Critical Analysis of Henry David Thoreau's Cape Cod (1864)

Overview and Posthumous Publication Context. The redoubtable Henry David Thoreau expert and admirer Walter Harding calls Cape Cod Thoreau’s “sunniest and least profound” book (Harding and Meyer 66). As The Maine Woods was, it was posthumously edited by Sophia Thoreau and Ellery Channing from portions that had been published in Putnam’s Monthly Magazine and the Atlantic Monthly and from lectures Henry David Thoreau had delivered on the Lyceum circuit. Although it shares some of the structural and textual problems of The Maine Woods, it is nevertheless a good book to have at the beach, especially if the beach is on the Cape. As Joe Polis starred in the final portion of The Maine Woods, this work features a character known only as the Wellfleet oysterman. Called “the book on Cape Cod,” the volume had its classic status confirmed when the 20th-century poet Robert Lowell quoted much of it in his poem “Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket” (Harding and Meyer 68–69).

Dark Tragic Themes and Maritime Disasters. The sunniness of Cape Cod has a notable counterpoint: that of the human tragedy wrought by shipwrecks along its coast, such as that of the St. John, with which Henry David Thoreau begins his book. Henry David Thoreau and his companion, Ellery Channing, arrived at Cohasset just as the 28 bodies from the steamer that had crashed in a storm were being loaded into hay wagons. As was Henry David Thoreau’s wont, the sight of the dead, their clothing scattered on the rocks, and the townspeople watching sent him on a four-page discourse on death. Of the mostly Irish immigrants who died, he said, “Why care for these dead bodies? They really have no friends but the worms or fishes. Their owners were coming to the New World, as Christopher Columbus and the Pilgrims did,” but “they emigrated to a newer world than ever Columbus dreamed of” (14). Later he will talk of the placid ocean, place of commerce and beauty, turning into “sudden fury,” breaking, distending, lashing at ships and people (144). Other hard realities include the heavy hardware discovered inside poor large fish who mistook knives, jewels, and newspapers for food.

Humor, Local Vignettes, and Coastal Characters. Such somber scenes contrast with lighter moods as Henry David Thoreau and Ellery Channing move up the Cape. For example, he repeats gossip—the town had a postmistress—leading Henry David Thoreau to tease, “We suspected that the letters must be subjected to a very close scrutiny there” (28). Later Henry David Thoreau makes another misogynistic comment on “a Nauset woman, of a hardness and coarseness such as no man ever possesses or suggests”. Before another human takes the stage, Henry David Thoreau unloads much history, especially about the early Pilgrims and their religious leaders, and he observes strange seaside creatures, “sea jellies”. The Wellfleet oysterman is worth the wait, and the funny meeting is conveyed mainly in dialogue. Ellery Channing called him “the wizard,” while Henry David Thoreau called him “the merriest old man that we had ever seen, and one of the best preserved” (104–105). No one matches the oysterman, who tells a great story about seeing George Washington, but other people wander into Henry David Thoreau’s path: a family of giants picking blackberries; a schooner owner he calls Uncle Bill, who was sleeping in the mud until flood tide; and the lighthouse keeper worried about erosion.

Literary Allusions, Etymology, and Geographic Metaphors. This book is not so replete with literary references as others, but Henry David Thoreau invokes Homer as he looks at the sea. At least twice, he uses—in Greek—a line from The Odyssey: the wine-dark sea and the sunset as the shining torch of the sun falling into the ocean (173). He quotes Ovid, and, most entertainingly, he quotes an Icelandic story about Furdustrandas (a mirrorlike mirage), a story into which he manages to weave (facetiously) the derivation of his own name—as from the god Thor. The last of the 10 chapters, “Provincetown,” is almost entirely devoted to the history of the Cape—and, for that matter, all of Massachusetts and parts of Nova Scotia—but he comes around at the end to contemporary people. “So we took leave of Cape Cod and its inhabitants,” he writes. “We liked the manners of the last. . . . They were particularly downright and good-humored. The old people appeared remarkably well preserved, as if by the saltiness of the atmosphere. . . . They are said to be more purely the descendents of the Pilgrims than the inhabitants of any part of the State” (Cape Cod 301). For almost 20 pages he affectionately introduces us to more of those inhabitants and then returns to the geography of America, a metaphor for the life that was so soon to end for him: “Here is the spring of springs, the waterfall of waterfalls . . . a lighthouse or a fisherman’s hut the true hotel. A man may stand there and put all America behind him” (319). That sounds like a pretty accurate description of Henry David Thoreau’s life at Walden Pond, linking each of the books of this prolific writer.

For Discussion or Writing.
1. Imagine that you are a naturalist and choose one of Henry David Thoreau’s strengths (as a botanist, geologist, or ornithologist, for example) and discuss what you might learn from The Maine Woods and/or Cape Cod. To what extent does Henry David Thoreau use nature as the basis for metaphors? To what extent does he simply record his observations?

2. What do you learn from Henry David Thoreau, the most famous “hermit” in American history, about his attitude toward other people from these two travel books? What, particularly, do you learn about his attitude toward “the other”: the immigrant, the poor farmer or lighthouse keeper, or the Indian?