Walden is a series of journals written by the naturalist, survivalist, and

transcendentalist. Henry David Thoreau. This paper entails a brief look into his life in

context of the years he spent in writing Walden.

Walden Pond Henry David Thoreau

Edison Orellana

Henry David Thoreau was a naturalist, survivalist, and transcendentalist philosopher who is best

known for his book, Walden. He was born on July twelfth eighteen seventeen. His father was a pencil

maker named John Thoreau and his mother was named Cynthia Dunbar. His family played little role in

his industrious life. Thoreau lived a normal life up to around his college years. Thoreau attended college

at the prestigious school of Harvard where he studies things like law, business, or medicine. He received

his was eligible to receive his diploma however he did not want one because he refused to pay the five

dollar fee for it. After college he went into traditional jobs such as a lawyer or business man but

everything left him unsatisfied. This is when Thoreau’s mindset started changing to what people know

him for. After college he ventured off to try teaching on his own. He taught an elementary class for a

while. His teaching curriculum was very new age and revolutionary because he embraced new things

like nature walks and field trips which were not regarded as educational at the time. Education was in

the spirit of old traditional practices like reading writing and arithmetic and not much else. Most notably

in his life was his experiment of which Walden is rooted. He went out to the woods on July fourth

eighteen forty five in Concord to live by himself in his self-built cabin because he was fed up with

society. He desired to live simply and self-sufficiently and independently.

The first chapter is the longest chapter in the book and it contains mostly a long winded

summary of how he was able to go out into the woods and live by himself with very little capital. He

talks about what sort of things he didn’t like about society. One of the most memorable ideas Thoreau

talks about in this chapter is the home. “…houses are such unwieldy property that we are often

imprisoned rather than housed in them…” (Thoreau 19) Thoreau talks a lot about homes and the

concept of having a home. I like his points of view on homes. He says that once we start our lives and

begin to start making payments on houses or paying rent on apartments we get stuck in a vicious cycle

of transferring money. The purpose of man’s life becomes being a camel of money. The money comes

from the employer then to the employee then to the bank and then back into the pockets of the

employer. Thoreau encourages people to raise enough money as that is necessary to build themselves a

house which bypasses the need to buy one already made or pay rent to live in one. Once that is done,

one can begin living simply.

Simple living is another concept that is greatly attributed to Thoreau. He talks a lot about simple

living in the first chapter, economy. Thoreau teaches to live by what is necessary, not by what society

thinks is necessary. Consumerism enslaves society. People submit to making mortgage payments and

always buying the newest fashions. Thoreau, in his life of simply living, advises to be content with what

you have and value that and exploit it to its fullest. This is an important theme of this book; and it is a

theme that remains to prove itself to be very important in modern society despite all the changes in

society. The problem with possessions is that we never have enough of them. Getting rid of the desire is

a crucial step in becoming liberated from the chains of consumerism. Either one must accomplish in

gaining everything and be incredibly rich or shed the desire of it. I agree with Thoreau on this belief. I

think it is a very noble thing to do. Being able to live without desire is a probably a very envied ability.

In my quest for book reviews I came upon one that was rather negative of Thoreau’s book.

Scott Berkun believes that Walden is meandering, thick, and tangled. He says that Thoreau does not

practice good writing skills because he gets himself worked up in a rage where he just writes about

everything that he disagrees with in society. He believes that Thoreau merely rambles for most of his

book giving overly detailed explanations. He believes that Thoreau is such a passionate author that he

cannot stop himself from just writing his feelings without considering that there is going to be a person

that reads this book. To give some balance to the critics opinion, he did say that the book did have some

great themes.

Firstly, I believe that Thoreau's book is an excellent piece of literature. I think that it has

excellent themes, and Thoreau is a very eloquent writer. I thought that Thoreau's writing was a bit

wordy, however it was still able to capture my attention; but I believe this is only because I have such a

great interest in Thoreau and his philosophical ideas. Thoreau's style follows a pattern of a very specific

statement in the beginning, which leads to more general discussion about his ideas. He may begin the

chapter with the personal recollection of anecdotes and then later in the chapter will begin talking

about society as a whole. Throughout his chapter's he sprinkles in philosophical one-liners that pretty

much sum up his ideal of transcendentalism. These snippets of philosophical quotes serve as summary

as of Thoreau's ideas, thoughts, and feelings. He is very analytical of what people do and why they do it;

things like owning a house or having a job. Thoreau questions society from its roots. While the normal

man may debate his work ethic, Thoreau would question the very necessity to work it all.

That is a good question on its own: why does man need to work at all? Why is it necessary to

work for someone else to support ourselves? Why not cut the middleman and support ourselves

directly? This is one of the reasons that Thoreau decides to live on Walden Pond. "Still living, and dying,

and buried by this others brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today,

insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, why how many modes, only not state prison offenses;

lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into at atmosphere of

thin and thick wrists generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his

hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourself sick, that you may lay up

something against a sick day, something to be talked away an old chest, or in a stocking behind the

plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little."

(Thoreau seven) this quote perfectly illustrates what Thoreau is talking about and what I am talking

about. It seems as though man is always working towards his next paycheck is though that is his only

motivation. "... instead of studying how to make it worth millions while to buy my baskets, I studied

rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them." (Thoreau 12) What if the man that never got the first

paycheck? He wouldn't have another one to look forward to, and thus he would never working for

something other than himself. What attraction is it to get stuck in this cycle of paying and payment?

Perhaps it is not out of attraction, but desperation. "The mass of men lead their lives in quiet

desperation." (Thoreau seven) it is reasonable to assume that no one likes to be stuck in this cycle

especially if they do not particularly enjoyed the job that they work at. Many people find it hard to find

joy in their work. And the few that I've known that do enjoy their work, are civil servants. But what

about the countless other jobs that help to keep this country functioning? What about those people?

There are a number of pencil pusher jobs that need to get filled and people often feel them for such

lengthy amounts of time. Perhaps all those men do share something in common with Thoreau in the

sense that they are desperate for something more than what their life is giving them presently. We

commit ourselves to the uncertainties of tomorrow. Out of this disapproval of society Thoreau

formulates the experiment that he conducts at Walden Pond. "It would be some advantage to live a

primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what the gross

necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them." (Thoreau nine) From this quote

we can derive Thoreau's motivation for his experiment.

In another critique of Thoreau's book, the critic talked about Thoreau's unity with nature.

Returning to nature at the most meaningful sense is when man lives one with nature and experiences

everything that is associated with it. This calling of nature is a common misconception about Thoreau's

book, I believe. The role of nature in Walden is merely to act as a host for Thoreau’s adventurism. "I

went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front the only essential facts of life, and see

if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

(Thoreau 46) If Walden is the two-year experiment, then this is the hypothesis. Thoreau lived in the

woods not to synthesize with nature, but to live differently than other people of Concorde,

Massachusetts who are submitting to the things that Thoreau says slave society. Another aspect of this

book but I wanted to address is that there were people then and people still today I believe what

Thoreau did is selfish. They say it would have been better if he put his life to charity rather than selfish

causes of self preservation. "Probably I should not consciously and deliberately forsake my particular

calling to do the good of society demands of me, to save the universe from annihilation; and I believe

that a like but infinitely greater steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it." (Thoreau 37) What

I think he means in this quote is that there are more important things than doing good works of charity. I

think this is an excellent example of the hegemonic culture deciphering good and evil. The good thing to

do is to have a job and be educated and to have a house and the bad thing is to be a hermit and live

selfishly. Thoreau rejects the hegemonic culture, and instead substitutes his own belief system which is

not selfish but self-sustaining; self-reliant. "There are 1000 hacking at the branches of evil to one who is

striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the

meeting is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve."

(Thoreau 39) At what cost of doing good charity does man realize that what he is doing doesn't make

him happy? What Thoreau is saying here is that when we work to help someone else we are not curing

the other persons angst, but we are transferring from their shoulders to ours. Our work is their pleasure

and our depression.

The third critique that I read was a synthesis of the two other critiques. The critic talked both

about Thoreau's anger and bitterness when he was writing and how it took away from the message of

the book but he also touched on nature. Specifically this critic talked about the importance of

observation. He mentions how Thoreau took great detail in describing the insects of Walden Pond in the

bubbles upon in the surrounding environment that he lived in for so long. He compares it to how people

know their daily schedule very well but their schedule is different from what Thoreau's was because it

involves things like TV schedules or work schedules which are all things that Thoreau never had to deal

with. But instead Thoreau knew the surrounding environment of Walden Pond. The pond is not the

point, nor is nature; the point is life. Journey Is the destination.

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Hughes, Chris. "Review: Walden by Henry David Thoreau." Readear. 17 Feb. 2007. Web. 17 Dec. 2010. <http://readear.blogspot.com/2007/02/review-walden-by-henry-david-thoreau.html>.

Lever, Roger. "Book Review: Walden by Henry D. Thoreau: Walden or Life in the Woods Documents Social Criticism and Dissent." Suite101.com: Online Magazine and Writers' Network. 9 Dec. 2008. Web. 17 Dec. 2010. <http://www.suite101.com/content/book-review-walden-by-henry-d-thoreau-a83050>.

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