Megan Mangione - Thoreau Texting Activity
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Nov 24, 2024
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Name: __________________________________________________________ Date: _____________ Period:
_________ Excerpts from Thoreau’s “WALDEN” I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if
I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did
not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite
necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as
to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and
reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine
meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and
be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange
uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is
the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever.“ Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has
for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion… Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow. As for work
, we haven't any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus' dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still. If I should only give a few pulls at the parish bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the bell, there is hardly a man on his farm in the outskirts of Concord, notwithstanding that press of engagements which was his excuse so many times this morning, nor a boy, nor a woman, I might almost say, but would forsake all and follow that sound, not mainly to save property from the flames, but, if we will confess the truth, much more to see it burn, since burn it must, and we, be it
known, did not set it on fire—or to see it put out, and have a hand in it, if that is done as handsomely; yes, even if it were the parish church itself. 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 waked 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 anywhere on this globe"—and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his 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 but the rudiment of an eye himself. For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it. To speak critically, I never received more than one or two
letters in my life—I wrote this some years ago—that were worth the postage. The penny-post is, commonly, an institution through which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so often safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter—we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are
acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news
, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip…
Name: __________________________________________________________ Date: _____________ Period:
_________ Texting Thoreau Even though Thoreau would criticize our modern technology and lack of face-to-face communication,
play along by answering these text messages as if you are Thoreau himself. Respond Thoreau-ly! Your
responses should be derived from “Walden.” Hey dude…so why did you disappear in the woods for two whole years? Hello my dear friend, I have vanished into the woods to gain more appreciation for the nature around me and to see how simply I can live out here.
I hear your motto is “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” What’s all that about?
Simplicity is a beautiful thing. Instead of worrying about the hundreds and thousands of things going on, reduce such to a dozen. Stop worrying and live. What the heck do you mean about being starved before we’re hungry? Say what?! My friend, Thinking so literally. We tend to prepare for the worst and miss the pleasure of the present. We prepare the food and then eat it and directly after we
are planning the next meal because we miss the pleasure of eating.
I know this is random, but why have you been hating on the post office and the news? It is outrageous reading about absurd things that are
happening. Why should we gossip about other people's lives? We need to take time and focus on ourselves as individuals.
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