Director, Environmental Studies
Professor of English

STUDY QUESTIONS

Henry David Thoreau, “Walking”

1. What kind of “walking” is Thoreau promoting? Why does he think it is important? What does such walking require of the walker? What effect does it have? How is it related to the notions of “West” and “Wild”? How is it related to the common life of villages and cities? Would you like to take up this kind of walking? Why or why not?

2. What does “West” mean in this essay? Look for multiple possible meanings. How is West related to Wild? To culture and civilization?

3. What does “Wild” mean in this essay? Look for multiple possible meanings. How is this term related to “Nature?” To our notion of “wilderness” as a large pristine tract of land untainted by human presence? How is Wild related to common village life and farming? To culture and civilization? How is it related to my distinction between nature as sacred other and as sacred place? Look for possible contradictory passages and attitudes.

4. What is the nature of the freedom that Thoreau champions in the essay? How is it related to walking, the West, and wild. To common village life and to civilization? Is he really calling for “absolute freedom and wildness” (first paragraph)? Do you want such freedom? What would happen to society if it pursued that freedom?

5. Thoreau makes several comments that could be considered ecological, relating to natural resource management. What does he say about these issues?

6. What is Thoreau’s relationship with tradition, particularly the European tradition. Look for divergent viewpoints.

7. How does Thoreau critique his contemporary culture? Look for various critiques, both social and ecological. Do you think his critique is valid? Why or why not? Do you see any contradictions between his critique and other passages in the essay? Do you think his critique could be applied to today’s world?

8. Thoreau speaks of the need for nature and wildness – both for individuals and for society. What need does he see for it and why does he hold that view? Do you agree? Why or why not?

9. One of the rhetorical approaches Thoreau takes is dualistic: an antagonism between mutually exclusive opposites. What instances of dualism can be found in the essay? Are some of the dualisms undercut by certain passages?

10. Seven elements: which of the Seven Elements of Nature Writing are found in this essay? Which are predominant? Which (if any) are absent?

11. What kind of literary style does Thoreau use: his figurative language (metaphor, simile), his choice of words, his voice, etc.? What kind of effect does this style have on you?

12. What kind of stance does Thoreau take? What is the cultural and historical context of the essay? What kind of persona does he take on, and how does he relate to the reader?

13. This essay is famous for a number of passages. What is the point and import of the following passages?

• I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and Culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make a emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization; the minister, and the school-committee, and every one of you will take care of that.
• The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the world. . . . Life consists with Wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. . . . In short, all good things are wild and free.
• Give me a Wildness whose glance no civilization can endure. . . .
• Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used them-transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots;-whose words were so true, and fresh, and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they lay half smothered between two musty leaves in a library,-aye, to bloom and bear fruit there after their kind annually for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding Nature.
• At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only,—when fences shall be multiplied, and man traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road; and walking over the surface of God’s earth, shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities then before the evil days come.
• We go eastward to realize history, and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race,-we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the old world and its institutions. If we do not succeed this time, there is perhaps one more chance for the race left before it arrives on the banks of the Styx ; and that is in the Lethe of the Pacific, which is three times as wide. [In Greek mythology, Styx was the river across which the newly dead were transported to the underworld. Lethe was a river whose water caused one to forget, especially one’s life before death.]

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