Henry David Thoreau went to live in the woods to try to discover a higher, simpler meaning to life. In one of his new intellectual outlooks on life he summarizes the everlasting course of time and the individual lives of humans and material objects by comparing them to a stream in which he fishes in because he wants to voice his opinion on the understanding that little things like life in the flow of time are just currents sliding away in a stream. .
I interpreted the following passage: .
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"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its think current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore-paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining rod and think rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine.".
Thoreau's ideas flow into different concepts throughout this entire passage, opening up his beliefs on life and time. Interpretively, the stream he fishes in is him existing in time. Thoreau drinking at the stream but at the same time seeing the sandy bottom and detecting its depth is him living life and acknowledging how short and futile it is. By stating, "Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains", he conveys that individual lives and material possessions die or break, but time never fades away.
His book depicts a time of his life spent living by Walden Pond in the country. ... Walden portrays nature in great depth throughout the book. ... Thoreau includes passages that describe the simple side to nature. ... Another way to view Walden is as a do it yourself guide. ... While at Walden Pond, Thoreau also builds his own home. ...
Henry David Thoreau's Walden is Thoreau's personal account of his experience at Walden Pond while in search of a deeper understanding of life and truth. In Walden Thoreau writes that a person's goal for human existence should not be wealth or the acquisition of power, but the exploration of one's own mind. ... "Higher Laws" is also instrumental in suggesting this conflicting theme of animal and spiritual natures which occurs throughout Walden.. ... He continues to satisfy his desire for the wilderness on his regular fishing and hunting trips at Walden Pond. ... This pas...
This essay will go through multiple key ideas Thoreau composed while spending his days at Walden Pond. ... He comments, "I watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling that I do the rising sun, which is hardly more regular. ... " , before I finally went into winter quarters in November, I used to resort to the North-east side of Walden, which the sun, reflected from the pitch-pine woods and the stony shore, made the fireside of the pond; it is so much pleasanter and wholesomer to be warmed by the sun while you can be than by a...
This was created by representatives Scott McInnis and Greg Walden in an attempt to control wildfires in western states. ... With the passage of this act, the US Forest Service will be allowed to conduct large harmful logging projects without considering alternative measures. ...
Walden Pond was one of Thoreau's favorite spots in Concord, Massachusetts. Walden Pond is a symbol for self-exploration; it must answer human nature depth for depth. ... Thoreau spent more time outdoors than in the small cabin he built by Walden Pond. ... While he was at Walden, Thoreau was alone quite often, but he was rarely lonely. Walden is a book about Thoreau's experiences while living in the woods beside Walden Pond. ...
Then in the spring of 1845 Henry persuaded Emerson to let him build a cabin on some newly acquired land on the shores of Walden Pond to give him self the necessary time to write it (Concise 351). In the first year at Walden Pond, Thoreau had already finished the first draft of his book, A Week On the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, but it was not until 1849 that it would finally be published (Mahoney-Smith). ... Passages such as: "It is necessary not to be Christian to appreciate the beauty and significance of the life of Christ," were offensive to Christian readers. ... Another significant ev...
Consider the way Worster's version of Thoreau's empirically rooted difference from Emerson's figuratively deracinated use of nature has extended into recent criticism that gives greater attention to Thoreau's unpublished work after Walden (1854). ... In its thoroughgoing and often messy empiricism, in contrast to the polish of Walden or the lyricism of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), Thoreauvian ecocritics read this later work no longer as aesthetically deficient in Emersonian metaphor or the transcendental poetics of correspondence, but rather as environ...
At first glance, Lewis's popular satirical novel Babbitt would appear to be a completely different work from Thoreau's philosophical classic Walden, uninspired by and possibly even disputing Thoreauvian principles. ... He wishes to leave society for a time and pursue mental clarity in his hand-built cabin among the woods around Walden Pond. ... In Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt and in Henry David Thoreau's Walden, independence plays a key role in the main characters' lives. ... He spends twenty-seven cents each week for food during his two-year stay at Walden Pond, empha...
Emerson preached to the young, Thoreau dropped out of society with his Walden experiment, foreshadowing elements of the civil rights movement with "civil disobedience", and Whitman faced scorn and censorship for his now-revered "Leaves of Grass". ... In Emerson's "The Transcendentalist", he states a very interesting passage, and upon reading it, one can construe the connection between the two groups. ...
