The Transparent Eyeball

About this curriculum

This novel is part of an innovative philosophy curriculum that uses engaging stories to introduce students to important philosophical concepts. In this story, a teen named TJ begins having vivid dreams that take him back to the nineteenth century, where he meets Henry David Thoreau and learns about Transcendentalism. TJ soon discovers that his classmate Ivy is sharing the dream with him. Together they must solve a murder mystery, which requires them to learn the Transcendentalist views on slavery, women’s rights, and humans’ relationship to the natural world and to the idea of God. Through this process, TJ gains a new perspective on how he wants to live his life. Nobody understands TJ, so when he finds an abandoned cabin in the woods, it feels to him like a haven from society. But that night, TJ starts having unusually vivid dreams that take him back to the middle of the nineteenth century, where he learns about the American philosophical movement known as Transcendentalism and where he is introduced to a man living in an identical cabin, this one on the shore of Walden Pond: Henry David Thoreau…