FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY OF NOVI SAD. Thoreau s Quest for Individuality in Walden and the Influence of his philosophy in Modern Society

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1 FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY OF NOVI SAD STUDY PROGRAM: MASTER S DEGREE OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE Thoreau s Quest for Individuality in Walden and the Influence of his philosophy in Modern Society MASTER THESIS Student: Ajtana Dražanin Supervisor: PhD Zoran Paunovic 1

2 Abstract The purpose of this paper is to examine the poetic quest of Henry David Thoreau, discovering in his work Walden an inseparable unitybetween nature and the philosophy of Transcendentalism, as well as the benign influence of his philosophy and ideals on the real life story of a young man and the protagonist of the novel Into the Wild and a young female author and the protagonist of the novel Tracksin the modern society. Thoreau was one of the very founders of Transcendentalism movement who constructed the movement oftranscendentalism by putting hisbeliefs into action and disobeying the government.in retrospect, it was one of the most significant literary movements in the nineteenth century America, with at least twoworld renowned authors, Thoreau and Emerson. Thematically, this paper will focus on the themes such as the importance of nature,specifically Thoreau s quest for individuality through nature, and the ideals of simplicity. Nature is central to Thoreau s quest for transcendence, his sense of spirituality and his idea of a perfect life. The next important theme Thoreau explores is a critique of industrialist society and an acceptance of individuality and selfreliancethrough nature and embracing solitude. The Walden quest was Thoreau s attempt to demonstrate self-reliance as a philosophical ideal implemented in real life. Therefore, Thoreau s self-reliance was stressed on the physical truth in order to reach the spiritual. The second part of my paper will begin with discussion on influence of Thoreau s philosophy of Transcendentalism in modern society.in doing so,the focus will be on Thoreau s influence on the real life story of the protagonist of the novel Into The Wild and another similar questof the protagonist of the novel Tracks and reveal the tenants of Transcendentalism found in their lives and work. As in Walden, thecritique of industrialist society is also one of the main themes 2

3 explored in the two novels, although set in a different periods of time. Finally, by including two real life stories with the same thematic ideas, the paper will end with a conclusion on the tremendous impact of Thoreau s work, his philosophy and ideals on the modern society, thereby marking him as one of very significant writers in the history of literature. Key words: Henry DavidThoreau, Transcendentalism, nature, individuality, quest. 3

4 Content Abstract... 2 Content Introduction Thoreau and Transcedentalism Walden experiment Self and Society Thoreau and Nature Solitude Rebirth Into The Wild McCandless and Society МcCandless and Nature McCandless and Thoreau Tracks Robyn and Society Davidson and Nature Rebirth Conclusion References

5 1. Introduction Henry David Thoreau, born July in Concord, Massachusetts, died May 6, 1862, was American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher, renowned for having lived the doctrines of Transcendentalism, as recorded in his masterwork Walden (1854), and for having been a vigorous advocate of civil liberties, as evidenced in the essay Civil Disobedience (1849). In retrospect, Transcendentalism was one of the most significant literary movements of 19 th century America. Essentially, it combined romanticism with reform and it celebrated the individual rather than the masses, emotion rather than reason, nature rather than man. Transcendentalism conceded that there were two ways of knowing, through the senses and through intuition, but asserted that intuition transcended tuition. Similarly, the movement acknowledged that matter and spirit both existed. It claimed, however, that the reality of spirit transcended the reality of matter (Encyclopedia Britannica,2014). As one of the very founders of the Transcendentalist movement, Thoreau said: Rather than love, money, fame, give me truth (Thoreau, 1962:19). Thoreau was peculiarly the product of an America at the beginning of its industrial growing pains. Thoreau was indeed the last great American exponent of the Rousseauistic doctrine of the natural rights of man. It was just because he could foresee the final subjugation of the individual by the Leviathan state that he spoke out against it with such uncompromising idealism. Thoreau's nonconformity was compounded of Emerson's principle of self-reliance, the frontier's necessitous 5

6 individualism. Like so many of his contemporaries, he grew up questioning the mores and manners of his generation, unlike them, however, he was, in Emerson's phrasing, "stubborn and implacable" in his adherence to his principles. When he found that earning a living left no time for life, he rebelled. He scorned as monstrous the gospel of work which was part of the Puritan way of life and which was eagerly propagated by an emerging industrialism. Wealth he regarded as an incubus that corrupted the body and degraded the soul. A Yankee hedonist, he argued that man's goal was enjoyment, not property. The success of his experiment at Walden Pond validated his transcendental individualism (Madison, 1944:121). In Civil Disobedience, Thoreau expressed his belief in the power and the obligation of the individual to determine right from wrong, independent of the dictates of society: "any man more right than his neighbors, constitutes a majority of one". While many of his contemporaries espoused this view, few practiced it in their own lives as consistently as Thoreau. Thoreau exercised his right to dissent from the prevailing views in many ways, large and small. He worked for pay intermittently; he cultivated relationships with several of the town's outcasts, lived alone in the woods for two years, never married, he signed off from the First Parish Church rather than be taxed automatically to support it every year.thoreau encouraged others to assert their individuality, each in his or her own way. When neighbors talked of emulating his lifestyle at the pond, he was dismayed rather than flattered (Reform papers, 1973:74). In Walden he said: I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account for, beside that before he has fairly learned it I may have found out another for myself, I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible, but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's instead (Walden, 1962:71). Thoreau also believed that independent, well-considered action arose naturally from a questing attitude of mind. He was first and foremost an explorer, of both the world around him and the world within him: Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought (Walden, 1962:321). 6

7 Thoreau intends Walden to contribute to the American literature of the time, but also to act as a critique of what America has become. It is Thoreau s expression of his relationship to America, to an America still to come, it is his expression of himself as an expression of America and a response to the feeling that America does not express him. Language and citizenship, then, are here intimately related. A central theme for Thoreau is of refusing to live what he will not call his own life (Cavell, 2005:226). His philosophy was and remains as one the most genuine and pure to this day. The values and ideals of his philosophy are universal thus it is no wonder it will find its great impact in the modern society. A modern man is obsessed by the need fora constant monetary gain and consumerism. As Thoreau stated many live lives of quiet desperation, a quote by which he perfectly defines our modern society. Two great examples of disillusioned modern individuals are true life stories of Chris McCandless and Robyn Davidson.Into the Wild is Jon Krakauer s biography of Christopher McCandless, a talented college graduate who inexplicably leaves his family, his friends, and all the comforts of civilization in search of ultimate freedom, a more simple form of life closer to nature and divorced from the extreme materialism of American society. Tracks is a memoir of Robyn Davidson, an Australian writer who at the age of 25 crossed 1,700 miles of desert landscape between Alice Springs and the Indian Ocean, with a dog and four camels. Estranged from contemporary society Chris and Robyn felt the need tolose themselves in the sublimity of nature in order to find their own voice. Thus, like Thoreau s Walden, their quest was both spiritual and physical. Though Davidson was not influenced by Thoreau directly, as McCandless was, her story celebrates the same values as Walden, that in order to reach individual transcendence one must return to nature, and embrace simplicity and solitude.chris McCandless and Robyn Davidson portray two very different individual but both in a desperate need for a raw transcendence. With a focus on the foundation and the beginnings of Thoreau s philosophy of transcendentalism and its impact in nineteenth century America, this paper will attempt to illustratethe importance of Thoreau s philosophyin the modern world as well.philosophy which answers the needs of an disillusioned nineteenth-century American amidst the industrial revolution as well as to the needs of a modern man. 7

8 2. Thoreau and Transcedentalism At the core of Henry David Thoreau s Transcendentalist philosophy was a belief that individuals should be self-reliant and live a simple life. Thoreau felt that people were conforming to accepted norms of the society and losing autonomy. In his masterpiece Walden Thoreau uses nature, solitude and simplicity interwoven by self-reliance as certain pathos one must follow to reach Transcendental individuality, for which Thoreau believed eventually leads to an ideal life (Glick, 1973:74). Although it is difficult to pinpoint just when Transcendentalism began, a plausible date is September 19, 1836, when George Ripley, a Unitarian minister, called together his friends,a group of very different individuals, among whom was Ralph Waldo Emerson, the leader, best writer and most famous of the group. His book Naturewould become a virtual manifesto for Transcendentalism. Their specific task was to discuss the shortcomings of Unitarianism. Henry David Thoreau was notably absent, being only nineteen years old at the time but would later become one of the two most important Transcendentalists along with Emerson. No one knows for sure who coined the term Transcendentalist, but it had been in use in Britain since the early nineteenth century, coined apparently in an attempt to describe thinking of European philosophers such as Imanuel Kant. In January, 1837, a Harvard tutor of philosophy wrote a review on Emerson s Nature, in which he criticized the new school of thinking and called it Transcendentalist. The Transcendentalism movement cannot be defined easily. Unitarianism influenced virtually all Transcendentalists. In the nineteenth century Unitarians were still the spiritual descendants of colonial Puritanism and they retained the emphasis on moral living, duty 8

9 and responsibility to build a just society and largely about living rightly, the emphasis which rankled Transcendentalists. It was not that they wanted to be liberated from living a moral life,rather they wanted to move from mundane and often glum emphasis on living by moral rules, to a deeper sense of experience. The experience they desired was not an emotionalist revivalist conversion but rather a quiet individualistic experience of oneness with nature. In contrast to Unitarians who were busy with harmonizing the Christian faith with rationalism of Enlightenment, Transcendentalists were Romantics. Where rationalists believe that all truth can be apprehended through the use of human reason, Romantics believe that some truths can be best attained through intuition, emotion, and aesthetic sense. In reading a good poem, experiencing a summer rainstorm, or contemplating a beautiful waterfall, individuals were more likely to see and feel the truth. One scholar defines Transcendentalism as a warm and intuitional religious, aesthetic, philosophical and ethical movement, a practical and theoretical way of life and a literary expression within the tradition of Idealism. Words such as intuition, mysticism, humanism and romanticism will be very important for understanding Transcendentalism, along with Emerson s thought and Thoreau s actions. Emerson s Nature had just been published in 1836 when the Transcendentalist Club met for the first time. Emerson believed nature was very much like God. For Transcendentalists, God was not a being, as orthodox and liberal Christians believed. Rather, God was a universal spirit and nature is the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to human beings. To know God, the universal spirit, one must be in harmony with nature. Emerson came very close to pantheism, the belief that God was in everything. For him, individuals should not study nature as if it were an object but experience it as if it were a living spirit (Hankins, 2004: 23, 25, 27). In 1833 Henry David Thoreau entered Harvard University and by a sheer chance he came under the benign influence of the essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson sensed in Thoreau a true disciple that is, one with so much Emersonian self-reliance that he would still be his own man. Out of their heady speculations and affirmatives came New England Transcendentalism. In retrospect, it was one of the most significant literary movements of 19 th century America, with at least two authors of world stature, Thoreau and Emerson, to its credit. Essentially it combined romanticism with reform. It celebrated the individual rather than the masses, emotion rather than reason, nature rather than man. Transcendentalism conceded that there were two ways of knowing, through the senses and 9

10 through intuition, but asserted that intuition transcended tuition. Similarly, the movement acknowledged that matter and spirit both existed. It claimed, however, that the reality of spirit transcended the reality of matter. Transcendentalism strove for reform yet insisted that reform begin with the individual, not the group or organization. As it was a reaction against rationalism of the Unitarian Church, the philosophy centered on the premise that divine truth is present in all things and that truth, or God, is known through intuition and not rational mind (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2014). If Emerson laid the intellectual foundation for Transcendentalism, Thoreau, more than anyone else lived its meaning. He held close to its fundamental principles than did any of the others and remained a true Transcendentalist to the end of his life. Although Thoreau was fourteen years younger than Emerson, the two became friends and Emerson saw in Thoreau the perfect American scholar. While Emerson at times seemed to believe that individuals could practically reach perfection by following their own star, Thoreau maintained a balance between the real and ideal, believing in the good as well as the evil individuals are capable of. His most famous book Waldenwas an attempt to prove that if he simplified his life, limiting his desire, he could support himself on about six weeks of labor per year and have time left for reading, writing and thinking. Freedom and knowledge of God were possible through experiencing nature in here and now, not in amassing wealth or in putting off salvation to the future. In his time at Walden Pond and for the rest of his life, Thoreau tried to live out his personal creed, holding that individuals should live simply and enjoy nature. For him, this was a spiritual quest, it was his religion. The Walden project was Thoreau s attempt to demonstrate the self-reliance as a philosophical ideal implemented in real life. Thus, Thoreau s self reliance was stressed on the physical truth in order toreach the spiritual (Hankins, 2004:30-31). What Makes Thoreau a special case among the Transcendentalists was that he put this radical individualism into actual practice. Preaching the simple life, unnumbered by worldly possessions, he never aspired even after the most modest wealth, never even held a steady job. Preaching self reliance, he took at the age of twenty-eight the drastic step of building a cabin in the woods and living there under Spartan conditions for over two years (Bertens, 2013:70). A hallmark of Thoreauvian thought seems to be a venture into nature, an interest initiated by his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. Thoreau has imbibed the basic tenants of Transcendentalism and was also deeply influenced by Emerson s Nature. In Language Emerson 10

11 asserts particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts. As a man studies details of nature he discovers the natural and spiritual law that operates within him. Walden is a replete with instances of correspondence between nature and man. When Thoreau saw the ugly or sensual in nature he analyzed it as a symbol of ugliness or sensuality in himself. All facts, even the unpleasant ones are part of the grand quest for self. Though, to a great extent the Thoreauvian thought seems grounded in Emersonian Transcendentalism, Thoreau was aware of the inane contradiction in Emerson s Nature. Emerson felt that nature was insignificant in itself, even untrustworthy. In his first edition of Nature he quotes Plotinus: Nature is but an image or imitation of wisdom, the last thing of the soul, nature being a thing that doth only do, but not know. Thus Emerson urges man not merely to return to nature but also urges him to bring nature under the sway of man s spirit so that the Universe may become entirely spiritual. Man uses nature only to rise above it to the spiritual life. Unlike Emerson, Thoreau was not interested in putting a man over nature but rather sought a partnership of equals with it. He was more interested in the landscape than Emerson as also in the wild nature in himself and other men. Thus Thoreau adopts a working compromise between spirit and nature in himself. According to this compromise man needs nature to renew himself, to recover his natural healthy life but nature also needs and fosters man as her highest creation and representative (Gurudev,2006:29-31). Transcendentalism was also a revolt against the institutional religion of the nineteenth century in both its conservative and liberal forms, i.e. revivalist Protestantism and Unitarianism. While Emerson held Jesus in lowest esteem, Thoreau was the most anticlerical of the Transcendentalists, i.e. opposed to organized religion. Even while rebelling against institutional religion, Transcendentalists shared with the revivalists and Unitarians a strong reform impulse. Most Transcendentalists were reluctant to join voluntary organizations that attempted to change laws. Instead, they were individualistic social critics who hoped that if people adopted the transcendental pursuit of the truth, they would become purveyors of justice. Thoreau, more than any other Transcendentalist, however, acted on his views, albeit individualistically. He not only spoke against the Mexican War and annexation of Texas but he even stopped paying the taxes to support the war and landed in jail. He advocated for individual passive resistance and through his 11

12 famous essay On Civil Disobedience influenced twentieth century reformers such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. (Hankins, 2004: 32-33). 2.1Walden experiment The idea behind Thoreau s experience in Walden Pond was to immerse himself in nature in hopes of gaining more insight about life. As identified earlier, transcendentalist thought revolved around the concept of self-reliance, finding answers byyourself and within yourself. Thoreau utilized nature to apply this concept. By immersing himself in nature he believed that it could accomplish a better understanding of society,himself, as well as spiritual discovery (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2014). "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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world, or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion"(thoreau,1962:172). 12

13 Before examining how Thoreau came to argue about the importance of the self in confrontation with societywe ought first to say something of a factual character about the industrial society of his day. The economics his society is after all what triggered and inspired Thoreau to discuss on the conflict between self and society. As Thoreau was born in the era when the economy of this early phase of industrialism in America was triggered by rapid, widespread, and revolutionary developments in internal transportation. This revolution began around the time of Thoreau's birth with canal building, but by 1840 it had already managed to effect the construction of three thousand miles of railroad in America.At the very beginning of Walden Thoreau makes several disclosures of his purposes during the years of this experiment. In the first place, he indicates the temporary and experimental character of these years. As an experiment this sojourn at the pond was not intended to be self-contained and self-justifying but was meant to return him into the normal flow of society, and provide an insight that would allow him to begin the task of correctly situating the self in society. In the second place he remarks that the experiment is largely autobiographical, thus sharing a genuine experience of the experiment and thereby implying that it is unique and not shared or social experience. Finally, he points out that the experiment was mainly for the purpose of the public service, specifically the society of Concord. The ultimate goal of the experiment, as highly autobiographical, is to have an influence on the public in regards to the issue of self and society in the industrial society.walden attempts to describe the relation this experiment bears to the exigencies of this society; in doing so, it is much more a manifesto of the self's relation to society rather than simply to nature. Thus, Walden represents a certain social philosophy rather than a simply natural philosophy (Sherman, 1962:247). The tendency of Transcendentalism as a method of thought, it has been said is not to reveal a universe as a complex of facts but simply to construct a point of view from which any world can be viewed by the highly self-conscious individual. It would appear that Transcendentalism as a method is overpowered by self-consciousness, by the act of creating a variety of perspectives for knowing as they radiate from the self of the present moment.to the extent that Thoreau consciously excludes the self from positive relation to the actual society around him, he must take pains to prevent the self from falling into the illusion of conceiving of itself as related to society. He must do this by securing the self against the passage of time as it is measured in this society. 13

14 In being given a new economic significance by industrialism, time represents a peculiar threat to the integrity of the self. The self must consequently be rescued from the slippage of time. It must carve out a space in time from which to oversee the passage of time. In effect, Thoreau must not only affirm the essential unrelatedness of the self to the social order surrounding it, but he must construct what amounts to a kind of philosophic therapy against the tendency the self might have to relate itself to the temporal artifices and controls of this society (Simmons & Thomas, 1853:36,53). The self must be disciplined to look upon this social order with an eye "half-shut" and to stand apart from it rather than engage with it (Thoreau, 1962:348). 2.2 Self and Society One of the fundamental ideas illustrated in Walden is the philosophical ideal of selfreliance.in Walden, self-reliance is both economic and social, and when it comes to social or economical relations, Thoreau argues that independence is more important than neediness (Tauber, 2001:253).The influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson as Thoreau s mentor and inspiration was certainly a great one. One of the essential inspirations in particular has been the Emerson s well knownessay Self-Reliance. The idea of self-reliance has been greatly illustrated as the main idea Thoreau wished to express in Walden. Thoreau felt self-reliance was a state of mind that could only be reached when in communion with nature. Transcendentalists believed society and its institutions ultimately corrupted the purity of the individual. As they highly cherished individuality over reason, they believed man is at his best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. One cannot think clearly when being influenced by others, thus a man must have the freedom to think for himself, to be able to rely only on himself in friendship, intimacy and moral guidance.as Emerson s essay details, self-reliance can be spiritual as well as economic, and Thoreau follows Emerson in exploring the higher dimensions of individualism (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2014).The Walden experiment was Thoreau s attempt to demonstrate the self-reliance as a philosophical ideal implemented in real life. Thus, Thoreau s self reliance was stressed on the physical truth in order to reach the spiritual. In his time at Walden Pond and for the rest of his 14

15 life, Thoreau tried to live out his personal creed, holding that individuals should live simply and enjoy nature. For him, this was a spiritual quest, it was his religion (Hankins, 2004:30,31). Thoreau believed the hectic pace of nineteenth-century America resulted in most people living lives of quiet desperation, a phrase he coined in Walden (Thoreau, 1962:111).His method for avoiding such a life progresses logically in the following stages: man was born free but is enslaved and even enslaves himself. He must begin with an analysis of the economy that dominates the consciousness of his contemporaries and no wonder his first chapter is called Economy. In this regard he recognizes a typical representative of industrial society to be a middle class worker which is driven by an ideal of success, which he can neither analyze nor reject. This middle-class worker is imprisoned by the contemporary consciousness of society but as well by himself. Freedom comes through self-reliance that is made possible by simplifying one s life, living in accordance to nature is the best way to health and happiness. Truth is the ultimate and should be valued above money, love or fame. The primary goal of life was to cultivate the inner person, but the quest for material possessions interfered with this effort (Hankins, 2004:32). What Thoreau seeks to explore in his experiment is the need of society for a philosophic state of mind that will criticize the popular consciousness and stress the importance of simplicity and independence which are absent,as they are needy to the economy of society. One of the many famous quotes by Henry David Thoreau says: I m making myself richer by making my wants few, a quote which greatly sums up Thoreau s most important life philosophy. In an age of rapid industrialization, where capitalism and consumerism reign, the individual has only but a few choices, to struggle keeping up with it or feel like the one falling behind. In Walden Thoreau represents this issue, and argues that a feeling of dissatisfaction one has towards his possessions can be dealt with in two ways, one may acquire more or reduce his desires. Therefore, the most important part of Thoreau s experiment at the pond turned out to involve answering basic economic questions. What is the best way to earn a living? How much food and what kind of shelter are necessary to live or to live well? Thoreau thus argued that the real importance of our economic lives lies not in how much wealth we create but what sorts of people they make us and how they relate us to others. In effect, Thoreau saw economics as a branch of applied virtue ethics as it was for Aristotle. He argued the primacy of ethical virtue 15

16 over economic considerations, principles over pleasure, final or higher ends over proximate ends or mere means. While virtue ethics arguably provides the proper framework for considering our economic lives, the complexity of modern economic life works to obscure it. In response, Thoreau structured his personal economy so as to clarify this framework primarily through simple living and a rejection of the division of labor. As far as possible he secured his own food, in the bean field and the pond. He built his own house using logical materials Thoreau lingered over these experiments and then over their interpretation. He saw the effects of his actions because he was looking and because they were written directly into the land around him. A good life involved both limiting his economic activities and carefully attending to them.thus it became means to know himself and his world and a springboard for higher achievements. Another reason why he stresses economy first is because all humans are tasked in supporting ourselves. Economic activity will thus be a large part of our lives, but how large it the key question.no matter what our overall goals in life, we must ask whether this economic activities further these directly or provide the means to engage in other economic activities that do so. Such questions demand answers because The Economy has its own answers that can easily become ours by default. We also have a tendency to lose ourselves in our economic purposes. Our economic forethought, valuable and necessary can end by narrowing our lives (Cafaro, 2010:76-77). Reduction, simplification and getting down to the bottom of things are Thoreau s injunctions throughout the text and he loses no time to impress on the reader not only the necessity but also the feasibility of such mottos in life. In the first part of Walden, that is, he sets down to reverse the machine of time, industry, and development hastening forward and grinding everything in its way. His intention is to show that a scaled-down economy, returning to its beginnings, must be a viable project, as testified in his case. The nation, suffering a wasteful economy, is ruined by luxury and heedless expense, while the only cure for it is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. Thoreau, obviously, is not a prophet of latter-day austerity but a self-aware idealistic squatter and surveyor trying to strike a balance between himself and both his social and natural environments, thus realizing the necessity of a reduced, simple, rigid and manageable economy. This requires, as warns Thoreau, only that we endeavor to train ourselves and to live deliberately and reservedly (Sesnic, 2013:40-41). 16

17 The main idea Thoreau wanted to express in regards to the economy of his time is summed up in his famous quote: Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! (Thoreau, 1962:173). By going to live in the woods his main purpose was to find means how to live the simplest life. Thoreau deprives himself of the luxuries of society such asa big house, coffee, meat, even salt and yeast and thus he discovers his own economy and the simple bare necessities for living a fulfilled life. Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass this was my daily work (Thoreau, 1962:124). Thoreau emphasizes that he is making the earth do as he wishes. Thoreau is the agent performing the sowing. Not only is he surviving on his own in the forest but he has taken control of his environment. Thoreau is the agent performing the sowing. Not only is he surviving on his own in the forest but he has taken control of his environment. Where wild grass once grew, Thoreau has tamed the land and cultivated a sustainable garden. But first, Thoreau must nurture the beans with regular care and diligence for the land to respond to him with reciprocal growth. In the very first paragraph of The Beanfield, Thoreau declares his purpose: This was my curious labor all summer to make this portion of the earth s surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse. What shall I learn of beans or beans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day s work (Thoreau, 1962:123). Thoreau s double entendre with the word pulse is particularly telling. The earth to him is not just alive it is a beating heart, and every season a heartbeat. Every summer, presumably without fail, the land produces cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like. In order to build an intimate relationship with the beans and the land, Thoreau mimics the regularity of the seasons with daily attention to his bean-field. He rises before dawn to hoe the beans from five in the morning till noon, and even after his task is done, early and late he has an eye to them. By taking care of his beans with mathematical regularity, Thoreau reinforces presence and influence over his surroundings at Walden Pond. By providing sustained diligence for his sustainable bean field, Thoreau has fashioned for himself a sustainable lifestyle (Hern, 2008:16). Thoreau believed that the best life is a simple life and wealth and the constant need for progress only complicate life and leave people depressed. He argues that materialism brings false idea of 17

18 progress and acquiring more wealth, when in fact it only makes people slaves of their possessions and leaves them spiritually empty. Instead, Thoreau argues for a separation between material wealth and spiritual growth, and proposes engaging in what he calls "voluntary poverty", which is how the wisest people in history had lived, for he believed that is the only way to live a peaceful and happy life. Thoreau s rejection of progress is best seen in his criticism of the train which disturbs the peace of calm Walden Pond. The kind of disturbance of natural peace is imposed by man s need for social progress and as such Thoreau believes it represents a false idol. For himit is far better to go vegetate in a little corner of the woods for two years than to commute from place to place ineffectively. Thoreau believed that man by blindly pursing values of a contemporary consciousness, makes life rather complex and complexity itself brings only dissatisfaction. The tragedy for the individual self does not consist in being consigned to live in this industrial society. Rather, the tragedy lies in the self's being consigned to the processes objectified in its machines. In the eyes of this economy, men are thought of on the same level as the machine. They are conceived as functionaries for the operations of these machines. The self has become a tool of the very tools he utilizes in this society; he has become a machine by relating to the machines of industrial civilization. This is the tragedy of the self in industrial society. 18

19 2.3 Thoreau and Nature The major reason for Thoreau s experiment at Walden was specifically to seek a complete involvement in the natural world, to have intelligence with the earth, so that one may come full to terms with the part of oneself. Thoreau believed that if man were more connected with nature, his life would be more spiritually rewarding. Nature is not there solely for its beauty and resources; nature is a divine tool for man to realize and perceive his own self-consciousness. In Walden, he attempted to reveal the vital energy beneath the surface of the earth and unite the physical with the metaphysical by demonstrating the interdependency of spiritual aspiration and physical energy. Thoreau s view of nature is clearly a dynamic one, shifting and changing in response to Thoreau s own growth as a writer and his synthesis of naturalistic observations accumulated over the years. In general terms, Thoreau s interpretive stance toward nature is a view shaped by his European and New England, Protestant heritage, yet defying easy categorization. It is neither Christian, nor secular, neither wholly scientific, nor traditionally religious. With the European Romantics, and older Transcendentalists, Thoreau saw nature as something other than simply God s creation. Thoreau s sense of ethics and aesthetics emerged from the Romantic and later, Transcendentalist presumption that nature is the ideal teacher. His purpose was to cultivate himself, in return, as an ideal pupil. Yet such an embrace of nature was not wholly positive, nor was his construction of nature exclusively beneficent, though it was prevailingly so. The Higher Laws section of Walden show a Thoreau who is sometimes ill at ease with the unseemly, violent, or lowly aspects of nature, including his own body, and reveals a 19

20 typical Transcendentalist and post-christian preoccupation with purity: nature in her ideal, good and higher aspects. Overall, however, nature forever remains a source of goodness and a model for humanity in Thoreau s view (Gould,2005:1612). Thoreau there repeatedly asserts the intrinsic value of nonhuman nature, whether in trees, woodchucks, or Walden Pond itself and tries to justify these assertions. But Walden also discusses the benefits to people of recognizing nature s value and living accordingly (Cafaro, 2010:144). Only Heaven knows why we must take life in order to live. But if it is natural to do this, it is also natural to put up our hoes sometimes and simply appreciate nature as it is. Working in his little field, Thoreau heard brown thrashers singing in the trees, saw nighthawks circling overhead on sunny afternoons, and disturbed outlandish looking salamanders in their rocky hiding places. When I paused to lean on my hoe, he writes, these sounds and sights I heard and saw anywhere in the row, a part of the inexhaustible entertainment which the country offers. This is the moment, when we pause in our own purposive work, when we canappreciate nature s intrinsic value. This is also the moment when we can recognize the higher uses of nature: those of the poet, the painter, the scientist, or any of the others who put aside economic activity for a time in order to know, create, or experience the world in a richer way. This suggests a further way in which some human appropriation of nature may be justified. We are the only creatures who can understand and celebrate what we see. Through poetry, art, natural history, and science, we can be nature s storytellers. Even at work in The Bean-Field, Thoreau notes the plants and animals around him, and in other chapters they rightly take center stage. This, he suggests, justifies his own presence at Walden Pond. Rather than trying to justify the unlimited human appropriation of wild nature by appeal to our superior reason (Cafaro, 2010:144,155). It is striking how often Thoreau, in discussing the good life, specifies human flourishing and excellence in relation to nature. Some of this is quite basic. The simplest messages in Walden are to get outside, use your limbs, and delight in your senses. Run, walk, swim, and sweat. Taste the sweetness of the year s first huckleberries and feel the juice dribble down your chin. It feels good to plunge into a pond first thing in the morning.walden, Thoreau insists, suggests possibilities for man's life as a student. The inspiration which nature provides could allow men in this society to attain a level of reading and thinking considerably higher than that provided by the contemporary consciousness. 20

21 The description of nature in Walden takes on a different scope and illustrates an entirely new dimension of how nature is portrayed and, as such, is beyond poetic and aesthetic. Like Wordsworth, Thoreau s love for nature was profound and treats it with imagination and feeling. The relationship Thoreau established between himself and nature, and which he wanted to be established between nature and other human beings, he used to demonstrate his main philosophical idea of self-reliance. He acknowledged the importance, beauty, and inherent goodness of nature. Nature provided a pure, spiritual, and beautiful setting for one to find oneself, thus making it a vital element of transcendentalist thought. Nature is represented with all its richness, and Thoreau communicates his experience in all its fullness. The idyllic life represented inwalden is not a matter of environment or of retreat from the urban life, but rather a moral question involving the way man chooses to live. Belonging to a highly industrialized society in which a man is deliberately separated from nature, Thoreau argues differently. Moreover, he firmly and with all his heart believes man is a part of nature, as he himself, with his quest into the woods, seeks to prove. By living off the fruits of the land and breathing on spiritual and intellectual energy from plants and animals, Thoreau successfully demonstrates that a man can live in the nature (Rao, 2013:306). In making this transition from nature as spatial context to nature as temporal sequence, Thoreau meets nature in a new condition of being, namely, as symbol for the depths of the self and for what the self can be in society. In this regard, Thoreau is increasingly taken up with the depth and purity of Walden Pond. He conceives the pond, in its reception of new life and movement from the sky, as a mediator between the land and the sky. He fixes his attention on the pond as a symbol for the authentic self: Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view. Lying between the earth and the heavens it partake our colors of both. (Thoreau, 1962:236). In the conclusion Thoreau's success is noted in measuring what men had thought to be bottomless, namely, Walden Pond. In being measured, it can still be preserved as a symbol of the infinite possibilities inherent in the self. Just as the concealed depths of the pond can be revealed 21

22 in the character of the shores, so also the concealed depths of the self can be indicated in the circumstances of a man's character. Just as the pond lends itself to measurement, so also does the self. The self can be measured, Thoreau feels, without compromising the uniqueness and privacy of its being. The continued existence of this symbol of bottomlessness and purity in nature assures the continued existence of man's awareness of himself as infinitely resourcefuland wild. This is the answer to which Thoreau comes. Nature exists to be penetrated by the mind of man, to be a symbol of the powers of that mind, and to have its symbolic resources tapped by the imaginativeness of that mind. Nature does not exist to serve as the basis of an economy or to serve as the sole platform for reconciling the self to the society from which it is alienated. The self is destined to be a measurer and explorer of itself in its opening out unto other selves, just as Thoreau was a measurer and explorer of the pond at Walden (Mathiessen, 1941:79). Nature contains both physical and spiritual aspect, and Walden Pond reflects both. Moreover, theweather and seasons seems to reflect Thoreau s emotions. In the winter when the pond is frozen, Thoreau experiences a period of melancholy and wonder. While he turns into a different man filled with joy and exhilaration during the rebirth of the spring. Therefore, the changing of the seasons reflecting a man s emotional state stands as a promise of a possible change in the very spiritual rebirth of a man, only reached by the acceptance of nature and her glories. No wonder Thoreau finishes the book with a metaphor of rebirth, where he describes a bug just hatched out of a wooden table, as a hope that one day such a rebirth will occur in human society. Some readers may arrive at a quick conclusion that Walden advocates a complete withdrawal from human society or that it represents absolute superiority of nature over culture. But Thoreau s acts of settlement and after all his return to the village at the end of the Walden experiment point to a different conclusion. Thoreau hopes that nature and culture may complement one another. He believes that the richest human life gathers experience from each sphere the best of what it has to offer. The proper mixture of nature and culture in an individual are complex matters thus we ought to pose a question: What does nature has to offer that the human world does not? To begin with, a new dimension in which to put our lives, and call the purpose of our lives to question, incredible natural beauty, undiscovered and unappreciated by human beings. Beneficial reminders of our own unimportance.a sense of hope when our fellow 22

23 human beings disappoint us. In the chapter Walking Thoreau develops Walden s claims for the high value of wild nature. I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, he writes, unless I spend four hours a day at least... sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields. (Thoreau.1962: ) Thoreau claims that the physical contact with nature revitalizes the mind, inspiring the uncivilized free and wild thinking. Walking provides an elaborate advice on how to deepen our experience of nature but furthermore how to enrich our own spirit through the spirit of nature.one reason to keep some forests uncut and rivers running free is so that the questions themselves do not disappear, as they have for many human beings and many regions of the Earth. We may be comfortable in our villages, but there may be an excess of comfort. We need the physical and intellectual challenges that wild nature sets us. Nature may speak to us piano in individual flowers or birds: nonhuman beings who challenge us to know and appreciate them. Or she may thunder fortissimo with displays of power and vastness to overwhelm our understanding and destroy our sense of our own importance. Such experiences may lead to love, wonder, horror, awe, reverence or to the renewed attempt to understand the order that we believe lies behind this complex world. These challenges to our intelligence and imagination strengthen them. Wild nature has been the source of great human achievements in science, poetry, religion, and philosophy. I share Thoreau s doubts that these highest human activities can thrive in its absence (Cafaro, 2010: ). 23

24 2.4 Solitude Thoreau's celebration of solitude was a natural outgrowth of his commitment to the idea of individual action. His neighbors frequently saw him heading out for his regular afternoon walk which took him to every stream and meadow in Concord and the surrounding towns. Contemporaries attest that Thoreau was gregarious, and he left an extensive correspondence which demonstrates the depth and perseverance of his friendships. And although he had many visitors at Walden, much of the time he was alone, a condition he savored (Glick, 1973:74). I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude (Walden, 1962:135). Thoreau did not believe this was important just because it soothed him, on the contrary, he believed a man must be exposed to solitude as he saw it an equal necessity to food and water. How highly he cherished the contemplative life in solitude can be illustrated by the fact he devoted two complete chapters of Walden to extol the positive virtues of solitude. In his love for, in fact his absolute need, solitude, Thoreau was simply affirming a basic doctrine of all mysticism. The vital need of the mystic for solitude is obvious, first the need for intensification and amplification of purity and simplicity, second, there is need for the conditions favorable to mediator and contemplation. In the stillness and solitude of nature, Thoreau says he felt as if he 24

25 had come to an open window, as he put it: I see out and around myself. Thoreau s propensity for a simple and pure life was matched only by his ardor for the solitary life: I will build my lodge on the southern slope of some hill there and take there the life the gods send me (Doyle, 1972: ). On his Walden experiment Emerson said: My dear Henry, A frog was made to live in a swamp, but a man was not made to live in a swamp. The statement by Emerson and others made Thoreau seem cold and asocial, interesting and challenging, perhaps, but lacking in the milk of human kindness; in short, a poor friend. Many had found it unacceptable for Thoreau to go to the woods and cultivate his own excellence in private, and thus doubt whether doing so was good for him, or whether the reflections growing out of such solitude provide guidance for more normal people. He had a genius for both solitude and social criticism, but apparently not for social intercourse. No one can teach us more about the uses of solitude and the dangers of society, and such knowledge is valuable for all of us regardless whether we are more inclined to solitude or society and no other American author of his time had celebrated the importance of solitude in a more beautiful and genuine manner. Not that Thoreau was friendless. The Walden experimentrecounts a period in Thoreau s life when he deliberately pursued solitary tasks and the celebration ideal of solitude throughout the entire book was exactly what Thoreau felt was needed to the contemporary consciousness of the period. Thoreau more than anyone else, introduces the very idea and importance of solitude in the period he lived. Apart from stating the very importance of solitude and its benefits, he firmly believed it is every individual s right to choose to engage in solitude and pursue ideals as long as he is not harming others. Through personal rights Thoreau again stresses the importance of individuality and illustrates how solitude and individuality are closely interconnected. Thoreau believed solitude is essential to living a good life. In Walden six key virtues are presented as particularly dependent on solitude: freedom, self-reliance, personal focus, selfknowledge, connection to nature, and philosophical reflectiveness. To the extent that these virtues and their fruits are important components of a mature, intellectually vigorous and enjoyable life, and some measure of solitude furthers them, perhaps is even essential to their development to that extent solitude s value stand as proven. Let us consider these virtues in return. Freedom is 25