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Transcript

Bryson's A Walk in the Woods and Thoreau's Walden

By: Leo Chen

Page numbers are based on the provided PDFs' numbering

Similarities in Intention

  • Both
  • Intended to encourage individual growth (elements of individualism)
  • Bryson's Appalachian Trail hike
  • To learn to care for himself in the wild
  • Thoreau's 3 years around Walden Pond
  • To foster internal growth
  • To better understand life as a whole
  • To understand his role

Bryson's intentions

Bryson's Intentions

  • "And here it was, quite unexpectedly, meandering in a dangerously beguiling fashion...A little voice in my head said: 'Sounds neat! Let’s do it!'" (Bryson 2).
  • Attracted by the trail's pure beauty
  • "It would get me fit after years of waddlesome sloth. It would be an interesting and reflective way to reacquaint myself with the scale and beauty of my native land...It would be useful...to learn to fend for myself in the wilderness" (Bryson 2).
  • Allows him to become physically fit, to immerse oneself in nature, and to learn to live by oneself
  • In summary
  • Bryson went on to hike the Appalachian Trail
  • because of
  • Nature's beauty
  • Health benefits
  • and that it teaches him to care for himself

Thoreau's Intentions

  • “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” (Thoreau 53).
  • To focus on understanding the meaning of life through nature
  • “Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation…” (Thoreau 57).
  • To avoid the unnecessary distractions from daily life
  • To live in simplicity
  • In summary
  • Thoreau spent 3 years around Walden Pond because
  • by doing so, he can
  • Understand himself better
  • To not live aimlessly
  • To live worrilessly

Differences in Accomplishments

Differences in Accomplishments

  • Differences
  • Bryson
  • Focused on the practical aspects
  • Health
  • Attitude
  • Thoreau
  • Spiritually focused and relatively abstract
  • Emphasized upon Individualism
  • Importance of ambition
  • Power of the self

Bryson's Accomplishments

Bryson's Accomplishments

  • "I learned to pitch a tent and sleep beneath the stars. For a brief, proud period I was slender and fit. I gained a profound respect for wilderness and nature and the benign dark power of woods. I understand now, in a way I never did before, the colossal scale of the world. I found patience and fortitude that I didn’t know I had" (Bryson 212).
  • After his Appalachian Trail hike, Bryson
  • Became physically fit
  • Learned to respect nature
  • To experience its beauty and grandness
  • Became stronger mentally

Thoreau's Accomplishments

Thoreau's Accomplishments

  • "I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings" (Thoreau 189).
  • Thoreau concluded that through his 3 year experiment
  • He learned that
  • One can live a successful life by pursuing his/her own goals and ambitions
  • All things will then be centered around the individual
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