# The Wild Apple explained — Essays

> Chapter companion for Essays by Henry David Thoreau.

## What happens

Thoreau celebrates the wild, ungrafted apple trees that grow naturally in rocky, untended soils, contrasting them with cultivated orchards. He reflects on their independence, resilience, and the natural bounty they provide, drawing parallels to human self-reliance and the migration of species to the New World.

## Themes in this chapter

### Nature and Simplicity

Thoreau extols the wild, natural growth of apple trees without human intervention, finding beauty and value in their untamed state.

### Individualism and Self-Reliance

The wild apple tree is portrayed as independent and self-sufficient, emulating human enterprise and thriving without care.

## Character check-ins

### Henry David Thoreau

Narrator and observer, expressing personal preference for wild apple trees over cultivated ones.

### Pliny

Referenced as Pliny, who classified apple trees as 'urbaniores'.

## Key lines

> I love better to go through the old orchards of ungrafted apple-trees, at whatever season of the year—so irregularly planted: sometimes two trees standing close together; and the rows so devious that you would think that they not only had grown while the owner was sleeping, but had been set out by him in a somnambulic state.

Thoreau prefers wandering through old orchards of ungrafted apple trees, whose irregular and haphazard arrangement suggests they grew or were planted as if in a dream.

_Highlights Thoreau's appreciation for natural, unplanned growth over orderly cultivation._

> The fruit was hard and green, but looked as if it would be palatable in the winter. Some was dangling on the twigs, but more half-buried in the wet leaves under the tree, or rolled far down the hill amid the rocks. The owner knows nothing of it.

The apples were tough and unripe but seemed edible later; many lay scattered under the tree or down the hill, unknown to any owner.

_Emphasizes the wild apple's overlooked abundance and resilience._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/essays_2_se/chapters/the-wild-apple
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/essays_2_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/essays_2_se/chapters