As a writer of an autobiography about life in the woods, would you spend more pages describing an ant war or loons
After examining Mr Thoreau’s novel, and hearing many other examinations, I believe that he took an interesting approach to how he wrote his Autobiography. An autobiography is “ an account of a person’s life written by that person.” (Oxford Languages.) In this account he does talk about his life , his theories , and his ideas. He was hypocritical at points, and sometimes his stories just did not make sense. He described many things in his narrative. He chose to write increased about some of his ideas, and spend little to no time at all writing about his others. Some say this ruined the book, others say they liked it. When the book was first published, only a handful of people read it. Not many of those enjoyed it. The book feels empty because of what he writes about. The to this day continues to perplex and mystify it’s readers till this day.
As stated previously, Henry David Thoreau wrote a account of his life, not many people have read to this day. He was underappreciated in his time, as when he died, the book caught traction and began being read by lots of people. His chapters were sometimes long and disconcert to the rest of the book. Chapters like the Ant War, or describing loons. Two chapters he spent almost now time on, but get the most feedback. Some people believe he should have written more about the loons. The loons are a medium sized bird, basically the size of a duck. It would have been peaceful to read about his experience with the birds. How he learned to interact with the. An example would be, “How did he feed them, if he was feeding them?” Things like these will enthrall a reader who is ready to put a book down.
However, some may argue that including more of the ant war is the smarter idea. Maybe so. The book does get dull and misleading. Including a war about ants might attract the reader. Something simple could be engaging such as this. So, I believe that including more of these could have definitely helped the book. Contradictory to the chapter on birds, this wouldn’t be relaxing, but rather fast paced, and full of action. Something somebody interesting. Questions would be raised, and the reader is connected. For example, “what happened to all the dead ants? Or how long did the ants battle for?” Although it may sound silly, including action could have kept the reader wondering what was going to happen next.
No matter what part of the narrative he includes, it still boils down to a failing book. I do not think including these will sell hundred of thousands more copies. The book has still failed. I do not think that if he included them back then, the book would have been a success. There are still errors and problems that needed to be addressed. He should have put more of both in. Then people could read about both. Although confusing, the book needed more that made sense.
Walden is missing a lot to make it a good book. The plot is missing details and ideas towards his early life. This makes everything fall apart because of one question. This is “Why?” Why did he write this book. Without crucial information much of the book makes no sense. So why did he write this book. That question travels into other parts as well. Why did he include that. Why didn’t he include more of this. He wrote little about things people cared about. He wrote too much about things people had no care in the world for. If he included such stories, the book will have still failed. But it would have made reading it more enjoyable.
JBSchool 