Thoreau — страница 2

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but furniture cluttering up a room. Americans were being confused and believed the illusions of luxuries of life to be beneficiary to their happiness, but the people of New England could not tell what an illusion looked like. They hadn’t the time to notice nature or to distinguish illusions from Sweeney 3 the real thing (173). Unlike Thoreau, New Englanders lacked “a passion for observation” (Literary 394) for focusing in on nature. Life in New England moved too fast to notice anything. Thoreau’s answer to these problems was always to slow down and separate what one needed from what one merely desired (Krutch 173). 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, without a doubt,

whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get our sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days or nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will want railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our own business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. … Why should we live with such hurry and waste of time? We are determined to be starved for we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches to-day to save nine to-morrow. As for work, we haven’t any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus’ dance and cannot possibly keep our

heads still. … Hardly a man takes a half hour’s nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, “What’s the News?” as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be walked every half hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After a night’s sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. “Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man any where on this globe,” – and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had this eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has put the rudiment of an eye himself (174-175). The tone of these words conveys

a feeling of anger and passion. Thoreau felt that Americans had deceived themselves about what is valuable in life and were wasting the precious time they had. His answer to wasting time is nothing Sweeney 4 more than simplifying your life and it becomes more valuable. He said, “We are as rich as the number of things we can do without” (160). By liberating themselves from the shackles of material things, people can find the time to see what is important and worthwhile about reality (178). If you stand right fronting and face to face of a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both sides its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude you mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only

reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business (178). True independence is achieved by finding the time to trust the instincts people are born with, in conducting their business, which is to throw off their sleepy condition and awaken themselves to the possibility of elevating their own existence to a higher level. We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor (172). Thoreau saw the need of man’s awaking to an awareness of three possible

levels – Animal, Intellectual, and Spiritual – each with rewards. The book opens with spring and ends with spring , the awakening of nature, of renewal, and of purification. By getting rid of the frantic pace dictated by technology and the enslaving grasp of material luxuries, man has the chance to purify himself through communion with nature (13). The renewal of the day, signaled by the dawn, also Sweeney 5 becomes a signal to renew the dawn in us, and rise with the sun to an intellectual level, by reading the best works of the best writers (184). Finally, by studying nature closely, Thoreau discovered the divine pattern of all creation, a simple leaf. “Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle of all operations of Nature. The Maker of this earth but