Question

Find a “Golden Line” in Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden”. A golden line is a line that stands out to you as important. It could be beautifully written or it could hold multiple layers of meaning. Most likely it’s both. Explain its importance and what it means. Discuss how one of the key ideas of the Romantic Movement is explored or illustrated in the line you chose. The key ideas of the Romantic Movement are listed below.
• Imagination over reason
• Individual over society
• Nature as a source for spiritual nourishment
• Men are basically good but corrupted by society

Answer 1

One of the "golden lines" from "Walden" could be: "Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry, philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality."

This line illustrates the romantic idea of nature as a source of spiritual nourishment. More precisely, nature is here represented as a complete opposite of the civilized and urbanized world, with all of its cultural phenomena. According to Thoreau, we shouldn't be wary of the mud in nature. We should be wary of the real, sticky, burdening mud of civilization, which is so difficult to get rid of. It is the mud of prejudice, opinion, tradition, delusion - everything that the civilized people cling to so ardently.