Thoreau's Walden: Points of Particular Interest
Chapter XI - Higher Laws
- Thoreau opens his exposition on hunting by threatening (not at all seriously)
to seize and devour a raw, live woodchuck. The point is to remind us exactly
what being a carnivore entails. We work to disguise our meat-eating, even
as butchering and cooking serve to disguise our meat.
- Thoreau discusses how hunting serves to introduce a child to nature; he
suggests that the child should outgrow the desire to kill for the sake of
killing but will not lose the appreciation for the natural world.
- He suggests that most adults remain "young," in that fishermen
expect to return with a long string of fish and often forget how pleasant
a day at the pond, under whatever excuse, inherently proves.
- He discusses his preference for vegetarian fare, suggesting some not quite
healthy notions of diet on 1476.
- His suggestions of natural intoxication and the desirability and pleasure
of water as a beverage (1477) stands as rather more useful dietary advice.
- At the bottom of 1477, Thoreau notes that it is one's attitude toward one's
food, not the type of fare, that does the glutton make.
- This leads to an exposition on our "animal" natures and the "animal
in us."
Chapter XII -- Brute Neighbors
- Your editor notes that the dialogue at the opening is between Thoreau and
William Ellery Channing the younger.
- 1481-82 discusses Thoreau's study of a woodland mouse.
- Then we have birds in equally acute detail.
- And, beginning on 1483, we find the often reprinted ant-battle.
This is essential reading from Walden. Read for the parallels
with human combat (both organized and not); read the piece as though reading
of some human war as offered through the eyes of some alien being.
- The rest of the chapter describes feral and semi-domestic cats, as well
as native wood life.
Chapter XIII -- House Warming
- A description of foraging for nuts and berries.
- A meandering account of building a chimney and plastering his house, both
necessary for the winter.
- And reflections on wood-gathering, the presence of waste-wood in the forest,
and the like.
Chapter XIV -- Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors
- Somewhat "snowed in," Thoreau devotes these early pages to reminding
us that he is not in virgin forest. He discusses earlier occupants, and houses
lost to fire.
- Mention is made of how thoroughly evidence of the past is swallowed up by
the woods.
- Thoreau discusses his walks through the woods, and his two winter visitors
-- one the young man he has regularly referred to as "the Poet,"
the other Bronson Alcott, to whom he devotes a couple complimentary paragraphs
beginning on 1504.