Blog Post #2: Thoreau and Meaning

In his book The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America, the critic Leo Marx writes that in Walden Thoreau “is clear . . . about the location of meaning and value”: “He is saying that it does not reside in the natural facts or in social institutions or in anything ‘out there,’ but in consciousness. It is the product of imaginative perception, of the analogy-perceiving, metaphor-making, mythopoeic power of the human mind.” Do you agree with Marx’s conclusions about Walden? Where does Thoreau seem to find “meaning and value” in the chapters you’ve read from the book, and in particular in the chapter “Spring”?

 

Throughout all of the readings of Thoreau there seems to be a few points he liked for his writing to center around: self-reliance; nature; the importance of consciousness; and of course, where life’s meaning is truly found. Thoreau left everything he knew, though everything he knew was but a brief distance away, to go and live in a self-made cabin in the woods. He lived off of what he grew and he lived meagerly. In his book, Walden, we see his search to find the meaning of life as he contemplates all of life’s forgotten intricacies. He takes notice of the critters that litter the ground. He sees how the earth labors to reproduce itself. At one point he notes, “No wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it. The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype.” Thoreau took notice of life in a way unlike most people in his day, or our day for that matter. He knew that we, as man, had to work with nature in order to have a coexistent relationship with it. He did not seem to view man’s relationship with nature as one where man was the dominant force, but rather, one where man relied on nature to live, and thus should respect it utterly. He viewed man as but an alternate representation of nature. He said, “What is man but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass of the body. Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven? Is not the hand a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins?” This comparison describes man in a way similar to how he described nature, both with their leaves and veins that display life and root deeply into the earth. This deep root that man has in the earth, I believe, is why man seeks so much to find peace among nature. This is why there is a calm one feels when he goes off to be alone in nature. This is one of the things that has also been made of apparent importance to Thoreau who noted that some of his most memorable times of peace, were just taking quiet walks among creation. This is what he valued. His value was in perceiving nature in the right way and forgoing societally accepted conclusions of mans over importance among it.

Blog Post #1: Gatsby’s Dream

At the very end of the novel, Nick gives us one last romanticized interpretation of Gatsby’s life, and he does so by linking Gatsby explicitly with the idea of America itself: “And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes–a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”

Do you think Fitzgerald means us to take this interpretation at face value? Are we meant to accept Nick’s conclusions about Gatsby and this country, or does this ending point once again to Nick’s unreliability as a narrator? Put another way, how is The Great Gatsby a commentary on the American dream?

 

This particular quote by Nick is a demonstration, in this writer’s opinion, of his reliability as a narrator. For a moment, he is seeing past the obviousness of the world around him and is now seeing it for what it once was. He is seeing past the ostentations of the lofty houses, the garishness of the expensive cars, and the vacuity of the participants in the loud lavish parties. He is seeing what once gave this place so much wondrous potential. Nick is seeing a dream of what America should be. The entirety of The Great Gatsby points to the hopes (and downfalls) of the American Dream. The same dream that the initial Dutch settlers had when they saw the land for the very first time. When the Dutch settlers came, they saw a lively land with lush life-giving possibilities. Their capacity for imagining was not hindered by any past experiences, but was opened to new possibilities and wonders never before seen by western man’s eyes. Whatever they imagined could actually be possible now, by the work of their own hands, in claiming this new land as their own. The same was true for Gatsby. He came from nothing. His past knew little prosperity, and yet, in that nothingness he had found some manner of happiness through meeting and falling in love with Daisy. Daisy, who represents life to Gatsby, becomes his dream as he is shipped off to war. He overcomes war and comes to this fresh new land with hopes of prosperity in tow. His seeking after this dream of his, this American dream, leads him to walk the path whereby he can attain the success which will lead him to his dream in the swiftest way. Gatsby does whatever it takes so that he can have the affluence and prosperity that his dream requires. The problem that Gatsby comes to is that, unlike the Dutch settlers, he can not see the wonder of life around him as it relates to the future. All Gatsby’s hopes and dreams are connected to the past. He forgets to, or relinquishes the ability to, put hope in the pleasures of the present while his hopes rely on the material to bring his past dream to pass. The material success that Gatsby acquired becomes his hindrance in truly living life to its fullest; it becomes his downfall. In actuality, the focus on the material becomes all of the main characters’ downfalls, for the most part. This world in which Gatsby now lives is a world devoid of real tangible meaning. It is a vapid and hollow world that teems with unhappy people, as they attempt to find comfort in what they have, living their lives of meaninglessness. The American Dream that Fitzgerald seems to be portraying is really an aberration of the American Dream that the early settlers envisioned. Their hopes and dreams were placed in bettering the lives of their loved ones through hard work and new ideas that benefitted all. The hopes and dreams of Gatsby’s world, however, was built upon bettering his own life through a cavalcade of selfish decisions that only benefitted himself in the short term, but was detrimental to all of those around him, in the end. The Great Gatsby demonstrates the reality of the American Dream, in its all follies and wisdoms. It shows that success and wealth while great, do not necessarily equate to lasting happiness.