INTRODUCTION + READING ASSIGNMENT + WRITING ASSIGNMENT
Assignment 26:
HENRY DAVID THOREAU (Part 1)

Thoreau moved to Walden Pond on the 4th of July, 1845, but did not publish the book called Walden until 1854. The title page included an epigraph: "I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as Chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up." This clearly indicates a broader social purpose for what is commonly regarded as the very personal statement of a reclusive writer. Yet what is it Thoreau would awaken his readers from, and to what should they open their eyes? Another way of posing the question: When Thoreau arrived at Walden on July 4th, from what was he declaring his independence?

The theme of awakening has a notable heritage in American writing, as we've already seen. To a Puritan writer like Bradstreet or Wigglesworth, the only awakening worth bothering about is that on the Day of Doom, when the Saints awaken in the New Jerusalem. In the early Republic, Washington Irving imagines the Dutchman Rip Van Winkle awakening from a henpecked monarchy into a fraternal democracy, thus to a "history" worth narrating to others. What kind of awakening does Thoreau imagine?

During his two years at Walden, Thoreau saw the States go to war with Mexico over the annexation of Texas, a war he opposed because of its empire-building motives. The move also promised to strengthen pro-slavery factions in the South, who saw the new territory in terms of new, like-minded Senators and Representatives who would with it. In fact, so divisive was the debate between pro- and anti-slavery factions over Texas that the Democratic party split in two. Former President Martin Van Buren became the presidential nominee of a new, Free Soil Party ticket, which pocketed the more staunch anti-slavery vote; the Democrats' more moderate ticket, headed by Michigan's Lewis Cass and Kentucky's William Butler, had been carefully devised to bring both Northerners and Southerners together. Before the Free Soilers deserted the party, Cass and Butler were clear favorites; after the split, the Whig candidate Zachary Taylor, a southern slave-holder, cruised to a relatively easy election. The Union nearly collapsed, and was saved only by the Compromise of 1850. This agreement allowed the extension of slavery into the western territories; in exchange, the North acceded to Southern demands for a law mandating the return of fugitive slaves. Added to these crises were demands for women's suffrage, after the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, as well as concern among journalists and intellectuals that the European revolutions of 1848-49 might well spill over into the Americas.

What was Thoreau's response to these crises during the 1852-53 period when he transformed his Journal entries into the book called Walden? He calls on Americans to reaffirm the importance of uncivilized Nature. "We need the tonic of wildness," Thoreau writes, because we "need to witness our own limits transgressed." And we need to experience that transgression or erasure of limits or boundaries, he goes on, because it is the essential resource of self-reliant freedom and individual transcendence. We may thus read Walden as the concrete and practical exploration of all that's abstract and ideal, in Emerson's Nature.

In addition, Walden rejects an American society that was increasingly industrialized, urbanized, and centralized. Thoreau critiques the railroad and the telegraph as unneeded and sense-dulling mediations between Man and Nature. By contrast, one aim of Walden's early chapters is to conduct an experiment whose purpose is to learn what are the real "necessaries" of life. This is what Thoreau means by the term "Economy": the essentials of Fuel, Clothing, Shelter and Food needed for self-cultivation. Put another way, the aim is to learn by experimentation what are the luxuries of life, and what may therefore be stripped away. Only by doing so, Thoreau argues, may human beings learn "to stand on the meeting of two extremities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line."

Reading Assignment
  1. Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Ch. 1 ("Economy") (pp. 1768-1810).
Writing Assignment
  1. In the "Economy" chapter, what reasons does Thoreau give for moving to Walden Pond? What objectives take him there?

  2. How does Thoreau define the term, "economy," in this chapter?

  3. By what phrases, references, and metaphors does he suggest that living at Walden is a scientific experiment?

  4. One of the ways that Thoreau's writing works is by the logic of paradox. An example: "I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools" (1769). The paradox, of course, arises from seeing an "inheritance" as a "misfortune." Reading the "Economy" chapter, locate three or four other instances of paradox and comment on them.

  5. Aside from the logic of paradox, Thoreau's style at its most powerful often works by means of pithy, proverbial sentences. An example of this: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" (1771). The sayings of Franklin's "Poor Richard" come to mind. Gather a sampling of such sentences, and compare their ethical code to that of Franklin's "The Way to Wealth."

  6. Using specific passages of text, summarize Thoreau's attitude towards life in cities, and towards industrial technologies. Exactly what does he dislike about them?

  7. How are Thoreau's thoughts about philanthropy (page 1807-1808) comparable to Emerson's, in "Self-Reliance? Discuss.

  8. Why does Thoreau tabulate the finances, the incomes and outgoes of his Walden experiment? What comparisons to Franklin's tables and moral accounts-keeping do you see?

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