Grant Patterson
Nature and Spirit
9/7/15
Response to “A Slight Sound at Evening” By EB White
In this essay White explains the greatness behind Thoreau’s “Walden” and defends
Thoreau’s opinions. He admits that many people have a lot of respect but also a lot of dislike for
Thoreau. He explains that this is because they don’t truly understand Thoreau. White believes
that upon leaving college, students should be sent out into the world with a copy
of Walden firmly tucked under their arms. This essay seemed to be written in an argumentative
style as White very carefully backed up each of his points to prove the dissenters of Thoreau’s
greatness wrong. White inserted quotes from Walden in an appeal to the reader to read what
Thoreau wrote and see how great the essay was. White was also writing this essay because it was
the one-hundredth anniversary of Walden, which explains why he was so positive about Thoreau
and felt the need to prove beyond a doubt his opinions. I respected White’s word choice words
such as revels, beckon, tormented, and reconcile. The essay starts out quite formally and ends
with a whimsical imagining of Thoreau coming to visit White and being shown about town. It is
easy to see that White is a very large fan of Thoreau and wrote this in ode to him. Walden is such
a timeless piece because the same relevance it had when it was written, is doubly true now with
all of the technology and advancements that have been made today. These things have slowly
separated man from nature even more than before, but also gave birth to a new generation of
people with respect for nature and the building of parks and preservation of massive amounts of
land by the government. Walden depicts true respect for nature and the timelessness is as
relevant as ever because the world is now using up so much nature that it cannot restore all of it,
and eventually certain resources will be depleted and now is as good of a time as any to start
making a change and truly respecting the earth and nature that has been provided to us.