The Forester (1862)

AUTHOR: Alcott, Amos Bronson

PUBLICATION: "The Forester." The Atlantic Monthly, April 1862.
https://www.walden.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/AlcottForester-1.pdf

SUMMARY (Bryn Skibo, edited Deborah Madsen):

In this short essay, Alcott celebrates Henry David Thoreau and his experiment at Walden. In this account, all that is good in “the Forester” arises from his intensely close relationship with the land and animals around Walden Pond, Thoreau’s closeness to the natural world and his innate understanding of it with his exemplary morality: “Of our moralists he seems the wholesomest; and the best republican citizen in the world, – always at home, and minding his affairs” (443). Alcott makes repeated references to classical authors (such as Pliny, Virgil, Theocritus) to underline the enduring  importance of maintaining ties with the land. Their assumed respect for the Forester is based on his knowledge of the land and animals around him and the clear thinking that is a result of this connection. In this respect, the essay contextualizes Alcott’s association between morality and knowledge or familiarity with the natural world. As in his earlier “Orphic Sayings,” Alcott here makes explicit the superiority of instinct over reason: “His senses seem double, giving him access to secrets not easily read by other men: his sagacity resembling that of the beaver and the bee, the dog and the deer; an instinct for seeing and judging, as by some other or seventh sense, dealing with objects as if they were shooting forth from his own mind mythologically” (444).