Chapter 12 Summary

"Brute Neighbors" offers a change of style and pace in its opening section. Thoreau presents a conversation between himself and his friend Ellery Channing. Thoreau is the "Hermit" whilst Channing is the "Poet." The rest of the chapter concerns the "neighbors," the animals that reside in the neighborhood of Walden Pond.

In the opening reported dialogue between Thoreau and Channing, the speaker, Thoreau, is curious about life in the world, which is what he calls the local community; the local village, the reader might assume, which has already been the subject of a chapter in Walden. He asks questions about the activities of others to himself; Channing, then arriving on the scene, describes the day. Again there is the suggestion of the two men going fishing for their dinner. The purpose of the dialogue is apparently to draw the reader further into...