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Brief Notes on the Structure of Walden:
A Few Organizing Principles

According to Adams and Ross in Revising Mythologies (1988), "Walden has two major climactic sequences, framed by an introduction and a conclusion" (178).  The first culminates in "The Ponds" (chapter 9) and the second in "Spring" (chapter 17).

1. By months of the year: cyclical by seasons. Note the importance of the circle.

2. By times of the day.

3. Accounts of excursions in summer and fall give way to the solid block of winter: "Winter Visitors," "Winter Animals," "The Pond in Winter". The radius of experience is thus contracted.

4. The idea of doubling: the air and water of the pond, for example. Thoreau extends this to the structure, as well, since the chapters are doubled:

"Baker Farm" "The Ponds"

"Winter Visitors" "Winter Animals"

5. The idea of different perspectives, of looking through and into instead of merely at surfaces.

6. Note also the imagery of mining, digging, fishing, surveying, viewing, cultivating--in short, of extracting and refining truth.

7. Note also Emerson's ideas in this work, among them

• microcosm/macrocosm
• nature as teacher
• natural facts as language
• reality as lying below the surface
• sleep and waking to consciousness
• self-reliance and individualism
• transcendental truth as perceived directly through intense study of the sensory world


Comments to D. Campbell.
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