WAKEFIELD AND THOREAU (SPOILER ALERT). Hawthorne’s “Wakefield” is not well known and it is not surprising that the blog comments on Doctorow’s “Wakefield” rarely discuss Hawthorne’s version. One blog comment was uncanny, however. It discussed Doctorow’s story in terms of the life of Henry Thoreau, who was Hawthorne’s contemporary. It had never occurred to me that Hawthorne’s story could be taken as a comment on Thoreau’s choosing to live at Walden Pond and drop out of society. When Hawthorne concluded his story, ““Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever. Like Wakefield, he may become, as it were, the Outcast of the Universeâ€, this could be taken as a criticism of Thoreau.
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I know so little about Thoreau, it is presumptuous of me to post at all. However, along with my habit of trying to answer what are, in effect, rhetorical questions, comes my habit of speaking up. So, here goes. When I read “Walden Pond” in college, I found it profoundly boring and couldn’t understand what we were supposed to get out of it. What a teenager! However, I have no drive to reacquaint myself at this point in my life. But, here’s the kicker: I have “heard” that Thoreau lived at Walden Pond for only two weeks, to “get the flavor,” and then retreated back into the world of civilization.
I don’t know if that’s true. That “Walden Pond” is really theory based on a very small sample, as in “This is what I did for two weeks. Why don’t you live your whole lives this way? It would be good for you.”
Do you know the truth of all this?
I STILL won’t reread it, just as I won’t reread Emerson’s essays. I would rather read another novel by the great Anthony Trollope.