Journal 11 - Selections from Walden
Write a summary of the following selections and identify a direct quote that you feel best expresses its main idea.
“Where I Lived and What I Lived For” (232)
The story starts with the narrator recalling several places he bought before he bough his home, “Walden Pond.” He concludes on a sermonizing note, urging all of us to sludge through our existence until we hit rock bottom and can gauge truth on what he terms our “Realometer,” our means of measuring the reality of things
Quote:
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life . . . and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
“Sounds” (234)
The narrator talks about how he spends his time sitting in the woods and taking in his surroundings and nature rather than going to a movie etc. The “sounds” represent using the senses to appreciate the environment. To him this is better entertainment.
Quote:
“I have this advantage at least in my mode of life”
“Brute Neighbors” (235)
The story shows how ant’s life can be just as hard as a humans. The author takes the small ant battle and enlarges it. Creates an epic story out of a relatively small occurrence in human terms. The point of the story is not only to show the ferocity of the ant battle but to show that the smallest of ants can have the greatest of battles by graphically recounting the ants fight.
Quote:
“I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum but a bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black.
“The Pond in Winter” (237)
The author begins this chapter awakening with a question put to him in the night, which was answered when he awoke again at dawn. The beauty of the light and his surroundings answers all his questions. After finding this answer, he turns to the morning work: finding water beneath a foot and a half of ice. The pond sleeps all winter like the animals, and when Thoreau cuts through the snow and ice to find the pond totally calm beneath, he finds heaven below as well as above.
Quote:
"While men believe in the infinite some ponds will be thought to be bottomless."
“Spring” (238)
With the coming of April, the ice begins to melt from Walden Pond, creating a thunderous roar.. Thoreau mentions an old man he know, whose wisdom, Thoreau says, he could not rival if he lived to be as old as Methusela, who was struck with terror by the crash of the melting ice despite his long experience with the ways of nature. He finishes by saying that death in an atmosphere like that would have no sting at all. Because new life is coming.
Quote:
“A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate between land and sky.”
