“Visitors”

In this chapter, I was able to get a better understanding Thoreau’s attitude toward society. He begins by stating that he likes company like any other man.  He talks about the visitors who pass by his home in the woods, mostly focusing on a 28-year-old Canadian woodchopper and post maker, whom he doesn’t name. He describes him as a simple-minded, quiet, natural and solitary happy man. Thoreau mentions that the man was so immersed  in his “animal life”,  he was unsure whether he was “wise as Shakespeare or as simply ignorant as a child”. Thoreau seems to respect the man’s simplistic life, but still sees him as inferior, due to his lack of education. Even though the man was in touch with nature, it still wasn’t enough to compare to Thoreau’s intellectual mind, according to him.