I really try to like Thoreau, and some of the time I succeed. I think if Thoreau and I took a walk in the wood, we would enjoy ourselves and talk about the uplifting effects of Nature and the dangers of a mechanical society.
But I take issue with a lot of what Thoreau says in “Walking.” My honors project focuses on American Indian literature and thus most of my dislike probably stems from discovering some of the effects of ideologies propagated by white men on native culture. I can see that “dominant culture” perspective in Thoreau when he talks about the West. Thoreau writes, “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” (488). The “we” here is obviously Americans of European descent. The West is a place to be taken and won, industrialized and profited from. Essentially, Thoreau articulates the belief of Manifest Destiny (although as a Transcendentalist, he probably didn’t think of it in quite those terms). At least in this essay, Native Americans really have no presence. I don’t know what Thoreau thought of Indians, but I approach the work of any early “wilderness writer” with wariness.
Wilderness writers, like Emerson and Thoreau, can be confusing. The wilderness is pure; society is not. We should be more a part of that wilderness. But if we all go into the wilderness, is it a wilderness anymore? Was it ever really a wilderness to begin with? Is wilderness even real? Ironically, although Thoreau want to be “a part and parcel of Nature” (480), his ideas about wilderness ultimately create separation between humankind and nature. Everyday human society and nature are polarized. “In short,” he writes, “all good things are wild and free” (497). Does that make human society inherently evil?
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