The first paragraph on page 48, Thoreau describes his unfinished cabin, and then goes off on an imaginative tangent, which I take to mean that his little home is his little piece of heaven on earth. I love the image in the next paragraph where he is the caged one while the birds of the wood are free. Notice how he names the birds he sees and hears. They are not “birds” in general, but very particular kinds of birds. On page 58, he’s observing the lake and has this realization that the earth is mostly water. He says that the earth’s dry land is an island in this water. He’s content to sit in his doorway and look out at the view. Do we do the same with our phones? Do we peer into their tiny screens to take in the view? Thoreau has got me tripping on this image!
He describes looking up at the constellations in the night sky. That’s something I miss, living in Queens. When is the last time you were able to see the stars in the sky? In the first chapter, “Economy,” Thoreau describes his purpose in going to live in the woods; in this chapter, you might say he’s advancing his thesis. On page 50, he connects this idea of “simplicity” to “Nature” and “innocence.” He then goes on to describe the times of day and his morning routine. In the margin of my book, I wrote, “He’s a morning person!” He talks about the sleep/wake cycle and what happens when we’re sleep deprived. He’s tuned into his inner rhythms and so can rise from his bed on his own without struggle. In the middle of page 51 is one of the book’s most famous lines: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately...” What does that mean to you? If you’re not sure what the word deliberate means here, look it up and come back to the sentence. He wants to get the most he can out of life and have every moment mean something. In the next paragraph, he uses the word “meanly,” but it doesn’t mean what you think it does. This is one of those instances where he uses a lesser known meaning of a word, or one that isn’t in fashion anymore. Even if you’re not sure what “meanly” means, what does it mean to live like an ant? He develops this image by referring to this fable (click). When he describes how our lives are “frittered away by detail,” I picture the time I spend scrolling through social media, going from cat videos, to angry political posts, to silly dances. He comes back to his theme of simplicity as a way to avoid such a life. On page 52, he riffs on “railroads,” which were relatively new back then. He talks about the lives that were sacrificed to build them and questions the purpose of riding them. Here, he kind of reminds me of a certain kind of person who predicts that digital technology will be the death of society (maybe it already has?). He asks questions like: why are we always in a rush? Why do we eat when we’re not hungry? On page 53, he claims he could “do without the post office,” which is so ironic, considering what’s going on today with the post office, but at any rate, I was reminded of texts, emails, and curated news feeds, which are our modern-day version of what he’s describing. Have you ever read Plato’s allegory of the cave? Becoming familiar with this well-known bit of philosophy might help you with the reference he makes in the long paragraph on page 54 about “shadows of the reality.” He ends this paragraph by talking about the importance of living in truth, in the present moment. He comes back to his notion of living deliberately on the top of page 55. He’s all like don’t sweat the small stuff. Don’t respond to every alert and pull on our attention. He believes it’s preferable to live in the real world than to avoid unpleasant truths. He ends this chapter with a metaphor about time. Take a moment and come up with your own metaphor about time. What can you compare it to? If you have the impulse, write it down in your notebook. Maybe you can make it into a poem. Page 56 starts the chapter, “Reading.” My lovelies—he is talking about you! You are the students struggling to look up each word. He claims that you don’t have to be a “good reader” (59) to enjoy a good book.
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