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Use Of Double Meaning In Henry David Thoreau's Essay 'Walking'

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Henry David Thoreau throughout his works uses many different levels to his writing. Lines even phrases from Thoreau’s writings can be taken in many different directions. Thoreau’s topics ranged from our inner thoughts, the environment and the political landscape in his time. All of these areas have substantive material and the way he phrases and styles his writing the reader can take his meaning in several different directions. Thoreau uses double meanings numerous times in his essay “Walking.” In the essay “Walking” Thoreau makes a double meaning when he stated “How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not STAND it at all” (Walking 2) The key …show more content…

Thoreau's personifies trees in this sentence giving it human like characteristics as it has the power to “send forth” its fibers towards the “wild.” By giving the tree human like characteristics Thoreau infers that nature is alive and to truly experience it you need to go to a part of nature not affected by society. Thoreau states earlier in the passage that the west is the wild he refers to in this sentence. During this time the west was the frontier of the United States filled with unknown and adventure. This would mean that nature would always make it’s way towards land untouched by society. However, Thoreau could also mean that a person is the tree in this phrase. In this interpretation Thoreau would mean that a person would spread their roots in a part of the world untouched by society and experience things they would not have experienced if they stayed in their comfort zone. By going off into the “wild” they would experience so much more and see so much more than what they usually would have

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In chapter six of “The Abstract Wild” by Jack Turner the main purpose is to talk about the differences in “wildness” and “wilderness”. Also it talks about how the wild is not wild enough. This chapter starts out with Turner stating a quote from Thoreau’s essay “Walking”. What Turner thinks is important about this quote is the misinterpretation that almost everyone has with it. In the quote

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In Walden and Resistance to Civil Government, Henry David Thoreau the author, uses the rhetorical strategies of personification, metaphor, and allusion/symbolism in the chapter “Conclusion” to describe what he learned from his experiment of living in Walden Pond. Thoreau’s main message of what he learned is to be undefined by what’s in front. Without the limits of conformity, humans have the capacity to achieve much greater and beautiful dreams and goals. Conformity is the boundary that doesn’t let individuals reach their great potential. Thoreau uses effective personification to imply the significance of following one’s dreams confidently.

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Thoreau believes that while his neighbors and himself are creating movement in opposite directions, they are drawing attention to an issue. This is evident in paragraph 16 where Thoreau states, “Action from principle,—the perception and the performance of right,—changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states

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At this point in the narrative he tells readers about an experience he had while observing a woodchuck in the woods while on a walk. He then tells in detail how he wanted to eat this woodchuck in a brutal way. This thought process he was having while observing this animal brought him a better understanding that human beings still have a wild instinct inside of themselves. Which he respected the idea and acknowledged that these instincts still occurred within himself. This experience supported Thoreau belief that hunting/obtaining knowledge on nature was important at an early age.

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Thoreau also related to the world, imprisoning him when he said: “I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having imprisoned one but having caged myself near them”. That makes me think about how Thoreau was given a life to be free or to be caged, just as well as any person does too. You can be the puppet of society and live, how the government tells you to live as or not be the puppet and defy what society has to tell you about life and live as you would want to. A rhetorical device Thoreau used to be logos mixed with pathos to convey the reader to see as he sees such as “live free and uncommitted” that would move a person to think living free is what I want and if it 's uncommitted then I’ll take it in my opinion.

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(389) Immediately, any American citizen is directly touched by this statement, and it gives a sense of truth and realization. Thoreau is aiming to challenge the status quo; the understanding that the government is responsible for any success of the country. For several people, he actually seemed to draw a sense of anger and resentment toward the government, which was exactly his goal. Emotional appeal is a major factor in making Civil Disobedience a timeless literary

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Henry David Thoreau stated in Walden that “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 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” (“What I Lived For 59). The transcendental lifestyle, as explained by Thoreau, is structured by the beliefs of purifying the mind and body from the corruption of modern society and its materialistic ideals. Embracing the spiritual aspects that nature provides allows us to grow physically and intellectually as a human, and ultimately finding our individual purposes in life. Both the book, Into the

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The Arboreal pond experiment gave us helpful insight into what microscopic creatures flourished or perished when dried out and put into cold conditions. To set up this lab, we first took a sample of the arboreal pond mixture and a plant stem. We then viewed through the microscope what what is in the mixture as well as the plant stem. We stored the solution and gave it a week’s time before coming back. When returning, we took a sample from our petri dish and observed it again under a microscope.

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Henry David Thoreau was a philosopher, poet, and a very outspoken person about society. He discusses his opinions on how people should live in his essay “Where I Lived and What I Lived For.” Thoreau's philosophy of simplicity and individualism and self-sufficiency poses many dangers for communities as a whole. Although there are many setbacks, his philosophy is, however, still viable today. Thoreau strongly advocates self-sufficiency and individualism in this essay.

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He talks about how “the leaves and tender twigs are an agreeable food to many domestic animals,” emphasizing on how all living things depended on nature (Wild Apples 1). This led to the idea that without nature humans cannot survive, so people cannot neglect nature. He pointed out how “the fragrance of some fruits is not to be forgotten, along with that of flowers” portraying a message to others by telling them that they should not forget nature due to their technological advancements (Wild Apples 1). Thoreau later on states “I saw a vigorous young apple-tree… uninjured by the frosts, when all cultivated apples were gathered.(Wild Apples 1)” This can be seen as an allusion towards transcendentalists, who, despite being outnumbered, continued to believe and have faith in nature while the rest of the world has been injured by “frosts” or technology and corruption.

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Consequently, what Thoreau proposed was simplicity rejecting modern civilization to return to nature and let the individual to develop his/her highest possibilities. Thoreau not only made a critique of the modern society as Emerson did, but also he practiced his ideology: he experienced that life is better without crowd, luxuries and complexity. The transcendentalist poet spent two year close to nature. He lived at Walden Pond where he wrote entire journals recounting his experience. Thoreau is well known for his book “Walden” (1854).

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Henry David Thoreau is one of the primary promoters of the transcendentalist movement and has been inspiring people to take on the transcendentalist lifestyle ever since the mid 1800’s. Mccandless was an admirer of Henry’s philosophy but he wasn’t as fully immersed in his work and ideals as Thoreau was to his own. His intentions were not as closely aligned to the movement as Thoreau’s and the difference between these icons are clearly visible. Self reliance is one of the most significant components of the transcendentalism movement that Henry David Thoreau contributed to in his literary career. “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.” - (taken from Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden”).

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In Walden, written by Henry David Thoreau, the author expresses the immense longing that we, as human beings, need to give up our connection to our ever-growing materialism in order to revert back to self-sufficient happiness. In Walden, the reader is able to infer that Thoreau feels as if we are becoming enslaved by our material possessions, as well as believes that the study of nature should replace and oppose our enslavement, and that we are to “open new channels of thought” by turning our eyes inward and studying ourselves. Thoreau feels that we are becoming enslaved by our material possessions. As stated in the chapter “In the Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”, Thoreau states that “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.” (972).

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Other works by Thoreau include Civil Disobedience, Poems of Nature, Life Without Principle and many more.

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Thoreau uses imagery, irony, and repetition to support his argument. In Thoreau’s essay he repeatedly uses imagery to illustrate the feeling and looks of where he walks. He attempts to show the reader what he is seeing and feeling at the time of him walking in different locations. In the third paragraph, Thoreau writes, “I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, commencing at my own door, without going by any house, without crossing a road expert where the fox and the mink do…” Thoreau uses this sentence to help the reader visualize the type of walks

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