Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Walden Pond
The meanings of Walden Pond are various, and by the end
of the work this small body of water comes to symbolize almost everything
Thoreau holds dear spiritually, philosophically, and personally.
Certainly it symbolizes the alternative to, and withdrawal from,
social conventions and obligations. But it also symbolizes the vitality
and tranquility of nature. A clue to the symbolic meaning of the
pond lies in two of its aspects that fascinate Thoreau: its depth, rumored
to be infinite, and its pure and reflective quality. Thoreau is so
intrigued by the question of how deep Walden Pond is that he devises
a new method of plumbing depths to measure it himself, finding it
no more than a hundred feet deep. Wondering why people rumor that
the pond is bottomless, Thoreau offers a spiritual explanation:
humans need to believe in infinity. He suggests that the pond is
not just a natural phenomenon, but also a metaphor for spiritual belief.
When he later describes the pond reflecting heaven and making the
swimmer’s body pure white, we feel that Thoreau too is turning the
water (as in the Christian sacrament of baptism by holy water) into
a symbol of heavenly purity available to humankind on earth. When
Thoreau concludes his chapter on “The Ponds” with the memorable
line, “Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth,” we see him unwilling
to subordinate earth to heaven. Thoreau finds heaven within himself,
and it is symbolized by the pond, “looking into which the beholder
measures the depth of his own nature.” By the end of the “Ponds”
chapter, the water hardly seems like a physical part of the external
landscape at all anymore; it has become one with the heavenly soul
of humankind.
Animals
As Thoreau’s chief companions after he moves to Walden
Pond, animals inevitably symbolize his retreat from human society
and closer intimacy with the natural world. Thoreau devotes much
attention in his narrative to the behavior patterns of woodchucks,
partridges, loons, and mice, among others. Yet his animal writing
does not sound like the notes of a naturalist; there is nothing
truly scientific or zoological in Walden, for Thoreau
personalizes nature too much. He does not record animals neutrally,
but instead emphasizes their human characteristics, turning them
into short vignettes of human behavior somewhat in the fashion of
Aesop’s fables. For example, Thoreau’s observation of the partridge
and its young walking along his windowsill elicits a meditation
on motherhood and the maternal urge to protect one’s offspring.
Similarly, when Thoreau watches two armies of ants wage war with
all the “ferocity and carnage of a human battle,” Thoreau’s attention
is not that of an entomologist describing their behavior objectively,
but rather that of a philosopher thinking about the universal urge
to destroy.
The resemblance between animals and humans also works
in the other direction, as when Thoreau describes the townsmen he
sees on a trip to Concord as resembling prairie dogs. Ironically,
the humans Thoreau describes often seem more “brutish” (like the
authorities who imprison him in Concord) than the actual brutes
in the woods do. Furthermore, Thoreau’s intimacy with animals in Walden shows
that solitude for him is not really, and not meant to be, total isolation.
His very personal relationship with animals demonstrates that in
his solitary stay at the pond, he is making more connections, not
fewer, with other beings around him.
Ice
Since ice is the only product of Walden Pond that is useful,
it becomes a symbol of the social use and social importance of nature, and
of the exploitation of natural resources. Thoreau’s fascination with
the ice industry is acute. He describes in great detail the Irish icemen
who arrive from Cambridge in the winter of 1846 to
cut, block, and haul away 10,000 tons
of ice for use in city homes and fancy hotels. The ice-cutters are
the only group of people ever said to arrive at Walden Pond en masse,
and so they inevitably represent society in miniature, with all
the calculating exploitations and injustices that Thoreau sees in
the world at large. Consequently, the labor of the icemen on Walden
becomes a symbolic microcosm of the confrontation of society and
nature. At first glance it would appear that society gets the upper
hand, as the frozen pond is chopped up, disfigured, and robbed of
ten thousand tons of its contents. But nature triumphs in the end,
since less than twenty-five percent of the ice ever reaches its
destination, the rest melting and evaporating en route—and making
its way back to Walden Pond. With this analysis, Thoreau suggests
that humankind’s efforts to exploit nature are in vain, since nature
regenerates itself on a far grander scale than humans could ever
hope to affect, much less threaten. The icemen’s exploitation of
Walden contrasts sharply with Thoreau’s less economic, more poetical
use of it. In describing the rare mystical blue of Walden’s water
when frozen, he makes ice into a lyrical subject rather than a commodity,
and makes us reflect on the question of the value, both market and
spiritual, of nature in general.
