This week, I continued reading Walden’s Pond by Henry David Thoreau. In this essay I am going to answer the question “if I was the writer of an autobiography about life in the woods, would I spend more time describing an ant war or loons?”
For those that are not taking the 9th Grade English course with RPC or for students who have not reached this lesson yet, you may be wondering why the essay topic is so random. For some background, I am currently reading Henry David Thoreau’s autobiography called Walden’s Pond. The book describes Thoreau’s time while living the woods next to Walden’s Pond. In one of the chapters I had to read this week, Thoreau described an ant war he witnessed and loons, a type of bird that lives on the pond with him.
To answer the question, I would not spend time on an ant war or loons unless I found something extremely interesting about them. When I write, fiction or non-fiction, I always make sure that the information I am giving is interesting for me and the reader. Personally, I do not think there is anything thrilling about ant wars or loons and I doubt many will find them attention-grabbing.
Out of all of the lengthy descriptions I have read in the book so far, only the ant war makes sense to me. Thoreau used the ant war to demonstrate his view of the political drama at that point in time. The ‘war’ was a battle between red ants and black ants. The red ants represented the people while the black ants represented the politicians. He noted how there would be three or four red ants fighting against one black ant, but the black ant would always win because it had more power than the red ants. He used the war to demonstrate that the number of people does not matter if the opponent has more power.
Thoreau also talked about loons, a type of bird that lives on the pond with him. The common loon looks like a duck with black, white, and grey feathers. Thoreau hated these birds with a passion and made it obvious in his writing. He thought their calls were ‘demonic’, and I cannot blame him for thinking that. At first, I thought that this was one of Thoreau’s odd views of the world. However, when I found a recording of their calls on YouTube I cannot say I blame him for hating the bird. Loon bird calls are the classic horror movie bird calls that Hollywood loves to use.
As you can see, I would not include ant wars or loons if I ever wrote an autobiography about living in the woods. I think that Thoreau’s description of the ant war was a clever way to show his opinion on the politics of that time. If I ever do end up writing an autobiography about living in the woods, I will be sure to look out for things that could correspond to my views on things happening in the world.
Sophia Elahi RPC Blog 