the short duration of Thoreau’s stay at Walden undercut the importance
of his project?
One widespread misunderstanding of Thoreau
is that he was a critic of modernity who failed in his plan to live
a more authentic life on his own. But, in fact, Thoreau insists
on telling us that his Walden project is not a life decision or
a commitment to a set of ideals, but an experiment in alternative
living that is unambiguously amateurish. It is more like casual
play than like solemn ideology. This informality explains why, when
he leaves Walden Pond in 1847, Thoreau does
not admit failure; rather, he says simply that he has other lives to
live. Thoreau was more of an Emersonian transcendentalist than he
was a socialist: the soul mattered more to him than sociology. He was
not as interested in being a model farmer as in showing how the soul
could benefit from a change of scenery and occupation. Having learned
the lessons that Walden Pond had to offer him, he turned to other
scenes and other occupations, thus proving rather than undercutting
his philosophy of life.
Suggested Essay Topics
1. Thoreau occasionally forces
a long series of tedious details upon us, as for example when in
“House-Warming” he tells us a precise history of the freezing of
Walden Pond over the past several years. Similarly detailed passages
refer to his farming endeavors, his home construction, and other
topics. Why does Thoreau repeatedly display these irrelevant details?
How do they fit in to his overall plan for Walden?
2. Thoreau has inspired twentieth-century
leaders such as Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, but it is
not certain that he had any leadership potential himself, though he
often posed as a kind of prophet for his fellowman. Is Thoreau a
leader? Why or why not?3. At times Thoreau
seems like a diarist narrating the flow of everyday events, as humdrum
as they may be. At other times he is almost a mystic writer, as
when he compares the topography of ponds to the shape of the human
soul. And at still other times he is a social critic and moral prophet.
Does the hodgepodge of genres in Walden contribute
something positive to its overall meaning for us?
4. Thoreau is a practical man
and a close observer of nature, but he is also a fantasist who makes
a lot of references to mythology. In “Economy” he mentions the Greek
myth of Deucalion and Pyrrha who created men by throwing stones over
their shoulders; in “The Pond in Winter” he compares a pile of ice
to Valhalla, palace of the Scandinavian gods. In “Sounds” he describes
the Fitchburg Railway train as a great mythical beast invading the
calm of Walden. What is the effect of all these mythological references?
Do they change the overall message of the work in any important
way?
5. Thoreau repeatedly praises
the simplicity and industriousness of the working poor, and comes
very close to joining their ranks when he lives at subsistence level
in the woods for two years. Yet in his chapter on reading he disdains
popular tastes in books, implying that everyone should be able to
read the Greek tragedian Aeschylus in the original, as he does.
His allusions to world literature are quite lofty, including Chinese philosophers
and Persian poets. Is Thoreau a snob? If so, is his democratic
populism undermined by his disdain for popular culture?
6. What would Thoreau make of
the fact that Walden is one of the most commonly
assigned texts in high school and college literature courses across
the country? Would he welcome the fact that he has become part of
the mainstream culture that he was criticizing?