Reading

Thoreau describes reading as the art of getting away from confusion, distractions, as well as the means towards achieving knowledge. He builds nature to symbolize the beginning of art, seeing as art is a way of interpreting our emotions and feelings about whatever happens to exist and so that would be nature. He describes the reading of classics as laborious and time-consuming, and difficult, using personification to describe their language as “dead”, adding to the intangibility of their whole being, but in the end those are the works that end up contributing to a more culture-aware person. Thoreau uses simile to liken the task of reading to a noble exercise like that of training that athletes undergo. He uses imagery when he says, “the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds,” to get the reader to fully grasp the gap between the written language and spoken word. The spoken words are always altered in a way that will fulfill and satisfy the audience, while the written words are existing solely for the author. Basically, reading is an entirely more intricate thing than just genres of entertainment.