
There are four main ways that the narrator describes the pond,
and thus metaphorically describes his perfected soul.
The first way is the purity of Walden Pond.The narrator has purified himeself by sloughing off his past life and the corrupting influences of society. His attempt at purifying his spirit by the number of times he bathes. In the book he says “I got up early and bathed in the pond was the best thing which I did.” Hence the pond is “so remarkable for its depth and purity.” Repeatedly, he points: “it is a clear and deep green well.” ; “it is bottomless.” ; “the bottom is pure sand.”; “the water is so transparent that the bottom can easily be seen at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet.”“The scenery of Walden is…very beautiful.”; “Walden is a perfect forest mirror.”
Secondly, is divine nature.There are two ways to express the idea of the pond divinity. One is the medium of divine that pond is lying between the earth and the heaven; the other is the metaphor of the divinity of the narrator’s self. We can find that the pond has “got a right of heaven to be the only Walden Pond in the world and distiller of celestial dews.” “It is sky water” “God’s Drop” “Eden Walden Pond” “in the Golden Age.” Thus the narrator expresses his divine mind as the purity of pond and his highest thoughts are divine in nature, “deepened and clarified” by the mind of God.
Thirdly, a metaphor for inspiration: Walden Pond is a symbol which shows many aspects of the narrator’s inspired self. It expresses rejuvenation “it is perennially young.” To emphasize the inspirational character of Walden that “Walden has no visible inlet or oultet”; as the narrator well knows, no one can objectively describe the exact way in which one receives inspiration.The narrator refers to the inconstant level of the pond’s depth : “the pond rises and falls” and “this rise and fall of Walden.” The pond is the seasonal metaphor weaves correlation between the seasons of the year and the “spiritual seasons” of the narrator. The narrator feels hopeful when the snow had thawed in the spring and his spirtual life will not die.
Finally is the eye-spiritual vision metaphor. The narrator states the color of Walden’s water is the colour of its iris. The term “iris”is the metaphor of the eye. that the narrator says: “It is the earth’s eye, looking into …the depth of his own nature.” The narrator metaphorically turning inward and viewing himself toward heaven. The narrator depicts the conscious mind (one kind of “eye”) is looking into the deepest self, the unconscious, the self that intuitively knows, or “sees” God (it is the other kind of “eye”) Thus the narrator indicates his awareness spirtual vision within himself is an ability to sense the divine.
文章定位: