1062 Thoreau, Henry David
it as an artistic model, as a source of sustenance, as
a moral teacher, and as a manifestation of divinity.
Nature shapes the structure of Walden: The book
begins and ends in spring, the seasonal cycle sym-
bolizing a spiritual journey through decay and death
to rebirth. This movement is also present in Tho-
reau’s treatment of individual days: “The night is
the winter, the morning and evening are the spring
and fall, and the noon is the summer.” Morning is
“the most memorable season of the day” because it
offers us the chance to reconnect to nature spiritu-
ally: “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves
awake . . . by an infinite expectation of the dawn.”
It is significant in this respect that Walden ends with
the lines: “There is more day to dawn. The sun is but
a morning star.”
Nature also functions as a life model and a source
of practical and spiritual sustenance. To restore
ourselves to spiritual health, Thoreau suggests that
we should “first be as simple and well as Nature
ourselves.” This requires sloughing off surplus pos-
sessions; by doing so, we will begin to perceive a
set of higher laws greater than those prescribed
by human society. Material assets are superfluous
because nature provides Thoreau with everything he
needs: shelter, fuel, food, and fellowship. His hut is
constructed of natural materials, he farms the land
to produce crops, and he shares his living space with
a variety of living things. Nature has “universal, veg-
etable, botanic medicines” to keep us “well, serene,
contented.” Its untamed, savage aspects are also
prized: “We need the tonic of wildness” because it
reminds us that there are elements of our world (and
by extension, ourselves) that are as yet undiscovered.
Thoreau’s conception of nature owes much to
his philosophy of transcendentalism, a school of
thought current in America during the mid-19th
century. Although he approaches nature as a natural
scientist, collecting facts and figures and gathering
sensory evidence, he also attempts to transcend the
senses in search of some higher cause. He observes
natural objects from a factual point of view and
simultaneously invests them with spiritual signifi-
cance; they thereby attain a double meaning, physi-
cal and symbolic. Walden Pond is a good example
of this duality. On a practical level, it is a place to
sail, skate, and fish; on a metaphysical level, in the
way that it reflects the sky and the stars, it is a sym-
bol of a “lower heaven”—as Thoreau puts it, “lying
between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of
the color of both.” This idea, that divinity is not a
remote, abstract concept, but incarnate in nature, is
one of Walden’s main messages: “Heaven is under
our feet as well as over our heads.”
Since divinity is embodied in nature, it follows
that nature can provide us with valuable moral les-
sons. Thus, Walden Pond’s “purity” mirrors moral
purity, “looking into which the beholder measures
the depth of his own nature.” Thoreau develops this
idea when he provides a map of the pond’s depths,
moving in his customary manner from the factual
to the spiritual: “What I have observed of the pond
is no less true in ethics,” he states, suggesting that
the same method can be applied to measure “the
height or depth of [a person’s] character.” The fact
that some people still believe the pond to be bot-
tomless appeals to him because it suggests faith in
the infinite.
Thoreau emphasizes our links with nature by
personifying it (underscored by his use of a capital
N) in the word Nature and assigning human char-
acteristics to animals and insects; for example, the
hooting of owls represents the “unsatisfied thoughts
which all have,” and an ant war is likened to famous
historical battles. These correspondences reinforce
the idea that nature and humankind are interrelated.
Not surprisingly, the most ecstatic passages in Walden
are those in which Thoreau describes experiencing a
sense of oneness with nature. The culmination of
this concept occurs in the penultimate chapter, when
he watches thawing sand in a railroad bank, a scene
that “illustrate[s] the principle of all the operations
of Nature.” Just as nature has human characteristics,
humans are made from natural elements: “Am I not
partly leaves and vegetable mould myself ?” he asks
“What is man but a mass of thawing clay?” Marvel-
ing at the sight of nature giving up its secrets, he
feels as though he is standing “in the laboratory of
the Artist who made the world and me.”
P. B. GrantWork in Walden
The nature and purpose of work is a major theme of
Walden, and it is greatly influenced by Henry David