Prof. Bruce Harvey

SCATOLOGICAL ECONOMIES--THOREAU'S WALDEN

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THOREAU'S CRITIQUE OF CAPITALISM/CONSUMERISM?

What happens to the "self" in the capitalist marketplace?

Do you agree that it is possible and necessary to get in touch with essentials of life, as Thoreau argues?

Who/what does Thoreau most like to bond with?

DO YOU NOTICE A PATTERN IN THE IMAGERY RELATED TO WALDEN POND? HOW DOES IT RELATE TO HIS PREVIOUS ECONOMIC CRITIQUE?

How does Walden, as Thoreau describes it, relate to his previous points about economic waste?

Does his point about "clean" fish start to suggest a pattern of ideas?

Read the passages comparing the purity of Walden to the waste of capitalist enterprise.

Does his portrait of the wasteful economy of John Field seem valid?

Does Thoreau seem perhaps "anal-retentive"--obsessed with self-control, self-reliance, etc. in comparison to those who, as it were, void their muck onto the landscape?

HOW ENAMORED OF NATURE, IN FACT, IS THOREAU? 

What is the ultimate point of "former inhabitant" case histories?

Sort out sequence below: wild=clean: "clean wild ducks."

He likes "wildest scenes"--could eat a woodchuck.

But eating meat is "unclean."

Indeed, at times we have a too sensual appetite: "slimy beastly life."

How does this equation make sense: to be "continent"=psychosexual closed economy.

Thoreau says "Nature is hard to overcome," in a book devoted to celebrating Nature!?  Thoreau wants to escape from the artificiality and servility of consumeristic / capitalistic society where most "lead lives of quiet desperation"; but going into the wild, you must be careful not to become wild/animalistic yourself.

HOW DOES THOREAU WORK THROUGH RAW ANIMALITY/SPIRITUAL ATTITUDE TOWARD NATURE TENSION?

Read the famous thawing sand passage: is this a heroic imaginative affirmation of life-out-of-muck/body parts or only just a metaphor?  Like Walden Pond, the sandbank is invested with projected meaning (Ahab will project meaning onto Moby-Dick; but Melville will be more haunted by the possibility that nature is meaningless)

Read passage on the beautiful epiphany as the spring light floods in!

Horse rotting scene/death being conquered: perhaps Thoreau can't quite get over obsession with beastliness--is this bravado?