_ huckleberrying our way through​…
The​ Night Thoreau Spent in Jail​ …
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PART 1 ​ -- Nonconformity and Self Reliance
Essential Questions​ to guide your annotation, interpretation and discussion (use these to decide what is
important)
■ What does it mean to be one’s own person? What are the benefits, what are the trade-offs?
■ How will people react to an act of nonconformity?
■ What does the nonconformist need in order to remain true to him or herself?
■ What are the aspects of society that encourage conformity, that encourage nonconformity?
Texts:
■ Pink Floyd’s song and video “Another Brick in the Wall”
■ Thoreau’s huckleberrying metaphor
■ Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self Reliance”
■ Walt Whitman’s poem “The Learn’d Astronomer”
■ Emily Dickinson’s poem “Much Madness is Divinest Sense” and “I’m Nobody--Who are You?”
■ Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Travelled”
Directions
■ Read​ each text closely
■ Annotate​ each text noting important ideas about the concept of nonconformity and self reliance
○ In your annotations, take note of what the details mean. Annotation is interpretation,
what is your opinion about what the author is saying in important details.
○ Do not try to annotate every word and line. Read first and then evaluate what are the
five or so most important details
○ Look for particularly powerful phrases -- imagery, repetition, strong diction. The author
uses these to signal an idea’s importance.
■ After​ you have finish the texts, choose one detail from each text that go together with the other
details to make a strong statement about nonconformity and self-reliance. Complete the graphic
on the last page.
Pink Floyd’s song and video “Another Brick in the Wall” by Roger Waters
(1979)
We don't need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
We don't need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
Thoreau’s
The huckleberrying
Night Thoreau Spent
metaphor
in Jailfrom ​
BALL How is it that I see no school books open here?
HENRY We're huckleberrying, sir.
BALL You're what?
HENRY We're scrambling for ideas the way we hunt for huckle​berries in the woods.
HENRY All, Deacon Ball? Young Potter, here -- (Pointing to a student in the first row.) -- just asked me
if I really think there' is a God.
BALL Young heathen!
HENRY He simply asked why, since we never see God, should we believe He exists?
BALL (Addressing Potter.) Matters of Theology, boy, are discussable with your spiritual leader.
HENRY Potter has already asked his "spiritual leader" -but the Reverend' Whoever-It-Is called him an
atheist! For com​mitting the primary sin of doubt. (To the student.)
Mr. Potter, I'll try to answer you just as lance replied to the same question put to me by an annoying,
inquisitive young man-myself… (little book 18/ big book 17-18)
HENRY It's Coix Lacryma-jobi, which means Job's Tears. I've never se;n a spe~imen here. Students, I
beg your pardon. We are m the undst of three hundred and one varieties of God-made grasses.
(He jots this information in his notebook. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees ELLEN writing.) You're
writing again.
ELLEN Just "Job's Tears"
HENRY Why?
ELLEN When you go to school, you're supposed to write things down, so you remember what you've
been taught.
HENRY Then it's the notebook that does the remembering, not you.
ELLEN You keep a notebook.
HENRY I also wear a ridiculous straw hat. That doesn't mean that you should wear a ridiculous hat.
You'd look ridiculous in it. Nature didn't stuff this meadow full of identical blades of grass, each an
imitation of another. They're all different! Follow-the-Leader is not the game we're playing here! Young
lady, BE YOUR OWN MAN!
JOHN (Low.) Henry, don't shout at her.
ELLEN I won't take notes. I promise you. Not one.
HENRY Why not? If you want to take notes, go ahead .. But not be​cause I'm doing it, or because I told
you to. ' (Gently.) Miss Sewell, I want you to be yourself-not your idea of what you think is somebody
else's idea of yourself. (Turning to the students.) Perhaps, students, Miss Sewell's interruption has given us
the essence of the textbook we call Heywood's Meadow. The multiple grasses beneath our feet. The
infinity of the sky above us. (Riffling through his notebook.) And if I have jotted down a note about a
cloud-flame, or about sunlight on bird-wings, don't you write, just because I am writing. Don't ape me, or
copy me. (Intensely, but quietly.) If you wish merely to listen to the sky, or smell the sky, or feel the sky
with your fingertips, do that, too! (With great conviction.)
Because I think there should be as many different persons in the world as possible. So--each of you-be
very careful to stand out and pursue your own way! (little book 29-30/ big book 28-29)
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self Reliance”
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within,
more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought,
because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us
with a certain alienated majesty…
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that
imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide
universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on
that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and
none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried… We but half
express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents… A man is relieved
and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done
otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius
deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope…
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for
you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and
confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, [in keeping with] their perception that the
absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their
being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not
minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers,
and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark…
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a
joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each
shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity.
Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be
hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the
integrity of your own mind. Absolve[1] you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage[2] of the world…
The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word,
because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath
to disappoint them… But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this
corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place?
Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then?… A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little
minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply
nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in
hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every
thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be
misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and
Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be
misunderstood…
[1] Absolve: to pardon a sin or set free from an obligation or the consequences of guilt
[2] Suffrage: a vote given in favor of a proposed measure or a short prayer offered for someone’s behalf.
Walt Whitman’s poem “The Learn’d Astronomer”
WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the
lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Emily Dickinson’s poem “Much Madness is Divinest Sense”
Much Madness is divinest Sense To a discerning Eye Much Sense - the starkest Madness ’Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail Assent - and you are sane Demur - you’re straightway dangerous And handled with a Chain –
Emily Dickinson’s poem “I’m Nobody--Who are You?”
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us?
Don’t tell! They’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
Robert​ ​Frost’s poem “The Road Not Travelled”
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Put it all together
1. Take another look at the essential questions on page one. And discuss what the texts show.
2. In the circle, write a two or three sentence take-away message or idea with good depth of thought,
showing what the key ideas these texts show about nonconformity.
3. Around the circle, record one key quotation from each of the texts that shows this idea