Thoreau's The Inhabitants

The Inhabitants begins with two quotes one from Thoreau and one from Rilke. Although both are quoted, Thoreau is directly addressed on the next page by the narrator, hereby referred to simply as Narrator. Here, Narrator begins his story, in bolded text, about what a look is and how it relates to inhabitants. Narrator, states that “a look is what a man gets when he tries to inhabit something –something like America” (Morris). Then, Narrator goes on to explain what it means to inhabit something and that “an inhabitant is what you can’t take away from a house” (Morris). The entirety of this book, as the title suggests, is about inhabitants and what that phrase means, and it explains what it means to be an American. Both in picture form and in …show more content…
Not only are the upper paragraphs of each page bolded and connected to the previous upper paragraph on the page before it, but they are also the product of Narrator. Sometimes Narrator will refer to the characters introduced in the lower paragraphs as with the case of Willie who states that “There’s a big piece in Willie.” Narrator then connects the following paragraphs, on that page, to the main part of the story. The main part of the story’s purpose is to discuss “what it is to be an American” through the idea of inhabitants. Paragraph by paragraph, Narrator pieces together a narrative about his family, and members of a small town, who leave said town to travel East toward Chicago because “the land itself started leaving [and] they had to give up” (Morris). Eventually, Narrator realizes that even though people are …show more content…
However, this does not diminish the idea that an inhabitant comes from the most basic structure. In fact, it helps to give the story a more complex depth by providing the last inhabitants of that town. Without the stories, the pictures offer a scene of their own inhabitants. The photo of two houses side by side with decrepit chairs in front provides the audience with ample opportunity to see the many inhabitants that once occupied those things. This does not mean that the author intends the reader to disregard the stories opposite the photo, but rather, by preventing the two from being printed on the same side he is showing the purest form of the inhabitant: a house, or in this case a photo, without people. The text that resides opposite offer their own versions of inhabitants which are the ones that the author cannot get rid of. Each of the stories provide a snapshot of inhabitants that either resided in or travelled through these pictures. While a blank photo provides for multiple inhabitants to be realized these short stories supply specific ones. These two elements form together to explain Narrator’s idea that an inhabitant can be realized by its purest form while simultaneously giving an example of actual inhabitants and how they existed in these photos. Paired with the upper paragraphs, these