Discussion Topic
Unifying Elements in Walden
Summary:
In Walden, Thoreau unifies the work through the symbolism of Walden Pond and the imagery of awakening. The pond serves as a spiritual symbol and central theme, while the imagery of waking conveys the natural environment's influence. Additionally, the book's structure mirrors the seasons, providing coherence. Thoreau condenses his two-year experience into one year, starting in summer and ending in spring, with chapters reflecting his deliberate living and daily adventures, culminating in a reflective conclusion.
What symbols and images in Walden unify it into a single work of art?
Without the symbolism of Walden Pond, it's likely that Thoreau's book would be little more than a collection of essays lacking an overall sense of structure. But because Walden Pond is always there, the place where Thoreau takes a bath each morning, it unifies all the essays into a comprehensive whole. Walden Pond structures the material, giving Thoreau's work a thematic coherence that it would otherwise lack.
Walden Pond is a symbol of the innate spirituality of nature. The pond is not just a body of water into which Thoreau plunges every morning for his bath; it is a sacred place imbued with deep spiritual significance. The same could be said of all features of the natural world, but Thoreau fixates upon Walden Pond as a symbol, as it is the part of his immediate environment with which he is most familiar.
As well as using symbolism to unify his...
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material, Thoreau also employsimagery. The most important imagery in this regard is that conjured up by his frequent exhortations to awake. Right throughout Walden, we find Thoreau stressing the importance of rising early or allowing oneself to yield to the early morning.
The concrete images of waking up to meet the dawning of another day serve to illustrate the natural phenomena of Thoreau's surroundings. Through this imagery, we gain a much clearer insight into Thoreau's world and the profound effect it has upon him as he rises to meet the morning each day as part of his bold experiment in living close to nature.
What unifies "Walden" as a work of art rather than a collection of eighteen essays?
This is a good question. It comes down to the underlying structure of those chapters as they fit together. Thoreau condenses his two-year experience into just one here, and he uses a standard seasonal approach, beginning in summer and ending the following spring. The progression of the seasons lends coherence to the text as a whole. He also introduces his most basic information in a sequence throughout the book – in spite of how long and cumbersome the first and introductory chapter, “Economy,” is. In “Economy” he tells us:
I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.
In the second chapter, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” he shares his purpose:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
The intermediary chapters are filled with daily life adventures and occupations, as well as an inventory of the site, the ponds, the animals, the village, and in “Sounds,” the nearby railroad line. Then he wraps up everything nicely in the “Conclusion:”
I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. … I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
So, Thoreau DOES craft a beginning, a middle, and an end to this book. And his deliberate choice to whittle two years into one makes the presentation not only more manageable to the writer, but more accessible to the reader as well.