Beck Fox, Skylar Riedell, Jaidyn Vorpahl
Introduction
“Brute Neighbors,” as its name would suggest, centers around the “neighbors” Thoreau had in his cabin property. It is no secret that Henry Thoreau had a deep respect for the natural world and the wildlife around him. The cabin gave him, so far from the hustle and bustle of a town that moved too fast for creatures of such a natural world to want anything to do with, a chance to become particularly in tune with the animals and the wildlife that he came across, particularly the wilder kind that have not been integrated into civilization. This could range from interactions with these creatures as they occasionally made their way into his house to appreciative and thoughtful observations on how their different minds could work. There are mice that occasionally sneak into his cabin or birds that make their nests near his wild living space. Thoreau considers himself lucky to be so close to creatures that may otherwise go their entire lives without ever being seen by mankind. For our purposes, it is a recount of coming upon a mouse and a mother bird that we take the most interest in.
Version A
In Version A, paragraph 9, Thoreau describes two experiences that reveal different aspects of nature and his relationship with it. First, he tells the story of finding a bird’s nest in the path of his plow, which he moved in an effort to save the birds and their nest. However, after the nest was moved, the parent birds abandoned the babies, leaving them to die. Through this story, Thoreau seems to suggest that although humans try to help nature, we don’t always fully understand it or know what is best for it. After telling the story of the birds, Thoreau shifts to an experience with a mouse. At first, the mouse is fearful of him, but the mouse eventually gains enough comfort to eat cheese out of Thoreau’s hand. This interaction displays a more intimate and trusting side of nature by showing the connection that humans can have with animals. While describing the mouse, Thoreau compares it to other creatures, like squirrels or flies. These comparisons suggest that he sees commonalities among different living things and recognizes the ways that animals and humans interact with the world around them.
Version A does not ascribe to the later manuscript editions’ chapter organization. In this manner, what became “Brute Neighbors” paragraph 9 initially followed “Spring” 25b. After writing his recollections of the field mouse, Thoreau returned to this leaf to pencil in the story about the downed nest. This may have been done to ease the transition between “Spring” 25b, which discusses the birds of Walden pond, and the closer nature encounter with the field mouse.
Version E
In Version E, paragraph 8 is seen for the first time, where Thoreau questions animals’ existence and purpose. He seems to be thinking about animals’ place and responsibility in the world and their role with one another and with nature itself. This leads him into paragraph 9, which introduces his experience with the mice. In earlier versions, paragraph 9 included both the mouse and bird stories. In Version E, however, Thoreau removes the bird story and focuses solely on the mouse. In the manuscript, the bird story is written in ink, while paragraph 8 is written in pencil between those lines. Because of this, it is unclear which section was written first, and both possibilities can be argued. The reasons to believe the ink came first are that the rest of the page was written in pen, so he probably wrote the whole page in pen first and added the pencil later; the pencil is also written pretty precisely between the lines of the font, which makes it seem like it was added with the knowledge of how the pen was formatted; the font size throughout the page is the same in the pen, and the pencil-written font size is much smaller; and the transition from Thoreau’s musing about the society he left in paragraph 8 to his firsthand experience with animals is much smoother. Paragraph 8 was likely included as a direct replacement for the original transition phrase, which dealt with Thoreau’s appreciation for nature despite being a hunter. This is clear because this phrase is actually separated from the rest of paragraph 9’s text that got deleted, which was about Thoreau attempting to save the nest of a ground bird. While dissecting Walden, we went back and forth on which possibility seemed more likely, but we ultimately decided that we believe the ink came first and then the pencil.
Meanwhile, the ground bird story as a whole was probably deleted because the story with the mouse simply got the point of Thoreau’s compassion across more. The story of the mouse simply details Thoreau feeding a mouse that happened upon his cabin. The ground bird story mentions Thoreau moving a ground bird’s nest out of the way so he wouldn’t plow it, only to find the birds were still doomed as their parents had abandoned the nest. Not only is this a useless story to add within a paragraph revolving around compassion, but it is also possible that Thoreau accidentally doomed these birds by misplacing the nest, and didn’t want to put his mistake in the paragraph about compassion.
Experience and Challenges
One of the biggest challenges while working on this project was the manuscript itself. Thoreau would frequently move sections of his writing around, interline them with pencil text, or cross them out entirely. Page 784, from Version E of the manuscript, contains an entire section of ink that Thoreau brought over from “Brute Neighbors” paragraph 9 in Version A. This section was then interlined with the pencil text that became paragraph 8 and eventually crossed out entirely as Thoreau grew tired of it. Although a great window into his creative process, it also left the manuscript page chaotic and hard to understand. In places, the text overlapped with itself, and words—written in Thoreau’s spiderweb-esque handwriting—often became illegible.
Another challenge we had was interpreting why Thoreau made certain revisions. It was hard to keep track of what he changed throughout different versions, but it was a whole different challenge to interpret why he made those changes. Thoreau’s writing tends to be pretty abstract, and sometimes even identifying the point he is trying to make in one version is hard in and of itself. But when it came to not only interpreting what was being said but also interpreting his revisions and why he made them, it was very challenging. It’s also hard to narrow down our best theories as to why Thoreau made the revisions he did, because sometimes there are so many possibilities.
One small blessing was the presence of the Walden fluid text. Referencing the existing transcriptions was the difference between total confusion and understanding. Words in Thoreau’s script often resembled others (“and” and “sod” being a common issue for me), and the fluid text offered needed clarity. However, the fluid text itself is not without flaws. Consistency in transcription style was at times lacking, and some minor edits were missing completely. In these cases, someone more familiar with the manuscript was consulted to decipher the text.
That being said, sometimes referencing between the fluid text and the manuscript proved to be a nightmare. The fluid text tended to lump things together based on where they ended up in the final version of Walden. However, they would actually be in an entirely different order in the manuscript, so actually finding the manuscripts would always be a struggle. One example was struggling to find where the opening sentence to paragraph nine was, only to find it smack in the middle of the paragraph within the script, in incredibly small and hard-to-read pencil.
