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Advanced Placement Language and Composition

Summer Reading 2014

Assignment #1 Interdisciplinary Nonfiction Choice

Model using Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Directions:

Choose one of the following nonfiction books. While reading, identify a key passage that
articulates the author’s central argument. Then, make a copy of the key passage and construct a
well-written paragraph that articulates the author’s central argument. Next, identify four
strategies the author is utilizing to support the central argument and, in paragraph format,
analyze how they contribute to the author’s central argument. While the assignment should be
scholarly and indicative of your ability as a sophisticated writer, this should not be a formal
essay. Paragraphs should be typed in 12 pt. Times New Roman font and double-spaced. Please
see the model key passage and analysis paragraphs, which are available online.

***Please note that while this model provides only two examples of strategies
Thoreau is utilizing to support his central argument, the assignment requires that
you identify and analyze four strategies utilized in your text.***

Passage that articulates the author’s central argument:

“I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of

life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I

had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear…I wanted to live deep

and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that

was not life…to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…Our life is frittered

away by detail…simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say let your affairs be two or three, and not

a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count a half dozen, and keep your accounts on your

thumb-nail” (Thoreau 77).

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Articulation of central argument:

Thoreau‟s argument centers on the idea that in order to live a fulfilling life, one must live simply.

In order to accomplish this, he suggests that it is imperative to eliminate all unnecessary burdens

including “details,” “affairs,” and “accounts.” By “reducing [life] to its lowest terms,” Thoreau

argues that a person can learn what life is really about whereas living an encumbered life leads to

just existing. To make certain that he simplifies his existence, Thoreau lives in the woods, next to

Walden Pond, essentially eliminating contact with anyone who could potentially complicate his

plan to “live deliberately.” Thoreau‟s allusion to the ancient Spartans emphasizes his desire to be

sternly disciplined and rigorously simple in order to learn “what [life has] to teach.” The fact that

Thoreau bases his lifestyle on this concept indicates his intention to “live [deeply]” in a life that

is not “frittered away by detail” in a way that abides by his central argument of “reducing life to

its lowest terms.”

Key Passage #1:

“When I first took up by abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days

there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was

not finished for winter, but was merely a defense against the rain, without plastering or chimney,

the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night.

The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings give it a clean and

airy look, especially in the morning when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied

that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout

the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain
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which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a

traveling God, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my

dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or

celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is

uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but outside of the earth everywhere”

(Thoreau 73).

Strategy #1: Personal Narrative

In an effort to substantiate the claim Thoreau proposes in his central argument, he uses a

personal narrative to describe his attempt to live simply. Using imagery to depict the sparse

setting and unadorned home, Thoreau purports his ideas by creating a picturesque yet

uncomplicated lifestyle that the reader envies. In describing his home, Thoreau notes that it had a

“clean and airy look, especially in the morning when its timbers were saturated with dew, so

that…some sweet gum would exude from them.” The positive connotation of the specifically

chosen diction “sweet,” “clean,” and “airy” conveys a sense of charm that apparently

accompanies a simplistic lifestyle. Furthermore, Thoreau compares his home to one he had

recently visited. After analyzing the similarities, he associates the home with the Gods,

goddesses, and heaven subtly linking simplistic living with a higher being. Concluding the

personal narrative, Thoreau references the “poem of creation” and Mount Olympus as other

recipients of the wind that only blows by him and others who live by the dictates of a simplified

lifestyle as “few are the ears that hear it.”

Key Passage #2:

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“Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?...Hardly a man takes a half hour‟s nap

after dinner, but when he wakes up he holds up his head and asks, „What is the news?‟ as if the

rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every half hour,

doubtless for no other purpose…And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a

newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident…we never need

read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a

myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher, all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they

who edit and read it are old women over their tea…As for Spain, for instance, if you know how

to throw in Don Carlos and the Infanta, and Don Pedro, and Seville and Granada from time to

time in the right proportions…and serve up a bull fight when other entertainments fail, it will be

true to the letter, and give us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of things as the most

succinct and lucid reports under this head in the newspapers…”

Strategy #2: Point of View

Thoreau effectively uses point of view to comment on the absurdity of “news” in order to

substantiate his claim that life should be lived simply. Beginning with a rhetorical question

allows the author to answer it through various perspectives. He starts with the news-obsessed

common man who needs to be updated every thirty minutes yet ultimately gains no new

knowledge as a result of his efforts. Moving to first person point of view, Thoreau says, “I am

sure I never read any memorable news in a newspaper.” This allows Thoreau to make his point

that “memorable news” is practically non-existent as every “new instance” has already

happened, in some form or another, in the past. He emphasizes his point by shifting to the second

person and restating his thought in the form of a question: “If you are acquainted with the

principle, what do you care for a myriad of instances and applications?” Next, Thoreau
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introduces yet another point of view-that of a philosopher, to demonstrate how an erudite and

scholarly person views the news as simply “gossip.” To conclude his claim concerning the

triviality of omnipresent news, Thoreau returns to the idea that news is redundant and ultimately

unimportant by saying that one can know the past and predict the future by knowing only a few

simple facts, or key points in the case of his Spain example, that can be thrown into a

conversation-“bull fighting,” “Seville,” “ Don Pedro”, etc. It is evident then, that frivolous news,

just like other burdensome and unnecessary trivialities in life, stands in the way of a life of

simplicity.