Walden
Henry David Thoreau
Chapter VI. Visitors
In Thoreau's chapter, Visitors, he revisits times that others came to his home. Thoreau says that he is not a complete hermit, and often enjoys the company of others, as long as they can provide intelligent conversation. He could easily entertain twenty people the same as one person. The food might run out, but they would have his sympathies. He remembers many people who had stopped by over the years, and a Canadian woodchopper that he especially enjoyed. This man was like Thoreau in many ways. He lived simply. The man owned only two books: and almanac and an arithmetic book. "A more simple and natural man it would be hard to find." Thoreau's only wish was that this man would be a little more spiritual and intellectual. There was also a time when Thoreau helped a runaway slave escape North. He noticed that out of most people he saw, young boys and girls, and young women were usually the ones happy to be in the woods.
Tone, Style, Theme
Tone: Whimsical
Style: Thoreau's writing is very metaphorical, and contains personifications. It flows smoothly like poetry
Theme: Society and Class, Isolation, Man and the Natural World.
Powerful Quotes and Metaphors
"I think I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way."
"The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet morion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plow out again through the side of his head."
Project Significance
This project is significant to help the class easily understand a chapter of Thoreau’s writing without having to read the whole book. My project is significant to AP Lang and Comp because it makes the class think about the chapter and the rhetorical devices Thoreau uses. Nonfiction in the AP Lang and Comp course is an important tool in developing our skills to easily identify rhetoric.
Rhetorical Strategies
Allusions:
Walden makes Allusions to the Bible, Civil Disobedience, The Odyssey.
"I am surprised when the herald blows his summons before some Tremon or Astor or Middlesex House..."
"For my own part, I was never so effectually deterred from frequenting a man's house, by any kind of Cerberus whatever..."
"Who should come to my lodge this morning but a true Homeric or Paphlagonian man..."
Tricolon:
"I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society."
Polysyndeton:
"I took them, and a priceless domestic swept the floor and dusted the furniture and kept the things in order."
"He was a skillful chopper, and indulged in some flourishes and ornaments in his art."
"The old and infirm and the timid."
Anaphora:
"Men of one idea, like a hen with one chicken, and that a duckling; men of a thousand ideas, and unkempt heads, like those hens which are made to take charge of a hundred chickens, all in pursuit of one bug, a score of them lost in every morning's dew--and become frizzled and mangy in consequence; men of ideas instead of legs, a sort of intellectual centipede that made you crawl all over."
Simile:
"I think I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way."
"Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them."
"Why are you in tears, Patroclus, like a young girl?"
"...who are as bottomless even as Walden Pond was thought to be, though they may be dark and muddy."
Rhetorical Question:
"...what danger is there if you don't think of any?"
"Why are you in tears, Patroclus, like a young girl?"
"...what danger is there if you don't think of any?"
Anecdote:
Story of Canadian woodchopper and post-maker.
Antithesis:
"In him the animal man chiefly was developed. In physical endurance and contentment he was cousin to the pine and the rock."