Comparing Nature In 'Two Views Of A River' By Henry David Thoreau

Nature in “Two Views of a River” and Walden

“Two Views of a River” by Mark Twain portrays a man with his job as the pilot of a steamboat and how he views the river while Walden by Thoreau depicts a man who believes that people are wasting their lives on unimportant matters and goes into nature to discover the meaning of life. Throughout “Two Views of a River”, Twain recognizes the beauty of the river because he had never seen a sight like it back home and through Walden, Thoreau describes nature as he goes on an endeavor to discover what life means to him. Over the course of both passages, both authors come to the realization that nature is not always how they perceive it to be. The passages “Two Views of a River” and Walden portray how nature changes a person’s perspective about how the natural world is naively viewed and how nature is dangerous.
As the passage continues his view of it changes. His perspective of nature becomes a more informed one and he realizes that the beauty of nature does not help him in any way but it actually distracts him. The passage says, “All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat.” He states how he began to cease noting the river’s glory and beauty altogether because it is useless when piloting a steamboat.
In “Two Views of a River” the narrator points out how the river shows signs of danger. The passage says, “That slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody’s steamboat one of these nights.” He describes how nature could be perceived as dangerous because it can cause accidents and even result in the death of a