INTRODUCTION + READING ASSIGNMENT + WRITING ASSIGNMENT
Assignment 27:
HENRY DAVID THOREAU (Part 2)

Fully living in the "present moment," in Nature, as Thoreau describes it in "Economy," is however just half the game. The rest concerns the question of Law, the question in short of how a person's hard-won independence may find transcendent meaning by living in accord with the norms or precepts of ordinary being. Thoreau's observations of Nature, his measurements of the Pond, his concise observations of plant life and geological structure, and his attempts to see their interrelationships with Man's existence, all exemplify his attempt to ground Ethics, and an understanding of Law, in Nature.

This project may be seen as a continuation of intellectual problems developed during the Revolution. In the Declaration of Independence, for example, Jefferson's first paragraph had sought to legitimize the very right to independence from England by referring the question to higher powers: "the laws of nature and of Nature's god," it says, "entitle" nations to seek legal means of self-determination. Similarly, Crevecouer's Letter III, "What Is An American?," argues that both the independence and rights of Americans stem from their tenancy on the land, their rightful husbandry of Nature. Or, to take a still later and more complex instance, Hawthorne's 1850 novel, The Scarlet Letter, symbolically connects the wilderness with essential freedoms, a modern liberty which the Puritan's rigid policing of the body and social practices had sought to deny.

It is in chapters like "The Pond in Winter," "Higher Laws," and "Spring" that Thoreau provides the most concrete hope of achieving in Nature a clarity of physical and moral experience. The Pond, for example, can be most concisely--scientifically-- measured when, seemingly, it is most dead: when frozen in the Winter. Knowing it with tools of measurement, Thoreau stands at the realization of principles in "natural law" and "ethics" (page 1920). Paradoxically, though, in its frozen state the Pond may be seen as most alive. Crawled by fishermen and ice-cutters, Walden Pond thus sends out its life and its "evaporations," thereby rejoining all of creation. Similarly, in "Spring" the surrounding Nature is rife with "hieroglyphics" for Thoreau's decipherment. These patterns remind him that "earth is not a mere fragment of dead history ... but a living earth" shaped by "the principle of all the operations of Nature" (page 1929), whose laws he can tease out, by precise, sensory attention.

One year after Walden was published in 1854, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was first released, on July 4, 1855. Its premier poem, "Song of Myself," is set on Independence Day, and similarly privileges sensory perception in Nature as the surest course to an understanding of the laws needed for self-emancipation. Thoreau's book stands four-square in this line of meditative works on Nature, stretching from Bradstreet's "Contemplations" to Whitman's "Song of Myself." Each is a distinctly American statement of the potentials for the moral life, and moreover for the life whose laws enable one to "toe the line" of a possible transcendence.

 Reading Assignment
  1. Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Chs. 2 ("Where I Lived"), 11 ("Higher Laws"), and 16-18 ("The Pond in Winter" to "Conclusion").
Writing Assignment
  1. In "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," what are the (paradoxical?) attractions of the Hollowell farm? Why does Thoreau decide against buying it?

  2. That second chapter is also notable for the range of its references to and quotations from world literature. What does Thoreau achieve by that range? That is, what are the effects of such far-reaching allusions on the reader?

  3. What is the "answered question" to which Thoreau awakens in the first paragraph of "The Pond in Winter" (page 1915)? How is that in fact a restatement of the theme developed throughout the book thus far?

  4. After his precise measurements of Walden Pond, measurements of its length and breadth and depth, what "Law" does Thoreau derive from his observations; and, how does that precept seem to have broader applications? By contrast, how do men behave? Discuss.

  5. At the heart of Thoreau's "Spring" chapter is a lengthy discussion of a thawing sandbank, the patterns of its exuvial flows, and the comparisons of those patterns to others found in Nature (see pages 1927- 1930). Answer the following:

    1. What forms does the thawing sandbank assume?

    2. After observing the formal similarities in things, Thoreau spins into passages of etymological discussion about the "radicals" of words. Why? What do these facts of "translation" teach him?

    3. From meditating on forms, and words, where does Thoreau arrive at the end of this meditation (on pages 1929-1930)?

    4. In a paragraph or two, discuss how this passage might be illuminated by means of Chapter IV, "Language," in Emerson's Nature, which similarly claims that "Words are signs of natural facts" and "Nature is the symbol of spirit."

  6. In several paragraphs, discuss how the concluding paragraphs of Walden complete the book that began in the "Economy" chapter. Be specific: show how specific themes, issues, metaphors and symbols reappear or are brought to fulfillment.

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