Writing of his one-night stay in a local jail after refusing to pay his taxes in protest of the government of the United States, Thoreau uses a simile that, ironically, compares imprisonment in jail to distant travel:
It was like travelling into a far country, such as I had never expected to behold, to lie there for one night. It seemed to me that I never had heard the town-clock strike before, nor the evening sounds of the village; for we slept with the windows open, which were inside the grating. It was to see my native village in the light of the middle ages, and our Concord was turned into a Rhine stream, and visions of knights and castles passed before me [...] It was a closer view of my native town. I was fairly inside of it. I never had seen its institutions before.
Imprisonment, he writes, is “like travelling into a far country,” one which he “had never expected to behold.” There is a pointed irony in Thoreau’s simile: imprisonment might be characterized specifically as a restriction on free movement, but here he imagines his brief stay in jail as a voyage across the world, one which introduces him to many novel sights and experiences. Though he was imprisoned in the town of Concord, Massachusetts, where he lived, he feels as though he experienced his town for the first time, noting, for example, the “town-clock strike” and the “evening sounds of the village” which he could hear through the open windows of the jail. He even compares his home town to a historically remote location such as medieval Germany, with “knights and castles.” Thoreau’s surprising simile suggests that jails and prisons are actually central to the social and political reality of the United States, and that those who have never spent a night in jail do not fully understand how their nation functions.
In his critique of the rich, Thoreau uses a series of paradoxes that suggest that those who are in possession of great wealth actually have less than the poor:
But the rich man [...] is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; and it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it. It puts to rest many questions which he would otherwise be taxed to answer; while the only new question which it puts is the hard but superfluous one, how to spend it. Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet. The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as what are called the “means” are increased.
Thoreau’s ironic language highlights the various paradoxes which are, for him, characteristic of the wealthy. “The rich man,” he writes, “is always sold to the institution that makes him rich.” Here, his language inverts the usual logic by which a wealthy businessman sells some product to the public, implying instead that it is the businessman who is for sale, a hired mercenary working on behalf of some company or institution. Next, he writes that “the more money, the less virtue,” an ironic reframing of the usual economic logic by which money is synonymous with value. In undercutting expected logic, Thoreau specifically employs situational irony.
Further, Thoreau claims that, rather than allowing a man to purchase commodities, money “comes between a man and his objects,” because it is the money rather than the man that truly purchases them. Finishing off this list of paradoxes and ironies, Thoreau argues that the more “means” a man possesses, the fewer “opportunities of living” he has. Ordinarily, one might assume that money increases an individual’s opportunities, but Thoreau insists instead that money limits an individual’s choices by tying them to responsibilities and institutions. In particular, those who have much to lose from revolution must remain loyal to the social institutions that guarantee their wealth, regardless of how unjust they are.
