죽음과 재생

Death and Regeneration: Grotesque Images in H. D. Thoreau's Cape Cod

Thoreau's Cape Cod is full of grotesque images which are both repulsive and attractive. Thoreau uses these grotesque images to defend nature in its most wild and pure form and to widen the reader's sensibilities. Through Thoreau's journey up the cape, life is paralleled with death. Through the threat of mortality and nature's apparent indifference, Thoreau compels us to throw away conventions of thought and renew ways of seeing. The grotesque images of Thoreau's Cape Cod are regenerative in their return to the fundamental layers of life. To Thoreau, describing nature means describing life in its transitions. The scenes he describes and the images he presents add one figure on top of another. By this means he struggles to grip with the processes of life. Thoreau's purpose of using grotesque images is to see the phases of life as a whole in the context of life. In his grotesque images, death and renewal are inseparable in life as a whole.