Ponds

 We are going to do some MC questions on AP Classroom, discuss Walden and look at Ponds. We are also going to read "On Self-Respect" on page 113. 

 

 

CHAPTER 9
"Ponds" - Thoreau sees something spiritual in ponds and water.  Most of the chapter holds an idyllic tone and he describes the unity of nature, self, and divinity.  The pond, among other things, is called "God's Drop".   Note - "Ponds" also comes between the chapters "Village" which recounts his sojourns to the village of Concord - where he is locked up (he reports on the incessant gossip which numbs the soul, and compares going to the village to running the gauntlet), and the chapter entitled "Baker's Farm" where he talks about his neighbor John Field who works himself to exhaustion to pay for his "rustic hut" and feed his family.  The question - why this juxaposition?  

Quotes from the chapter to discuss:

"Once in a while we sat together on the pond, he at one end of the boat, and I at the other; but not many words passed between us, for he had grown deaf in his later years, but he occasionally hummed psalm, which harmonized well enough with my philosophy." (169)

"It was very queer, especially in dark nights, when your thoughts had wandered to vast and cosmogonal themes in other spheres, to feel this faint jerk, which came to interrupt your dreams and link you to Nature again.  It seemed as if I might next cast my line, upward into the air, as well as downward into this element which was scarcely more dense.  Thus I caught two fishes as it were with one hook."  (170)

Also on 170 there is a description of Walden" "It is a clear and deep green well, half a mile long and a mile and three quarters in circumference...a perennial sping in the midst of pine and oak woods."

"Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both" (171)

"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature." (180)

This is one of the most symbol-laden chapters in Walden; it presents the pond as having human character. Thoreau introduces the symbolic mode at the end of his opening to the chapter, as he talks about fishing at night, when, he says, "I caught two fishes as it were with one hook", a literal fish and a "symbolic" fish.

 In groups on by yourself answer the following:

In what ways are the following qualities of Walden Pond symbolic of human qualities for which Thoreau thinks we should strive?

1. Its depth and the purity of its water 
2. Its colors, blue and green, and its position between land and sky 
3. Its role as "earth's eye"
4. The pond as a mirror