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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 3 page essay that discusses 2 essays by Henry David Thoreau. Writing in the first half of the nineteenth century, Henry David Thoreau’s writing seems to modern readers to invoke a time when nature was freer and less constrained by the imprint of humanity and its influences. Nevertheless, Thoreau, in several of his nature essays, makes it clear that he sees human influence on nature as changing it, categorizing it and taming it to fit the requirements of commercialization. In this manner, Thoreau’s essays, “Huckleberries” and “Wild Apples,” are quite prophetic. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
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3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khthone.rtf
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constrained by the imprint of humanity and its influences. Nevertheless, Thoreau, in several of his nature essays, makes it clear that he sees human influence on nature as changing it,
categorizing it and taming it to fit the requirements of commercialization. In this manner, Thoreaus essays, "Huckleberries" and "Wild Apples," are quite prophetic. For example, in "Wild Apples," Thoreau makes
a point in comparing cultivated apple orchards, with their grafted trees, to the "old orchards of ungrafted apple-trees" ("Wild Apples"). While the cultivated orchards are set in regular rows and
are characterized by their uniformity, the old orchards sometimes have trees standing "close together" and "rows so devious that you would think that they not only had grown while the
owner was sleeping, but had been set out by him in a somnambulic state" (Thoreau "Wild Apples"). In other words, the old orchard is fascinating precisely because it is not
regimented, but rather offers irregular paths, interesting turns, and surprises. In the wild apple-tree, Thoreau sees a metaphor for human independence. Unlike other fruits or crops, which depend on
human cultivation, "the apple emulates mans independence and enterprise," as it makes "its own way" ("Wild Apples"). Similarly, in his essay "Huckleberries," Thoreau deplores the regimentation of nature within humanly
imposed boundaries. He asks, "What sort of a country is that where the huckleberry fields are private property? When I pass such fields on the highway...I see a blight on
the land" ("Huckleberries" 249). As these comments suggest, Thoreau, in the early nineteenth century, saw with prophetic vision the way in which American society was heading, which was toward
commodification, which is a term that refers to the transformation of anything into a commodity, that is, something with an assigned value in the commercial arena. Rather than apples or
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