The Meaning and Effects of Winter in Thoreau's Experience at Walden Pond

Paul Lee
English 471
Professor John Cleman
May 20, 1992
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The Meaning and Effects of Winter
in Thoreau's Experience at Walden Pond


In the beginning of the chapter "Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors," Thoreau wrote: "I weathered some merry snow storms, and spent some cheerful winter evenings by my fire-side." His first winter experience comes after a busy experiment at Walden Pond where he wants to find his philosophical life. As he described in Walden, Thoreau lived alone in a house he built on the shore of Walden Pond that is a mile away from any neighbor [civilization] in Concord, Massachusetts. In the woods, he "earned his living by the labor of my hands only." Thoreau began writing about his shore life in the wilderness at Walden Pond early in 1846, some month after he began living at the pond, and Walden was published in 1854 after rewriting the manuscripts several times. To study the meaning and effects of winter in Thoreau's experience at Walden Pond, I will analyze Walden through summaries reviewing the properties and the role of winter in Throreau's account of his two years at Waldoen Pond.
       Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) lived and died in Concord, Massachusetts, and he was an independent spirit, who was concerned only with having time to write and meditate. After education at Concord Academy and Harvard University, he had constant contact with some of his era's greatest thinkers and writers. Among these was the influential Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), who encouraged Thoreau's writing and helped to publish his poetry and essays. Emerson, who was Thoreau's first and most powerful literary acquaintance, offered Thoreau some land by Walden Pond for use in his Experiment with self-sufficient living. Thoreau spent two years on Emerson's property at the pond (1845-47) in a cabin he built himself. Thoreau's journal of the two-year sojourn, begun July 4, 1845, later served as the basis for his masterpiece, Walden.
       Why did Thoreau go to the pond? As E. B. White said in his essay, "A Slight Sound at Evening," "Henry went forth to battle when he took the woods, and Walden is the report of a man torn by two powerful and opposing drives - the desire to enjoy the world and the urge to set the world straight. One cannot join these two successfully, but sometimes, in rare cases, something good or even great results from the attempt of the tormented spirit of reconcile them. Henry went forth to battle. Thoreau took, as White observed of Walden, man's relation to nature (I want to call this "a landscape") and man's dilemma in the civilized society and man's capacity for transcending his spirit. He tried to solve all these matters together with the Walden experiment in his economic thought, and practice (as in the chapter " Bean-Field") and in his individualism than religious attitude.
       Walden consists of eighteen chapters. Among them, there are three significant chapters about winter at Walden Pond which I mainly study its properties including the meaning and effects that give essentially affects Thoreau, a nature-lover, in his wilderness life. In the first chapter "Economy," Thoreau wrote that "My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there." Here, we can see that Thoreau's dream came true. The landscape of the pond played for him as a "haven." (Thoreau, later in the chapter "Pond in Winter," said that he felt "Heaven" at the pond.) He wanted to belong for his ideal individualism and transcendental life in the woods. Thoreau also shows that his purpose was to encourage the readers to evaluate the way he had been living and thinking at Walden Pond where he attempted to fulfill his longing for ideal existence in the real world.
       When he went to the pond, Thoreau felt that "The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage" and to make haste to his own experiment, and he started to build his house: (As he wishes, now is the time that his dream comes true. He really gets into the center of nature, Walden Pond landscape and his battle with nature begins.) I think his historical movement towards Walden Pond was not a retreat from the Concord society but a forceful experiment for his desire and messages to the external, natural world to realize transcendental life than materialism in the mid-nineteenth century in the New England society.
        Thoreau advises his readers to follow his example by similarly simplifying their lives as he wrote that "I learned from my two year's experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food." Thoreau examined "philosophy of living," in the chapter "Economy," through his simplified life with meditation and suggested his readers to reform their lives inward to get perfection of each individuality. And they would discover the way for a rebirth of transcendental life in their real life in light of his simplified wilderness living in the heart of nature as a "Man [who] is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances."
       Thoreau readers can strongly see that his relation to the pond helps the development of his spiritual life. His cry "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!" draws the reader's attention that how he wants to live in nature, individually in landscape of the pond. We can think that Thoreau expects the principal role of landscape offering solitary togetherness. In Walden, truly, the reader sees that he enjoys moments days and nights in the wilderness through his confessing the busy experiences of building his house, cultivating beans, readings, and listening to the sounds. Appreciating landscape's role, which provides him a mood to elevate his naturalism for fulfilling a transcendental life. As Thoreau once said that "nature is natural; it depends on you," he tries to experiment a human capability of his own life in an untamed, adversary landscape for his individual ideals.
       After he spent spring and summer at pond, preparing for winter, he has been renewed and vitalized. He had to turn inward and said that "I withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored to keep a bright fire both within my house and within my breast" to survive "spiritual winter." Winter has come at the pond and it changed nature. Thoreau's winter experience begins with the memory of the former occupants of woods, new visitors, animals, the pond, and Thoreau himself. His occasional socializing with people at the winter pond gives him an indirect way of reviewing his wilderness experience in meditation.
       Thoreau heard the winter sounds like the loud honking of a goose, the whooping of the ice in the pond, the foxes, the red squirrel in the dawn, the chicaees in flocks, and a pack of hounds thrading all the woods. He also saw wild mice, hares, rabbits, and patridges. At winter midnight, interestingly, he observed that "when there was a moon, I sometimes met with hounds in my path prowling about the woods, which would skulk out of my way, as if afraid and stand silent amid the bushes till I had passed."
       Like Rousseau once declared "Return to Nature," Thoreau now found himself in nature at the winter pond through his experimental experiences. One winter morning when he cut the ice of the pond and drank water, kneeling on the "snow-covered plain" [pond], Thoreau could see the "quiet parlor of the fishes through a window of ground glass." For Thoreau standing in the middle of winter landscape, nature embraced him in her heart and he felt that his transcendental life -an individual perfection -was fulfilled at the "pure" lake, (after he measured the depth of the pond, Thoreau said, "this pond was made deep and pure for a symbol.) symbolizing a vital resource to sustain his intentionally designed simple life of thinking, fishing, drinking, navigating (measuring), reading, and writing. These experiences make Henry most certainly feel: "Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads." (In the chapter "Pond in Winter")
       Observing Thoreau's story about measuring and mappi ng of the pond, it reminds me of my early childhood life at the Endless Stream (later, in 1960s, it became a large reservoir for farming). When I lived there, we used to spend much time to fish, swim, skake, and row at the reservoir. I still remember that we could choose the fishing spot, swimming area, and a safe place to row our boat by observing the hills and valleys of the mountains around the reservoir. (What a positive nostalgia!) We could do entertain ourselves, just for fun, without any big mistakes in instinctive ways of measuring all the circumstances as Henry Thoreau found entertainment [ecstasy] in hoeing the bean-field and bathing in the winter morning pond. Like Henry, I was very much influenced by nature. Speaking of winter, I enjoyed very much in skating and strolling on the ice of the reservoir.
       Since I lived many winter years in the woods and around the reservoir in my childhood as I told before, (even though he lived there for his experiment and I lived during my childhood,) I most properly feel that I can favorably understand what Thoreau experienced in winter at Walden Pond, as well as in spring, summer, and autumn. Describing the Walden ice, Thoreau tells us, repeatedly emphasizing, that the ice is, "like the Water, green near at hand and is beautifully blue at a distant." As Thoreau states here, "ice is an interesting subject for contemplation" which winter gives benefits, intellectually or economically to him or other townsmen. In the winter morning, when Thoreau bathes in the pond, he admits that his intellect is bathing. His state of mind and body are baptized in purity. Then he is reborn and is in an ecstasy [Nirvana] of joy to live in transcendental life. Here is one of great effects of winter to Thoreau's experience at Walden Pond.
       Winter, in Thoreau's experience at the pond, is a symbol of spiritual nature which Thoreau's spiritual life can continue as inspirational springs and wells at the pond of winter are still in vitality. All the characters such as animals, neighbors, fish, woods, hills, worms, and soil are not dying; they all live in winter days and nights. Henry tells us that winter is the season we can have a hope and spiritually growing inward until spring comes. Winter makes Thoreau realize nature's principle and provides Nivrana (probably, it is his main purpose to live at the pond) to Thoreau spiritually surviving a lone life in the wilderness.
       Thoreau said, in the chapter "Conclusion," that "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." But when I think of Thoreau's life at Walden Pond, I want to conclude his life at the pond as "a successful experiment, as Thoreau might say, on his superindividualism seeking transcendental life withdrawing from the "civilized" society with a great deal more than "family" as a thirty year-old youth.
       Thoreau, as a social philosopher also a naturalist or a lover of nature, refused to live by the materialistic values of the New England society. He wrote Walden in the organic prose, poetic expression, and the symbolic characters of landscape that he wanted to experiment with nature for his transcendental life. Especially, in Walden, winter, which Thoreau really lived in and realized nature, played the role of the nest for him to meditate himself in his philosophical, transcendental life comparing the relationship of the civilized Concord society to his hermit-like individualism against materialism. In Thoreau's Walden, I could find that winter was significant symbol and also contributed Thoreau many insights into his experimental life experience at Walden Pond, physically, spiritually, and emotionally.



Works Cited

"Walden, Or Life in the Woods." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Third Edition., Volume 1,
1989: 1635-1808
White, E. B. "A Slight Sound at Evening." Walden. by Henry David Thoreau. Pennsylvania: Courage Books, 1990: 199-204.

 

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청산靑山 (impaul)   11.18.2009 08:28 |

지난 번에 이어 Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)의 Walden에 대한 에세이입니다. 제가 영문학과 4학년때 John Cleman 교수님의 수준높은 English 471 을 공부하면서 쓴 에세이랍니다. 관련된 사진은 오늘 출근했다 귀가해서 올리겠습니다. 저는 조금 후에 출근합니다. 좋은 하루 보내세요.