“Ktaadn” Thoreau’s Culture Shock
For anyone who has read Thoreau’s “Life in the Woods” Ktaadn seems to be written by a different person. “Life in the Woods” is written by an author so full of himself he thinks of himself as being better than everyone else around him, he values nature over all things and is extremely philosophical in his musings and above all considers nature as a thing that must be protected from man. However in Ktaadn there is very little in the way of philosophy and Thoreau means quite literally what he says as there are few hidden layers and he begins to understand that nature is not weak rather it is the mistress of her domain and it is instead man that is weak.
One thing he does do is give a personality to nature, he paints it first as a mother correcting her children from going to where they were not meant to go and helping to lead them to where she believes they belong. However he seemed to have been astonished in just how wild Ktaadn was, unlike in “Life in the Woods” Thoreau seems to be at a loss for words not using the vivid language in his descriptions that was present in his earlier works. Instead he seems content to just describe what he sees. He describes the moose in terms of horses and cows and unlike in “Walden” trees were trees and rocks were rocks rather than giving them a deeper meaning. To Thoreau nature was the unbridled primal forces at work in the world that included life and death. Man on the other hand attempted to remove nature from its rightful place until he had completely destroyed what had come before. Experiencing the untainted wilderness left Thoreau elated and awed, he craved the contact with nature that was unpolluted by human beings yet even in his cravings he still conceded that nature itself was not to be taken lightly.
Thoreau speaks on the encroachment of human civilization on the wildernesses of America. He marvels at how nature has managed to flourish even or in spite of humans destructiveness. He seems to realize that although in his home area that human footprints are seen everywhere in this wilderness no human is evident and it is more likely that any human caught inside of it would be swallowed whole rather than be able to create a permanent presence. In ” Life in the Woods ” Thoreau lives with a foot inside civilization just barley immersed into the wilderness, and from this vantage he is unable to comprehend the raw power of the wilderness. As soon is he is fully immersed in the wilderness of main he seems to understand that his prior opinions of a weak nature being rampaged by humankind was wrong, that nature is just as able to rampage man in her realm.
Overall, Thoreau seems to be going into a sort of culture shock, he is unable to describe the world around him and he also seems to forget the transcendentalism that was such a large part of his prior works. Thoreau spoke at length in “Walden” about leaving civilization behind and becoming fully immersed in nature, yet when it finally happens to him he is reduced to having to grasp at straws of his former experiences and instead of taking everything for what it is he attempts to tie it in with his prior experiences.