Henry David Thoreau Nature Walden Pond example essay topic

Is nature important to anybody? What role does it play in an individual's life? The fields of beans, ants, birds, and pond represent Walden as a small piece of nature that can provide spiritual development and the nurturing of the mind. Henry David Thoreau emphasizes his spiritual perception to Walden Pond, as the important place where he has experienced the "essential facts of life". On the other hand E.B. White's perception mirrors the social insignificance toward the nature, social carelessness about the life in the woods and its power t restore human spirit. H.D. Thoreau's metaphor and E.B. White's irony in both representations of Walden convey the similar authors' tone and perception toward nature. Thoreau provides deeply philosophical concern about the meaning of life with the help of nature as an ultimate power for the rebirth of soul.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. His belief of death and that "I [Thoreau ] had not lived" concludes that life means more inner fulfillment rather than physical. "Liv [ing] deliberately" he wants to choose his simple way of life independently, as a subject to his own deliberation - vegetarian food, one meal a day, and plain clothes - to " live deep and suck out all the marrow of life". Thus if you come to die, you will know that you have lived. The irony penetrated through the sentence from Walden (June 1939): "a pond in the Concord atmosphere and live deliberately, fronting only the on Number 126".

Who could find any essential facts of life on the highway # 126? In one hundred years the Walden Pond has been changed to the place where "the traveler ['s] comical image of himself, and "trailer people leaving the city, as you did, to discover solitude... get bogged deeper in the mud then ever."Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour... forge rails, "but "We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us". The railroad "rid [ing] upon us" metaphorically communicates the idea how superficial accomplishments controls our life, and people depend on it by placing material matters in front of spiritual. With the same purpose and explanation E.B. White ironically portrays a woman cutting grass with motorized lawn mower, that actually appeared that "the lawn was mowing the lady". The progress of building railroads, trains, highways, and advantages of technology provoke the authors' strong resistance to society's enthusiasm for this innovation in transportation than "go [ing] tinkering upon our lives to improve them", as a false deed of social progress. The metaphor: "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", compares the "castles" lives of people full of hollow, external, and superficial aspects: internal improvements, furnishings, and transportation. If we do not build foundation for them our lives will collapse. "Now put the foundations under them", the most important in your entire life, your soul. Similarly, E.B. White ironically laughs at social instability and meaninglessness of life; "each year it [ document of increasing pertinence] seems to gain a little headway (castles), as the world loses ground (foundation) "; "Our modern improvements - we are awed and pleased without knowing quite what we are enjoying". There is no chance to see autumn carpet of foliage, now it is mixed with Transcripts. There is no isolation and calm for meditation and inspiration, instead "rails expanding noisily"; "nervous curiously disturbing polytope of automobiles".

Variety of rich food in everyday life does not need its past frugal menu of "rice, Indian meal, and molasses". All these perfect aspects if nature was distorted by human progress in material life. E.B. White feels the respect for Thoreau's philosophy of significance of nature in human existence and its power to restore human spirit, but this piece of nature has been ignored by majority of people, "the house where you practiced the sort of economy which I respect was haunted by mice and squirrels". Both the authors' perceptions in their pieces of literature revealed importance not of our "accumulated goods... and material adornment [that] takes on a certain awkward credibility, "but the exploring the nature, in the person's life. Though Henry David Thoreau has depicted the relationship with nature through metaphor, and E.B. White has reflected human progress' pernicious influence on environment using irony.