Nature, Civilization, and the Human Spirit
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers is full of longing for and celebration of nature and wildness. Civilization and society, nature's foils, threaten man's communion with the wild. Human history has been destructive to wildness in both nature and man. From the beginning to the end of the book, the presence of the Native American in tales of local history constantly reminds the reader of civilization's incompatibility with nature. The story of Hannah Dustan in "Thursday" is a particularly powerful statement of the antagonism between civilization and the wild. Dustan, a New England folk heroine, experienced the full force of the wild in her captivity by Indians and in the murder of her infant. She escapes only by killing her captors — destroying the wild — but does so at a price to herself. As she proceeds down the river through the wilderness on her return to civilization, she is out of her element, silent and fearful. The woods are to her a "drear howling wilderness" to which she has no capacity to respond.
Thoreau finds a more positive example of man's ability to interact with nature in the person of the rough, rude, but innately civil man called Rice in "Tuesday." Like the Indian, Rice has grown naturally out of his wild environment. Above the meaningless niceties of society's standard of etiquette, Rice is naturally decent. Nature possesses its own refinement, Thoreau writes.
Thoreau denounces all of society's institutions in A Week. In "Sunday," he contrasts Christianity with the religion of nature, and the wildness of the Indian with the civilization of the white man, who is "strong in community, yielding in obedience to authority." Religion, political life, and society in general are presented as institutions of the dead, lacking both vitality and the heroic spirit. Man cannot heed the call of higher knowledge if he simply accepts conventional beliefs and definitions. Just as Thoreau travels against the current on the Merrimack River, he must go against the current of civilization and history in seeking the wild.
In "Thursday," the travelers pass into the Pemigewasset Wilderness. They climb Mount Washington, referred to only by its Indian name, "AGIOCOCHOOK." Although Thoreau describes the trek through the surrounding area, he is silent about the ascent. Silence is presented elsewhere in A Week as a listening for communication from nature and the divine. The lack of description and interpretation and the uppercasing of the mountain's name in the text suggest an experience too intense and mystical to be conveyed in words. At the end of the book, Thoreau exhorts his reader to become more natural and spiritual. The life of the spirit is not possible without openness to nature and the wild. Nature is essential to the inner voyage explored in A Week.
