Walden Pond
...g upon the claims of Walden’s bottomless mystery Thoreau carries his argument further by use of highlighting the preposterousness of these stories. He first relates how people will believe a great number of things without examining them, and then follows to say he has visited a great number of ponds in his area people claim bottomless, and reaching through to the other side of the world. (p.226) The shortness of these sentences and the brevity with which Thoreau asserts them accents the simplicity and ignorance with which he regards these ideas. Though Thoreau never states how he directly feels about these assumptions, his brief tone and uncharacteristically laconic phrasing show his repugnance. By using these three short clauses directly after his long expanded descriptions the contrast in sentence length juxtaposes the complexity and superiority of his ideas with those of the shallow locals. Thoreau reverts back to his poetic and manifold style in the next phrase. In lengthy portrayal it describes a person laying next to the winter pond in an attempt to discern it’s bottom. Thoreau recalls the pond as an “illusive medium” (p.226), a phrase that has significance in that it is deceptive towards most, yet to him it is allusive in his years spent considering it. He gives a detailed account of people lying near the water with the fear of catching cold and fanciful thoughts that they could drive a load of hay into it (p.227), as a parallel to those people who in the previous sentence thought the pond reached through the “other side of the globe.” (p.226) He also makes a reference to the depth of the pond as a mouth towards the Styx, a mythological river in the underworld Hades where the dead souls ran. (p.227) This comparison carries the implication that Thoreau considers these people dead of thought, therefore relating them to the world of the dead. The length of this sentence also parallels the length of time that he is accusing these people of laying next to the water, drawing the reader into the impatience he himself is feeling at their foolishness. His tone, compared with the sparseness of the previous sentences suddenly becomes poetic, as he inserts his own opinion of them in an intellectual tone meant to contrast with their simplicity. In the next sentence Thoreau uses the common slang of “fifty-six” (p.227) to highlight the idiosyncratic visitors to Walden Pond in their own terms. He describes these people in terms of their “immeasurable capacity for marvelousness” (p.227) to reinforce their need to believe that there was no bottom that they themselves cannot measure. The tone is friendly and simplistic like the people described in order to accentuate the character he is giving them. He follows this final comment on the townspeople with a final and direct appeal to the reader, “assuring” that the pond does have a bottom at, “an unreasonable but not unusual depth,” (p.227). The assonance in the words provides flow to the sentence and conveys the difference between himself and the naïve citizens, as well as stressing his point in the existing bottom of the pond. His change in tone as he suddenly addresses the readers directly also gives more warmth to his words, and therefore makes him more credible. Thoreau next describes the ease with which he confirmed the bottom, and gives specifics in order to justify his point. He speaks of the, “Water underneath to help me” (p.227), and again shows the friendly and familiar way with which he regards the pond and leads us at a hint of the admiration he feels towards it. The following line is also purely factual, giving the exact depth of the pond at one hundred and two feet. However, in the next line he readjusts the depth to add for rainfall, further reinforcing the conclusive fact that his measurements are exact. By also using clear language he stresses the clarity of his methods and by using simple tone makes the facts easy to convey. His scientific approach also contrasts with the illogical and gambled approach he described of the other people. The ensuing sentence is broken into two sections with the semicolon so typical of Thoreau. The punctuation serves as an important breaking point between the completely factual and concrete concerns of the paragraph to date, and the philosophical bend that he is about to embark on. The beginning of the sentence summarizes that Walden has a “remarkable” (p.227) depth, and the next section brings in his opinion with the conclusion that not one inch could be spared. This change in tone towards a sapient trend serves to shift the reader into the conceptual undertaking Thoreau is approaching. Thoreau carries through with two poetic and philosophical questions, the first of which is rhetorical, asking, “what if all ponds were shallow?” (P.227), and the second bringing in the reflective point the paragraph has been molding towards in that would the shallowness of ponds not then “reflect on the minds of men?” (p.227) By posin...