This week, we finish up the chapter “Visitors.” This one is interesting to me to read because right before I sat down to write this, I noticed my cat looking out the window. When I went to see what she was looking at, I saw about six or seven little birds hopping around on the walkway. I thought to myself that now that there are so few people on the street, the city animals are around more during the day. I don’t know why Thoreau greets his visitors with “Welcome, Englishmen! (85). Why do you think he does this? The next chapter is “The Bean-Field.” This is a hoe (stop laughing!): He’s turning over the earth (chopping it up) and making rows so he can plant his beans.
On page 86, he remembers visiting these woods when he was a little kid. He views the plants growing naturally and the trees that presently give him wood to burn through the lens of memory. Did anyone notice that he mentions johnswort? I know some people who take it today for depression. He uncovers ashes and arrowheads while he’s hoeing, which makes me think of when I found an arrowhead last summer in Oyster Bay out on Long Island. Thoreau thinks of the Native Americans who once cultivated the land he’s working on now. What are some of the sounds he describes hearing as he works? Pause for a moment and close your eyes. Tune into the sounds around you right now. The paragraph in the middle of page 89 is a tough one. In the first couple sentences, he refers to people he knows who are spending their summer going to museums while he, like the other farmers, is spending his on “husbandry” (89). Go ahead and look up that word. I’ll wait. Then he talks about the various uses for beans. He mentions porridge, which is like oatmeal, and voting, which is something people once did to cast their votes, and also for trade. He then talks about thinking about the activity of planting beans as a “parable”—I wonder if he means “Jack and the Beanstalk.” He seems to be saying that he’s planting the beans because it’s fun, not because he wants to eat them. I have no idea who Evelyn is, maybe someone who is a bean-planting expert. By the end of the paragraph, he is proud of himself for harvesting quite a lot of beans. Then he has a nice little expense report of his bean enterprise. On 90, he continues to detail his bean-growing enterprise, but now he’s using them as a metaphor. What is he comparing the beans to? What does he compare seeds to? Why does he mention “fathers” and “Indians?” What is comparing the growing of new crops to? Break down these comparisons one by one. What is he learning about himself while he plants his beans? On page 92, we start the chapter, “The Village,” which reminds me of that M. Night Shyamalan movie. The very long first paragraph describes his love of gossip, which I think is so funny since he spent the first few chapters saying how “company is cheap” and so forth. He reminds of that person who puts down social media, but then they’re on Twitter all day. On page 93, he’s on his way back to the cabin with his supplies and describes walking through the woods as it’s getting dark. He says that sometimes, he’s so in his own head that before he knows it, he’s at his door with no memory of how he got there. Has that ever happened to you, that you went from one point to another automatically? I am amazed that he doesn’t mind getting lost, not even in a snowstorm! This paragraph ends with this insight: “Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations,” which to me means we cannot really know ourselves until we are able to let go of attachment (94). This is especially meaningful to me now when I am not able to go out into the world. On the bottom of page 94, he’s thrown in jail! (Did you look up the word “cobbler”?) Why do you think he didn’t pay his taxes? What is the “State”? What is the State doing that he objects to? He leaves his door unlocked while he is in the village. He trusts people. The next chapter, “The Ponds,” starts on the bottom of page 95. He eats some huckleberries and hangs out with a deaf fisherman. On page 96, he does some night fishing. What do you think he means with the metaphor on the bottom of page 96? What is he comparing? The very long paragraph on page 97 describes all the colors of the water and compares the pond to an eye. On page 98, he drops his ax through the ice and fishes it out again. On page 98, he describes the shore around the pond, the banks, and the muddy shallows. He speculates that the pond is “bottomless,” but is it? There’s another pond! White Pond. He thinks about how old the pond must be and remembers what it looks like in the snow. He describes how the water is a different levels at different times of the year. We’ll finish with an old Indian tale told by Thoreau on page 100 about how Walden Pond got its name.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Book Order InformationNotes for Reading Guides:1. The page numbers in these Reading Guides correspond to the page numbers in the book listed above. You can also order the book by clicking HERE Resources |