Some thoughts on Walden

We were asked today in a class on Literature and the Environment how is Walden environmental?  How do we reconcile seeming contradictions in the text?  I take the work of Walden by Henry David Thoreau as a thought experiment in the midst of a changing world.

Walden reads very much like the Utopian ramblings of a discontented gentleman educated in the Western European tradition, upset by the industrialized world's effect on the common man, but so indoctrinated in Society that it is difficult to pull oneself out of it in order to see more clearly.  Thoreau expresses the colonial quandary that Nature is appealing and necessary, but so is order and society.  His attempts to reconcile these concepts within himself mirror those of modern environmentalists.  "The Universe is wider than our views of it," he wrote.  Thoreau wanted to wake up his neighbors and make them aware that they are building fences that hold them in place.  He wanted Man to be aware of the choices being made.  We have to ask ourselves where we want to be... in society, on Earth and in the Universe.

http://www.amazon.com/Walden-Henry-David-Thoreau/dp/1619493918/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1360119911&sr=1-1&keywords=walden

People's Choice Award

I am so excited I want to dance!  I created a Utopian concept for my final project in English Literature: Modern Utopian Lit, and my story won a People's Choice Award for Best Form from the class.  It will be in an anthology of Utopian papers this fall.
 
I have a new Facebook community page I have created for Utopian thoughts and interests.  Feel free to take a look and post anything relevant (and in good taste.)

Brightest Blessing, Everyone!

http://www.facebook.com/MyUtopianImpulses