Toying with Death in Walden

Abstract

This essay tries to question the usual, quasi-consensual reading of Walden as a celebration of life, health and youth. It relies on a network of underground metaphors which introduce a number of disturbing interferences into the text, from slumber, choking or infectiousness to decay and death, and are deliberately concealed by humor or the grotesque. It also attempts to show how these motifs gradually emerge, how they climax in the chapters devoted to the winter months, and how they appear even in the final celebration of spring rebirth.

Keywords

• death
• animals
• disease
• romanticism
• dejection
• sleep