Reference no: EM133288373
Study Questions--Walden
1.) Does Walden appeal to our "sense of rebelliousness and individualism"? Are we "inspired by his idealistic actions and principled and good-humored erudition"? Do we enjoy thinking about how we might take a more "Thoreauvian approach" to our own lives?
2.) How do modern conveniences and gadgets influence our culture? After reading Thoreau, are we now eager to give them up?
3.) Can we consider how doing and thinking for ourselves is made possible (or impeded) by modern educational and cultural institutions?
4.) To which "genre" (or genres) does Walden belong?
5.) What is Thoreau's relationship to his audience and to society as a whole? How does he situate his narrative persona? That is, what kind of person is the "I" in the text, and how do we know?
6.) How can Walden be considered as an application of Transcendental philosophy?
7.) Choose one tenet of transcendentalism and explain how Thoreau affirms, complicates, or rejects it in a chapter in Walden.
8.) Locate passages in the text that seem directly comparable to one of the other authors we've read -- especially Emerson, but possibly also others, like Franklin. How does Thoreau use one or more of the ideas of this author?
9.) Discuss the way that Walden redefines a familiar word, such as economy, travel, or shelter.
10.) Since Thoreau's text proceeds from the central metaphor of Walden Pond (in the same way that Whitman's "Song of Myself" on p. 1238 proceeds from a blade of grass), how does each chapter of Walden define some overlooked philosophical or metaphorical aspect of nature?
11.) How can Walden be considered as a response to the "runaway train of nineteenth-century growth, industrialization, mass agriculture, and capitalist values?
12.) Consider and discuss Thoreau's work as a reformist response to one of the following:
industrial capitalism
manifest destiny
technological progress
slavery
Briefly explain the significance of ONE the following passages
(A) I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in.
(B) The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
(C) 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 practise 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. . . .
(F) 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 thin 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.
(G) If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all travelers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her bead against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself. . . . Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.