It's not
surprising that Thoreau should usegiven his pantheistic worldview. Like all pantheists, he
regards everything in this worldfauna and flora, rocks and trees, man and animals, (indeed man
and God)as all linked together in a gigantic cosmic unity.
As far as Thoreau
is concerned, the features of the natural world he so deeply venerates have as much personality
as any human he's ever encountered; more so, in fact. We can see this point illustrated in one
particularly notable passage of , where he describes the lips of the
lake:
These are the lips of the lake, on which no beard
grows. It licks its chops from time to time.
The lake, of
course, isn't literally a mouth, let alone a human one. But Thoreau's use of personification
dramatizes the lake's presence in nature, allowing us to feel the same kind of connection to it
as Thoreau himself feels.
A great example ofcomes when Thoreau describes
humans in so-called civilized society as living "meanly, like...
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