Brute Neighbors

The first section of the chapter is a talk between (I would assume Thoreau and his friend who comes to fish with him) the Poet and the Hermit. The Hermit seems to see life very materialistically while the Poet is content with watching the clouds. Onto the main section of the chapter, Thoreau describes his "brute neighbors" or the animals which coexist with him in the woods of Walden. Thoreau's tone is one of admiration and genuine interest when he describes the manner of animals he has wonderful encounters with. "When I was building, one of these had its nest underneath the house, and before I had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet." Once such animal is a mouse that Thoreau feeds on a daily basis. Thoreau also writes about a phoebe, a robin, and a family of partridges; he also dedicates a good portion of his writings to their general behaviors. This is where you begin to see how Thoreau is disappointed with society in that people just don't or cannot appreciate nature anymore. Like Emerson, he seems to be encouraging people to go ahead and try this out simply because he finds it to be so fascinating and that we could learn much from watching what we would normally ignore or not even think about. Thoreau is also wowed by a raccoon that has eluded humans long enough to grow to four feet in length and says "He grows to be four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps without any human being getting a glimpse of him." Aside from his general interest, Thoreau also has a scientific motivation to observe these animals. When he went to his woodpile one day, he notices a large battle between red ants and black ants. While the red ants outnumber the black ants two-to-one, they happen to twice as large, he notes. He brings home a wood chip to watch two red ants face off against a black ant under his microscope. But the most interesting part about this is his comparison of the ants to the warring ideals of humanity, "I was myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think of it, the less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed." He contemplates the reasoning behind the ants' fight and realizes that it is no different from human ideals and those who fight to uphold and protect them. At the same time, he is also horrified at what, men or animals, may do to each other for ideals or otherwise, "I never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of the war; but I felt for the rest of that day as if I had had my feelings excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, of a human battle before my door...The battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years before the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill." The final animal he talks about in great detail is the loon he see on Walden Pond in the fall. Thoreau open "challenges" this loon in an attempt to get a closer glimpse of its majesty. He manages to chase the loon quite well on the surface of the pond, but runs into trouble when it dives beneath the water. When he finally gets close the loon flies off as the sky darkens and begins to rain, "Though the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water were all against him. At length having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and I was impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was angry with me; and so I left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous surface." While many people may not have the time to watch ants wage war or chase loons across a lake (well, in Thoreau's perfect world maybe) , Thoreau manages to easily capture any audience with a more storytelling type style and scores major points by telling the audience exactly what he did and reflect on the result. While everyone may not understand or care because of Thoreau's reputation and nature, most people should have been able to understand and even enjoy this particular chapter because at the time towns and villages were not yet industrialized and even new cities were still surrounded by some type of wilderness.