Watermarks Hook, Line, and Sinker: How Thoreau Lures Us Back into Nature in Walden by Ryan Clark

In Walden, Henry David Thoreau explains how a relationship with nature reveals aspects of the true self that remain hidden by the distractions of society and technology. To Thoreau, the burdens of nineteenth century existence, the cycles of exhausting work to obtain property, force society to exist as if it were "slumbering." Therefore, Thoreau urges his readers to seek a spiritual awakening. Through his rhetoric,Thoreau alludes to a "rebirth" of the self and a reconnection to the natural world. The text becomes a landscape and the images become objects, appealing to our pathos, or emotions, our ethos, or character, and our logos, or logical reasoning, because we experience his awakening. Thoreau grounds his spirituality in the physical realities of nature, and allows us to experience our own awakening through his metaphorical interpretations. As we observe Thoreaušs awakening, he covertly leads us to our own enlightenment.

Thoreau submerges us into the text through his language, thereby allowing us to come as close to his experience of solitude in nature as he allows. Author Lawrence Buell explains that, as "Walden unfolds the mock serious discourse of enterprise, which implicitly casts the speaker as self-creator of his environment, begins to give way to a more ruminative prose in which the speaker appears to be finding himself within his environment" (122). Buell explains that Thoreau invites us inside the text and allows us to see the images he sees and to feel the life around him. His strategy is to disengage us from the chains that society so elegantly places around our ankles, and allow us to return to where we are closest to our natural essence. This essence can only be found, according to Thoreau, by secluding ourselves in nature to live as "deliberately as nature," so as not to realize upon our deaths that we have not really lived at all (87).

Thoreau's main concern is that the accumulation of wealth, and the desire to obtain it, distracts humans from recognizing their true essence, which is spirituality. In the chapter "Economy," he urges us to learn to live life by ourselves, without the pressures of monetary consumption, and reevaluate ourselves in order to obtain its true necessities. He states, "It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what the gross necessaries of life are and what methods have been taken to obtain them" (9). Thoreau reduces the necessaries of life to four things: food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. Anything beyond these four necessities serves as a wall dividing physical from spiritual realities.

In agreement with Thoreau, an anonymous author explains how human existence separates from its essence due to a preoccupation with financial prosperity. In the National Anti-Slavery Standard, an obscure anti-slavery newspaper from 1854, the author states, "The life exhibited... teaches us that this Western activity of which we are so proud, these material improvements, this commercial enterprise, this rapid accumulation of wealth, are very easily overrated" (8). Thoreau understands the harmful effects of modernization and relinquishes his responsibility to society in order to discover his connection with the natural world, and shows us how to achieve the same through his metaphorical imagery.

However, an opponent of Thoreau, James Lowell, regards him as a "pistillate plant [pollinated] by the Emersonian pollen" and a man with "so high a conceit of himself that he accepts without questioning, and insisted on our accepting, his defects and weaknesses of character as virtues and powers peculiar to himself" (44-45). Lowell expresses dissatisfaction with Thoreau's writing and philosophy. He believes one can discover the true self without separating from society, or communing with nature. He asserts, "[T]he radical vice of his theory of life was that he confounded physical with spiritual remoteness from men. One is far enough withdrawn from his fellows if he keeps himself clear of their weaknesses" (48). He supports a more organized assimilation of spiritual clarity through adhering to the laws of man and its traditions. He claims, "[T]he old mystics had a wiser sense of what the world was worth; they ordained a severe apprenticeship to law and even ceremony, in order to gain the freedom and mastery [of the Self]" (48). Lowell also asserts that Thoreau has no sense of humor and misleads readers by mixing reality, poetic metaphors, and sarcastic misdirections together, instead of clearly stating his intentions.

Interestingly, the poetic metaphors Lowell refers to are very powerful, deliberate, and sensible. Thoreau posits his belief that our excesses in material goods, such as clothing, strip animals of their natural heating systems (birds' feathers for stuffing pillows and mattresses) while heating our bodies to unnatural temperatures. He states, "By proper shelter and clothing we legitimately retain our own internal heat, but with an excess of these, or of fuel, that is, with an external heat much greater than our internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin?" (11). He creates an ironic image by pointing out the similarities between our destruction of animals for clothing and our destruction of ourselves by roasting. He embraces both our logos and pathos by pointing out that we are killing not only the elements of the natural world, but also ourselves. He emphasizes the irony of people sacrificing years of their lives striving for unnecessary possessions when their needs are really quite simple. Our perseverance towards material wealth is unnatural and ultimately leads to our own demise, which he so eloquently equates to our cooked bodies stimulated by overaccumulation of inanimate objects.

Thoreau lures us into his own reflections through metaphors and by appealing to our senses. He uses the idea of slumbering as a metaphor for humankind's inclination to live by routine, without considering the greater questions and meanings of existence. He accentuates the perspective he gains by awakening early and experiencing nature while others are still sleeping. He uses the metaphor of awakening in the morning to demonstrate the difference between himself and his Concord townsmen. The spiritual awakening of Thoreau and his readers is reflected both in the times of day and in the seasons in the year, with the greatest self-awareness and spiritual discoveries occurring in the morning and spring. Thoreau expresses the dichotomy between morning and spring in the "Spring" section by stating, "The pond began to boomŠan hour after sunrise... it stretched itself and yawned like a waking man" (293). Thoreau illustrates that humans are a part of nature and have the potential for spiritual rebirth, as nature has its rebirth every morning in the spring.

Furthermore, Thoreau composes nature as a metaphor when he comments about working in the "fields if only for the sake of tropes and expression, to serve a parable maker one day" (162). James Papa suggests that "the use of the word 'serve' is critical, since it suggests a hierarchical relationship and reinforces the notion that nature is simply raw material to be used for literary ends" (71). Papa further clarifies that Thoreau does not intend to see what is in nature and tell us, but rather to teach us that what we see is evidence of what we are already capable of knowing and understanding if we will only allow ourselves enough to recognize it.

Thoreau takes us gradually through the process of rebirth by illustrating the significance of Walden Pond and placing the pond as his central metaphor. He refers to the pond at various points as a "well" dug by an "ancient settler," implicitly referring to God as the creator (183). The pond becomes a representation for Thoreau as an ordered cycle that he explores and understands: "[N]ot a fish can leap or an insect fall on the pond [that I cannot detect by] circling dimples" (188). So, through his discovery of the pond and his submersion into its cycles, we experience the demolition of societal structures and recognize our connections to nature and spirituality. The cycles of the seasons, with the rebirth of the winter-dormant pond, animals, and plants in the spring, are synonymous with an eventual spiritual rebirth in humans which Thoreau propagates. His metaphor of awakening from the slumber of life evinces his hope and belief in the progress of humans to a new, profound understanding of themselves. He uses the simile of the snake to notify humans of their spiritual dormancy along with the ability to overcome it. He states:

I saw a striped snake run into the water... and lay... without any inconvenience... more than a quarter of an hour... because he had not come out of his torpid state. For a like reason, men remain in their present low and primitive position... but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs... they would rise to a higher, more ethereal life. (38-39)

Thoreau explains the slumbering metaphor even further by including the snake. He grounds his argument in the cyclic rotations of the seasons and nature's reaction to it. Comparing humans to the snake shows how we too have the ability to rise from our slumbering state if we listen to the calls of nature. Without the natural lure, we pacify ourselves with meaningless objects and technological advancements. Humans have a higher nature that is aroused in what Thoreau refers to as the spring of springs, or the rebirth of the individual spirit.

Along with his metaphors and other rhetorical strategies, Thoreau creates a landscape through the text for us to envision ourselves within nature. As Isaiah Smithson explains, "Thoreau organized his prose descriptions from a set point of view, or along a sight line created by the walking observer, which creates an image of his surroundings as if they came straight from a picture, and we are there alongside him as he lives off the land and water" (94). In accord with his direct point of view, he applies "a controlling metaphor (e.g., a painting, journey, or seasonal cycle)," and "space relations seen typically on a canvas." Smithson continues by referring to Thoreau's elements of persuasion which he claims are "obvious," such as the "odor of plants, sounds of wildlife, and moonless night scenes" (95). Thoreau relies heavily on metaphor and imagery to assist in his portrayal of solitude, nature, and spiritual discovery.

In the final section, Thoreau convincingly claims, "[I]f rail fences are pulled down, and stone walls piled up... , we "set our lives and our fates." The stones are metaphors for the advancement of industry and technology, which we seclude ourselves in and become oblivious to life outside the walls. The rail fences, made of wood, allow a connection to still exist between humans and nature. Unfortunately, their destruction symbolizes the disengagement of the two. He urges us not to build these opaque walls around us, but to establish a relationship with nature. This relationship leads to a rebirth, not only concerning nature, but our own relationship with God.

Thoreau explains in his final metaphor that the self is "a strong and beautiful bug... from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier... buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society [which] may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society's most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last" (324). The dormancy of the bug seems permanent, but even wedged between many layers of wood, there is still hope of life again. We are the beautiful life represented by the "bug," and our advancements have only created the barriers that surround us. The last image Thoreau creates is one of perseverance and hope for our rebirth.

Thoreau sees beyond the power and economic structures that society creates and offers an alternative. He uses Walden Pond as his central metaphor and recreates his experiences through his imagery. His recognition of the pond, and the natural world surrounding it, not only establishes an atmosphere for spiritual growth, but also succeeds in creating a paradigm for society to follow in order to achieve the same. He assembles an instruction manual for the purpose of spiritual discovery and discovery of the self.