Monday, December 3 rd

1. Monday, December 3rd Come to the front with your Walden homework. Review Walden. Homework: Read the excerpt from Into the Wild and answer the attached questions. FYI: Many of the Chua letters on my G drive are blank . . .

2. Walden • Written by Henry David Thoreau • Published in 1854 • Two years he spent living in a cabin he built on the edge of Walden Pond • The land was owned by Emerson (“Self-Reliance”) • Living at the pond was “experiment”: could he live simply in isolation without the trappings of society? • Full of “aphorisms”: a short statement expressing a truth (“an apple a day keeps the doctor away” or “a penny saved is a penny earned”) • “In one book . . . he surpasses everything we have had in America.” – Robert Frost, poet

3. “Where I Lived and What I Lived For” • Live deliberately • Suck out all the marrow of life • Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity • We are determined to be starved before we are hungry • Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in • My head is hands and feet

4. “Solitude” • I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time • I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude • Society is commonly too cheap • Here, Thoreau is explaining that he was not a hermit as some readers believe—he was close to town and entertained visitors

5. “The Pond in Winter” • Nature puts no questions and answers none which we mortals ask • It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them

6. “Spring” • We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring. In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven • Rebirth, not only of nature, but also the author

7. “Conclusion” • I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one • That if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours • If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them • If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away • However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is • The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star