Summary: Spring
With the coming of April, the ice begins to melt from
Walden Pond, creating a thunderous roar in which Thoreau delights.
Thoreau mentions an old man he knows—whose wisdom, Thoreau says,
he could not rival if he lived to be as old as Methuselah—who was struck
with terror by the crash of the melting ice despite his long experience
with the ways of nature. Thoreau describes it as a kind of universal
meltdown, heralding total change. The sand moves with the flowing
rivulets of water. Buds and leaves appear. Wild geese fly overhead,
trumpeting through the heavens. Thoreau feels that old grudges should
be abandoned and old sins forgiven in this time of renewed life.
Inspired by the arrival of good weather, Thoreau takes to fishing
again. He admires a graceful, solitary hawk circling overhead. He
senses the throb of universal life and spiritual upheaval, and meditates
that death in such an atmosphere can have no sting. His mission
completed, Thoreau leaves Walden Pond on September 6, 1847.
Summary: Conclusion
It is not worth the while to go round
the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Thoreau notes that doctors often recommend a change of
scenery for the sick, but he slyly mocks this view, saying that
the “universe is wider than our views of it.” He argues that it
is perhaps a change of soul, rather than a change of landscape,
that is needed. Thoreau remarks that his reasons for leaving Walden
Pond are as good as his reasons for going: he has other lives to
live, and has changes to experience. He says that anyone confidently
attempting to live “in the direction of his dreams” will meet with
uncommon success, and calls this dream life the real destination
that matters, not going off “to count the cats in Zanzibar.” He
laments the downgraded sensibility and cheapened lives of contemporary
Americans, wondering why his countrymen are in such a desperate
hurry to succeed. He urges us to sell our fancy clothes and keep
our thoughts, get rid of our civilized shells and find our truer
selves. Life near the bone, says Thoreau, “is sweetest.” Superfluous
wealth can buy superfluities only, and “[m]oney is not required
to buy one necessary of the soul.” He reflects on the dinner parties
taking place in the city, the amusing anecdotes about California
and Texas, and compares it all to a swamp where one must seek the
rock bottom by oneself. Thoreau reflects that we humans do not know
where we are and that we are asleep half the time. This puny existence
leads him to describe himself as “me the human insect,” and to meditate
on the “greater Benefactor and Intelligence” that stands over him.
Thoreau concludes by acknowledging that the average “John
or Jonathon” reading his words will not understand them, but that
this does not matter. A new day is dawning, and the sun “is a morning star”
heralding a new life to come.
Analysis
The biblical references slipped into Thoreau’s nature
writing throughout the work become more marked in the final chapters
of Walden. The Old Testament figure of Methuselah
is mentioned, and there are clear evocations of the creation story
of Genesis in Thoreau’s comparison of man to clay: “What is man
but a mass of thawing clay?” God the creator is mentioned several
times in “Spring,” as when he is described as having patented a
leaf, or when Thoreau depicts the green world as the laboratory
of “the Artist who made the world and me.” More pagan, but equally
powerful as myth, is Thoreau’s similar reference to spring as being
“like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of
the Golden Age.” This description alludes to the ancient Greek notion
that the gods brought order to the cosmos, thereby creating the
analogue of Christian paradise—the Golden Age. Here again, every
human in springtime seems to become Adam or Eve before the Fall,
full of infinite potential. These theological references give a
deep symbolic meaning, though always subtle and understated, to
the revitalization of nature that occurs in this chapter. It is
more than a change in the climate. The coming of spring brings not
just warmer weather to Walden Pond, but also an allegorical renewal
of life, a spiritual rebirth. The long, detailed description of
the melting ice, transformed from stasis to movement and fluidity,
suggests the freedom promised by the living water of Christian baptism.
This thaw marks the end of the story, just as Thoreau chooses to
make spring the end of his own work, rather than, as might be expected,
the beginning. By ending his account in the spring, Thoreau points
us toward the open future and the unlived potential of our own lives.
Also occupying a final position in Christian Scripture
is the Apocalypse described in the Book of Revelations, the last
book of the Bible, which also promises a transformed future for
our own lives. There are strong apocalyptic images in Thoreau’s
“Spring.” The roar of the shaken earth on Judgment Day is echoed
in the strange and wild sound of the breaking ice heard by the old
man described by Thoreau. That the old man, who Thoreau says knows all
of nature’s operations, has never encountered this sound before gives
us the feeling that this wild roar is more supernatural and heavenly.
Similarly, the great heavenly armies of the Apocalypse are hinted
at by the wild geese called “into rank” by “their commander,” flying
overhead with a thunderous flapping. The wild honk of the head goose
evokes the angel’s trumpet blare that, according to the Bible, will
herald the onset of Judgment Day. The earth, as Thoreau describes
it, is transfigured into a higher form of existence, and life becomes
celestial. Thoreau has a vision of gold and jewels reminiscent of
the divine riches described in Revelations, no less valuable in
actually being the fish he has caught. This wealth is not earthly
but rather seems heaven-sent, as it is in the Apocalypse. In all
these images of majesty and heaven, Thoreau blends nature writing
and religious writing, creating his own religion of a new life to
come, an imminent springtime for the individual soul.
Thoreau’s relationship with us becomes more intense,
even passionate, in these final chapters. The easygoing description
and anecdotal storytelling of earlier chapters gives way here to
a more urgent tone, almost at times sermonizing. There are far more
direct commands than ever before: Thoreau tells us to “[s]ell your
clothes and keep your thoughts,” and “[s]ay what you have to say,
not what you ought.” These are not religious injunctions, but still
there is a feeling that Thoreau is in the pulpit and we are in the
church pew, receiving his words as moral instruction. But his stern
orders to “you” do not imply superiority in his own position, as
if he is talking down to us. Generally he includes himself in his
own dictates, referring to “us” and thereby including himself. This
rhetoric is different from ordering us to obey the truth: it implies
that he is subject to the same higher laws that we are, and susceptible
to the same temptations and risks. It is a morally righteous tone,
but it is also egalitarian, resonating with a conviction that we
are all humans together. This hint of American equality is heard
in his command to accept poverty or riches without concern: “Love
your life, poor as it is.” The rich may not love their lives any
better than the poor: all are equal. At times there is even a direct
echo of American rhetoric in Thoreau’s words, as when he says, “Rather
than love, than money, than fame, give me truth,” echoing the American
revolutionary slogan, “Give me liberty or give me death.” In these
intense and intimate addresses to us that emerge at the end of the
work, replacing the meandering rhythms of the first chapter, we
sense the urgency of Thoreau’s final message to us. The work he
has written is meant to mobilize us to start working to live our
lives differently.
