Maubhowmick111055 Ba5sem Walden (first published as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is an American book written by noted transcendentalist

Henry David Thoreau. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance.[2] First published in 1854, it details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. The book compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolize human development.By immersing himself in nature, Thoreau hoped to gain a more objective understanding of society through personal introspection. Simple living and self-sufficiency were Thoreau's other goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, a central theme of the American Romantic Period. As Thoreau made clear in his book, his cabin was not in wilderness but at the edge of town, about two miles (3 km) from his family home. Themes-The site of Thoreau's cabin marked by a cairn in 1908."Walden is a difficult book to read for three reasons: First, it was written by a gifted writer who uses surgically precise language, extended, allegorical metaphors, long and complex paragraphs and sentences, and vivid, detailed, and insightful descriptions. Thoreau does not hesitate to use metaphors, allusions, understatement, hyperbole, personification, irony, satire, metonymy, synecdoche, and oxymorons, and he can shift from a scientific to a transcendental point of view in mid-sentence. Second, its logic is based on a different understanding of life, quite contrary to what most people would call common sense. Ironically, this logic is based on what most people say they believe. Thoreau, recognizing this, fills Walden with sarcasm, paradoxes, and double entendres. He likes to tease, challenge, and even fool his readers. And third, quite often any words would be inadequate at expressing many of Thoreau's non-verbal insights into truth. Thoreau must use non-literal language to express these notions, and the reader must reach out to understand." Ken Kifer[9]Walden emphasizes the importance of solitude, contemplation, and closeness to nature in transcending the "desperate" existence that, he argues, is the lot of most people. The book is not a traditional autobiography, but combines autobiography with a social critique of contemporary Western culture's consumerist and materialist attitudes and its distance from and destruction of nature. That the book is not simply a criticism of society, but also an attempt to engage creatively with the better aspects of contemporary culture, is suggested both by Thoreau's proximity to Concord society and by his admiration for classical literature. There are signs of ambiguity, or an attempt to see an alternative side of something common. Some of the major themes that are present within the text are: Self Reliance: Thoreau constantly refuses to be in "need" of the companionship of others. Though he realizes its significance and importance, he thinks it unnecessary to always be in search for it. Self-reliance, to him, is economic and social and is a principle that in terms of financial and interpersonal relations is more valuable than anything. To Thoreau, self-reliance can be both spiritual as well as economic. Connection to transcendentalism and to Emerson's essay. Simplicity: simplicity seems to be Thoreau's model for life. IT is philosophical and necessity to him. Throughout the book, Thoreau constantly seeks to simplify his lifestyle: he patches his clothes rather than buy new ones, he minimizes his consumer activity, and relies on leisure time and on himself for everything. Progress: In a world where everyone and everything is eager to advance in terms of progress, Thoreau finds it stubborn and skeptical to think that any outward improvement of life can bring inner peace and contentment.The need for spiritual awakeningMan as part of natureNature and its reflection of human emotionsThe state as unjust and corruptOrigins and Publishing History-There has been much guessing as to why Thoreau went to the pond, E.B White stated on this note, Henry went forth to battle when he took to the woods, and Walden is the report of a man torn by two powerful and opposing drivesthe desire to enjoy the world and the urge to set the

Maubhowmick111055 Ba5sem world straight.[10] While Leo Marx noted that Thoreaus stay at Walden Pond was an experiment based on his teacher, Emerson's "method of nature" and that it was a report of an experiment in transcendental pastorialism."[11] Likewise others have assumed Thoreau's intentions during his time at Walden Pond was "to conduct an experiment: Could he survive, possibly even thrive, by stripping away all superfluous luxuries, living a plain, simple life in radically reduced conditions?"[12] He thought of it as an experiment in "home economics". Although Thoreau went to Walden to escape what he considered, "over-civilization", and in search of the "raw" and "savage delight" of the wilderness, he also spent considerable amounts of his time reading and writing.Thoreau spent nearly four times as long on the "Walden" manuscript as he actually spent at the cabin. Upon leaving Walden Pond and at Emersons request, Thoreau returned to Emersons house and spent the majority of his time paying debts. During those years Thoreau slowly edited and drafted what were originally 18 essays describing his experiment in basic living. After eight drafts over the course of ten years, "Walden" was published in 1854[12]After Walden's publication, Thoreau saw his time at Walden as nothing more than an experiment. He never took seriously "the idea that he could truly isolate himself from others."[13] Without resolution, Thoreau used "his retreat to the woods as a way of framing a reflection on both what ails men and women in their contemporary condition and what might provide relief."[14]ThemesThemes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.The Importance of Self-Reliance -Four years before Thoreau embarked on his Walden project, his great teacher and role model Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an enormously influential essay entitled Self-Reliance. It can be seen as a statement of the philosophical ideals that Thoreaus experiment is meant to put into practice. Certainly self-reliance is economic and social in Walden Pond: it is the principle that in matters of financial and interpersonal relations, independence is more valuable than neediness. Thus Thoreau dwells on the contentment of his solitude, on his finding entertainment in the laugh of the loon and the march of the ants rather than in balls, marketplaces, or salons. He does not disdain human companionship; in fact he values it highly when it comes on his own terms, as when his philosopher or poet friends come to call. He simply refuses to need human society. Similarly, in economic affairs he is almost obsessed with the idea that he can support himself through his own labor, producing more than he consumes, and working to produce a profit. Thoreau does not simply report on the results of his accounting, but gives us a detailed list of expenditures and income. How much money he spent on salt from 1845 to 1847 may seem trivial, but for him it is not. Rather it is proof that, when everything is added up, he is a giver rather than a taker in the economic game of life. As Emersons essay details, self-reliance can be spiritual as well as economiy, and Thoreau follows Emerson in exploring the higher dimensions of individualism. In Transcendentalist thought the self is the absolute center of reality; everything external is an emanation of the self that takes its reality from our inner selves. Self-reliance thus refers not just to paying ones own bills, but also more philosophically to the way the natural world and humankind rely on the self to exist. This duality explains the connection between Thoreau the accountant and Thoreau the poet, and shows why the man who is so interested in pinching pennies is the same man who exults lyrically over a partridge or a winter sky. They are both products of self-reliance, since the economizing that allows Thoreau to live on Walden Pond also allows him to feel one with nature, to feel as though it is part of his own soul. The Value of Simplicity -Simplicity is more than a mode of life for Thoreau; it is a philosophical ideal as well. In his Economy chapter, Thoreau asserts that a feeling of dissatisfaction with ones possessions can be resolved in two ways: one may acquire more, or reduce ones desires. Thoreau looks around at his fellow Concord residents and finds them taking the first path, devoting their energies to making mortgage payments and buying the latest fashions. He prefers to take the second path of radically minimizing his consumer activity. Thoreau patches his clothes instead of buying new ones and dispenses with all accessories he finds unnecessary. For Thoreau, anything more than what is useful is not just an extravagance, but a real impediment and disadvantage. He builds his own shack instead of getting a bank loan to buy one, and enjoys the leisure time that he can afford by renouncing larger expenditures. Ironically, he points out, those who pursue more impressive possessions

Maubhowmick111055 Ba5sem actually have fewer possessions than he does, since he owns his house outright, while theirs are technically held by mortgage companies. He argues that the simplification of ones lifestyle does not hinder such pleasures as owning ones residence, but on the contrary, facilitates them.Another irony of Thoreaus simplification campaign is that his literary style, while concise, is far from simple. It contains witticisms, double meanings, and puns that are not at all the kind of New England deadpan literalism that might pass for literary simplicity. Despite its minimalist message, Walden is an elevated text that would have been much more accessible to educated citydwellers than to the predominantly uneducated country-dwellers. The Illusion of Progress -Living in a culture fascinated by the idea of progress represented by technological, economic, and territorial advances, Thoreau is stubbornly skeptical of the idea that any outward improvement of life can bring the inner peace and contentment he craves. In an era of enormous capitalist expansion, Thoreau is doggedly anti-consumption, and in a time of pioneer migrations he lauds the pleasures of staying put. In a century notorious for its smugness toward all that preceded it, Thoreau points out the stifling conventionality and constraining labor conditions that made nineteenth-century progress possible. One clear illustration of Thoreaus resistance to progress is his criticism of the train, which throughout Europe and America was a symbol of the wonders and advantages of technological progress. Although he enjoys imagining the local Fitchburg train as a mythical roaring beast in the chapter entitled Sounds, he generally seems peeved by the encroachment of the railway upon the rustic calm of Walden Pond. Like Tolstoy in Russia, Thoreau in the United States dissents from his societys enthusiasm for this innovation in transportation, seeing it rather as a false idol of social progress. It moves people from one point to another faster, but Thoreau has little use for travel anyway, asking the reason for going off to count the cats in Zanzibar. It is far better for him to go vegetate in a little corner of the woods for two years than to commute from place to place unreflectively.Thoreau is skeptical, as well, of the change in popular mindset brought by train travel. Have not men improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was invented? he asks with scarcely concealed irony, as if punctuality were the greatest virtue progress can offer. People talk and think faster in the depot than they did earlier in stagecoach offices, but here again, speedy talk and quick thinking are hardly preferable to thoughtful speech and deep thinking. Trains, like all technological improvements give people an illusion of heightened freedom, but in fact represent a new servitude, since one must always be subservient to fixed train schedules and routes. For Thoreau, the train has given us a new illusion of a controlling destiny: We have constructed a fate, a new Atropos, that never turns aside. As the Greek goddess Atropos workedshe determined the length of human lives and could never be swayed (her name means unswerving)so too does the train chug along on its fixed path and make us believe that our lives must too.Motifs motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the texts major themes. The Seasonal Cycle -The narrative of Walden, which at first seems haphazard and unplanned, is actually quite consciously put together to mirror the cycle of the seasons. The compression of Thoreaus two actual years (1845 to 1847) into one narrative year shows how relatively unimportant the documentary or logbook aspect of his writing is. He cares less for the real calendar time taken up by his project than for the symbolic time he projects onto it. One full year, from springtime to springtime, echoes the Christian idea of rebirth, moving from one beginning to a new one. (We can imagine how very different Walden might be if it went from December to December, for example.) Thus each season inevitably carries with it not just its usual calendar attributes, but a spiritual resonance as well. The story begins in the spring of 1845, as Thoreau begins construction on his cabin. He moves in, fittingly and probably quite intentionally, on Independence Day, July 4making his symbolic declaration of independence from society, and drawing closer to the true sources of his being. The summer is a time of physical activity, as he narrates in great detail his various construction projects and domestic management solutions. He also begins his cultivation of the bean-fields, following the natural cycle of the seasons like any

Maubhowmick111055 Ba5sem farmer, but also echoing the biblical phrase from Ecclesiastes, a time to reap, a time to sow. It may be more than the actual beans he harvests, and his produce may be for the soul as well as for the marketplace. Winter is a time of reflection and inwardness, as he mostly communes with himself indoors and has only a few choice visitors. It is in winter that he undertakes the measuring of the pond, which becomes a symbol of plumbing his own spiritual depths in solitude. Then in spring come echoes of Judgment Day, with the crash of melting ice and the trumpeting of the geese; Thoreau feels all sins forgiven. The cycle of seasons is thus a cycle of moral and spiritual regeneration made possible by a communion with nature and with oneself. Poetry -The moral directness and hardheaded practical bookkeeping matters with which Thoreau inaugurates Walden do not prepare us for the lyrical outbursts that occur quite frequently and regularly in the work. Factual and detail-minded, Thoreau is capable of some extraordinary imaginary visions, which he intersperses within economic matters in a highly unexpected way. In his chapter The Bean-Field, for example, Thoreau tells us that he spent fifty-four cents on a hoe, and then soon after quotes a verse about wings spreading and closing in preparation for flight. The down-to-earth hoe and the winged flight of fancy are closely juxtaposed in a way typical of the whole work. Occasionally the lyricism is a quotation of other peoples poems, as when Thoreau quotes a Homeric epic in introducing the noble figure of Alex Therien. At other times, as in the beautiful Ponds chapter, Thoreau allows his prose to become lyrical, as when he describes the mystical blue ice of Walden Pond. The intermittent lyricism of Walden is more than just a pleasant decorative addition or stylistic curiosity. It delivers the powerful philosophical message that there is higher meaning and transcendent value in even the most humble stay in a simple hut by a pond. Hoeing beans, which some might consider the antithesis of poetry, is actually a deeply lyrical and meaningful experience when seen in the right way. Imaginary People -Thoreau mentions several actual people in Walden, but curiously, he also devotes considerable attention to describing nonexistent or imaginary people. At the beginning of the chapter Former Inhabitants, Thoreau frankly acknowledges that in his winter isolation he was forced to invent imaginary company for himself. This conjuring is the work of his imagination, but it is also historically accurate, since the people he conjures are based on memories of old-timers who remember earlier neighbors now long gone. Thoreaus imaginary companions are thus somewhere between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy. When Thoreau describes these former inhabitants in vivid detail, we can easily forget that they are now dead: they seem too real.Thoreau also manages to make actual people seem imaginary. He never uses proper names when referring to friends and associates in Walden, rendering them mythical. After Thoreau describes Alex Therien as a Homeric hero, we cannot help seeing him in a somewhat poetic and unreal way, despite all the realism of Thoreaus introduction. He doesnt name even his great spiritual teacher, Emerson, but obliquely calls him the Old Immortal. The culmination of this continual transformation of people into myths or ideas is Thoreaus expectation of the Visitor who never comes, which he borrows from the Vedas, a Hindu sacred text. This remark lets us see how spiritual all of Thoreaus imaginary people are. The real person, for him, is not the villager with a name, but rather the transcendent soul behind that external social persona.Symbols -Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.Walden Pond -The meanings of Walden Pond are various, and by the end of the work this small body of water comes to symbolize almost everything Thoreau holds dear spiritually, philosophically, and personally. Certainly it symbolizes the alternative to, and withdrawal from, social conventions and obligations. But it also symbolizes the vitality and tranquility of nature. A clue to the symbolic meaning of the pond lies in two of its aspects that fascinate Thoreau: its depth, rumored to be infinite, and its pure and reflective quality. Thoreau is so intrigued by the question of how deep Walden Pond is that he devises a new method of plumbing depths to measure it himself, finding it no more than a hundred feet deep. Wondering why people rumor that the pond is bottomless, Thoreau offers a spiritual explanation: humans need to believe in infinity. He suggests that the pond is not just a natural phenomenon, but also a metaphor for spiritual belief. When he later describes the pond reflecting heaven and making the swimmers body pure white,

Maubhowmick111055 Ba5sem we feel that Thoreau too is turning the water (as in the Christian sacrament of baptism by holy water) into a symbol of heavenly purity available to humankind on earth. When Thoreau concludes his chapter on The Ponds with the memorable line, Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth, we see him unwilling to subordinate earth to heaven. Thoreau finds heaven within himself, and it is symbolized by the pond, looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. By the end of the Ponds chapter, the water hardly seems like a physical part of the external landscape at all anymore; it has become one with the heavenly soul of humankind. Animals -As Thoreaus chief companions after he moves to Walden Pond, animals inevitably symbolize his retreat from human society and closer intimacy with the natural world. Thoreau devotes much attention in his narrative to the behavior patterns of woodchucks, partridges, loons, and mice, among others. Yet his animal writing does not sound like the notes of a naturalist; there is nothing truly scientific or zoological in Walden, for Thoreau personalizes nature too much. He does not record animals neutrally, but instead emphasizes their human characteristics, turning them into short vignettes of human behavior somewhat in the fashion of Aesops fables. For example, Thoreaus observation of the partridge and its young walking along his windowsill elicits a meditation on motherhood and the maternal urge to protect ones offspring. Similarly, when Thoreau watches two armies of ants wage war with all the ferocity and carnage of a human battle, Thoreaus attention is not that of an entomologist describing their behavior objectively, but rather that of a philosopher thinking about the universal urge to destroy. The resemblance between animals and humans also works in the other direction, as when Thoreau describes the townsmen he sees on a trip to Concord as resembling prairie dogs. Ironically, the humans Thoreau describes often seem more brutish (like the authorities who imprison him in Concord) than the actual brutes in the woods do. Furthermore, Thoreaus intimacy with animals in Walden shows that solitude for him is not really, and not meant to be, total isolation. His very personal relationship with animals demonstrates that in his solitary stay at the pond, he is making more connections, not fewer, with other beings around him. Ice -Since ice is the only product of Walden Pond that is useful, it becomes a symbol of the social use and social importance of nature, and of the exploitation of natural resources. Thoreaus fascination with the ice industry is acute. He describes in great detail the Irish icemen who arrive from Cambridge in the winter of 1846 to cut, block, and haul away 10,000 tons of ice for use in city homes and fancy hotels. The ice-cutters are the only group of people ever said to arrive at Walden Pond en masse, and so they inevitably represent society in miniature, with all the calculating exploitations and injustices that Thoreau sees in the world at large. Consequently, the labor of the icemen on Walden becomes a symbolic microcosm of the confrontation of society and nature. At first glance it would appear that society gets the upper hand, as the frozen pond is chopped up, disfigured, and robbed of ten thousand tons of its contents. But nature triumphs in the end, since less than twenty-five percent of the ice ever reaches its destination, the rest melting and evaporating en routeand making its way back to Walden Pond. With this analysis, Thoreau suggests that humankinds efforts to exploit nature are in vain, since nature regenerates itself on a far grander scale than humans could ever hope to affect, much less threaten. The icemens exploitation of Walden contrasts sharply with Thoreaus less economic, more poetical use of it. In describing the rare mystical blue of Waldens water when frozen, he makes ice into a lyrical subject rather than a commodity, and makes us reflect on the question of the value, both market and spiritual, of nature in general. Major ThemesThe slumbering of mankind and need for spiritual awakening-To Thoreau, the trappings of nineteenth century existence the cycle of tiring work to support property ownership forced the common man to live as if he were sleep-walking. Thoreau uses the idea of slumbering as a metaphor for mankind's propensity to live by routine, without considering the greater questions and meaning of existence. Therefore, Thoreau urges his readers to seek a spiritual awakening. He emphasizes the perspective he gains by awakening early and experiencing nature while others in the village are still sleeping and using the metaphor of awakening in the morning to demonstrate the difference between himself and his Concord townsmen. The spiritual awakening of Thoreau and his readers is reflected both in the times of day and in the seasons of the year, with the greatest self-awareness and spiritual discoveries occurring in the morning and spring.

Maubhowmick111055 Ba5sem Man as part of nature-Living in a society in which man in the form of railroads, factories, and other technical innovations had begun to tame and control nature, Thoreau counters the separation of man from society by conceiving of man as a part of nature. Through his life in the woods, living for the most part off the fruits of the land and deriving intellectual stimulation from plants and animals, Thoreau demonstrates that man can live successfully in the midst of nature. The animals give him companionship and accept him as a familiar part of their environment. Even nature itself is empathetic to him, for example waiting to blow its coldest winds after Thoreau builds his chimney and plasters his walls. The assertion that man is part of nature promotes Thoreau's suggestion that most people who be more intellectually fulfilled and spiritually aware away from the smothering cocoons of city and village life. The destructive force of industrial progress-Thoreau began his life at Walden, when the Industrial Revolution was in full force. Its impact upon life is best illustrated in Walden by the locomotive which passes daily by the pond, its whistles and rumbling contrasting with the natural sounds of the birds. Village life now runs at a faster pace, "railroad time," leaving even less time for the contemplation of self and nature which Thoreau desires. Such "progress" has a negative impact upon people's lives and upon the environment, the purity of which it pollutes and destroys. The animal/spiritual dialectical struggle within man-Within himself and all men, Thoreau perceives two struggling natures one a wild, animal nature and the other a spiritual nature. It is this animal nature which occasions the impulse to catch and deliver a woodchuck raw and which he detects in its fullest form in the French-Canadian woodcutter. However, he seeks in himself and urges in his reader the perfection of the spiritual nature, through avoidance of meat and animalistic desires, and represents the struggle in himself through the imagined conversation between the Hermit (spiritual) and Poet (animal). Only within a few examples from the animal kingdom noble battling ants, the winged cat, and the loon can Thoreau see the animal and spiritual coexist peacefully. Nature as reflection of human emotions-More than once, Thoreau describes Walden Pond as a mirror. Throughout the novel, the weather continually reflects his emotional state. His period of melancholy and doubt occurs during the winter when the pond is frozen and nature is silenced, and his joy and exultation is reflected in the thawing of the lake and growth of new life in the spring. The daily and seasonal variations in the pond and surrounding environment parallel the variety of and changes in Thoreau's intellectual musings. The idea of nature reflecting human emotion supports Thoreau's belief in man as a part of, rather than separate from or above, nature. Spiritual rebirth reflected in nature and the seasons-Thoreau employs the repeated metaphor of rebirth throughout his book, as a means of convincing his readers to seek new perspective on themselves and the world. The cycle of the seasons, with the rebirth of the winter-dormant pond, animals, and plants in the spring, functions as the promise of an eventual spiritual rebirth in humans. Likewise, Thoreau's description of the hunter boy who grows to be a naturalist as a man and his metaphor of awakening from the slumber of life evince his hope and belief in the progress of human beings to a newer, greater understanding of themselves. He ends the book with a final metaphor of rebirth, describing the bug which hatched out of a wooden table after decades, in the hope that some day, even if not immediately such a rebirth will occur within human society. Discovery of the essential through a life of simplicity-In his first chapter, "Economy," Thoreau says that he went to the woods to describe what is truly necessary in life. Later, he says that he "went to the woods to live deliberately" so that when he died he would not find that he had never really lived. By ridding himself of the luxuries of society a big house, coffee, meat, even salt and yeast Thoreau discovers through his own "economy"

Maubhowmick111055 Ba5sem what is really necessary to live a fulfilled life. His discovery of the relatively small amount of work needed to live in relative comfort leads him to attempt to convince his reader as well as John Field to similarly simplify their own lives and thus live more happily. For Thoreau, this is a happy discovery, for he comes to believe that one could be as happy in almshouse, with the same afternoon sun coming in the window as does in a rich person's house, as he would anywhere else. To his reader, Thoreau insists, "Simplicity! Simplicity! Simplicity!" Exploring the interior of oneself-Thoreau omitted the subtitle of Walden, or Life in the Woods in its subsequent publications because he feared his readers would take it too literally. Though he was enthralled by the nature around him, Thoreau also went to the woods to consider himself. In his final chapter, he urges his reader, who may not be able to voyage to Africa or India, to instead explore within himself. He believes that there are uncharted depths within such as will continue to surprise and occupy anyone who explores within, but he perceives that such self-exploration is rare. He uses his own experience at Walden as an example for his reader and urges not social change but change on the level of the individual. The Transcendentalist conception of nature as the embodiment of the divine- A follower of the Concord school of Transcendentalism and a good friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau expressed and clarified his own personal understanding of Transcendentalism in Walden. For him, the divine is most sublimely expressed in nature. He draws upon various Christian conceptions of the divine, as well as those from Eastern religions with which he is familiar, and recontextualizes them to create new meaning. For him, the role of God as creator of all of nature is most inspirational, and through this understanding, he expresses the Transcendentalist belief in existence of a spark of divinity in all men. The state as unjust and corrupt controller of men's thoughts and actions-In sentiments that would be more fully expressed in his essay "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau recounts in Walden the story of his imprisonment in jail for not paying taxes to a government that supports slavery. Elsewhere in the book, as when aids a fugitive slave on his journey to Canada, Thoreau demonstrates his opposition to slavery and disgust with the Fugitive Slave Law. He sees the state and its institutions as corrupt and insidious controllers of men, even when they try to escape it, as he does by living in the woods. On a more basic level, he sees the gossip of townspeople and the constant, artificial interactions demanded by village life as distracting from concent

Walden Theme of Isolation-There's a big difference being lonely and being alone in Walden. Thoreau believes that the vast majority of people out there feel terribly lonely, even in the midst of crowded cities. Paradoxically, we are most alone in a crowd because we lose the company of, well, ourselves, which is what otherwise makes us unique. Without a sense of ourselves, we can't form authentic attachments with others. We can't be good friends. We just become part of the miserable herd. This is probably something we can all relate to: you have to love yourself in order to love others, right? Thoreau's life alone by Walden Pond is an attempt to recover a more authentic sense of who he is. He's alone, an independent spirit, but he's no hermit. Walden isn't a lonely book. It's filled with characters, and more than a few conversations end in robust laughter with good company. What's important, though, is that with a strong sense of self, Thoreau is able to be a part of that company.ration on the true essentials of life. Walden Themes

Walden Theme of Man and the Natural World-Thanks to Walden, Thoreau is known as one of the first environmentalists. How did he get this title? Well, he interpreted nature in a way that hadn't been done before. For Thoreau, nature isn't just a mirror to man's soul, as it was for the Romantics, nor is it celebrated within the confines of a well-ordered landscape or farm, as it is in the pastoral tradition. Thoreau wants wild nature, nature untouched by human hands. As is demonstrated simply through his presence as an observer, this untouched-byhuman-hands thing may not be possible, but, hey, a guy wants what he wants. Thoreau represents this wild vision

Maubhowmick111055 Ba5sem of nature through various lenses first, with a naturalist's eye for the differences between species, and for the changes in distinctive habitats as they evolve over the seasons. Second, he represents it as a historian, capturing the way that humans have altered the landscape. This includes his own attempts at farming, which is in tension with his respect for native plants. In the end, the nature Thoreau describes is only about a mile away from the center of town, and not in some far-off wilderness. But so what? Thoreau wants to remind us that nature is all around us, and there to inspire us to be better than we are. Chapter One "Economy"Summary:Thoreau opens his book by stating that it was written while he lived alone in the woods, in a house he built himself, on the shore of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. The book is a response to questions his townsmen have asked about his life at Walden, and as such, will focus on Thoreau himself and his experiences. Having seen other young men who have inherited farms enslaved and made a machine by the obligations of property, Thoreau sought to escape their plight through his life at Walden. He wanted to discover "what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life." The narrator disputes the wisdom of old people, most of whom have not truly "tried life," and the value of tradition. A life lived doing what most consider "good" would in his eyes be wasted. Living "primitive or frontier life" will allow him to discover what he calls "necessary of life" for humans, food, shelter, clothing, and fuel, the latter three which he argues are not fundamental necessities, because the sun can provide warmth enough in some climates. Riches and possessions are responsible for the degeneration of the human spirit, and Thoreau addresses his words about their destructive power specifically to the discontented "mass of men" who complain of their lots in life. Thoreau then recounts the cherished enterprises of his life, focusing on his joy in anticipating "Nature herself!" while working in various odd jobs out of doors. He compares his experience, realizing that the town would not vote him an allowance for his contributions to that of an Indian, who offered baskets he had woven for sale to a local lawyer and found that he had not made it worth the man's while to buy from him. Therefore, Thoreau decided to go immediately to Walden Pond, without saving money first, to reflect privately without outside distraction. In order to do so, he found his strict business habits, which require personal oversight of every detail no matter what the business, to be indispensable. Eschewing public preoccupation with fashionable clothing, which he considers to be "false skin," Thoreau expresses his surprise that something as noble as patched clothing should be so publicly abhorred and notes his tailoress's surprise when he asked for a suit of plain and simple clothing. He finds this ridiculous when he considers fickle public propensity's to laugh at old fashions and devotedly seek new fashions, and expresses his belief that the factory system is only a way to make corporations rich and not to "well and honestly" clothe people. Shelter has become a "necessary of life," though it has not always been; Thoreau reflects on examples of seemingly instinctual seeking of shelter, as by children entering caves and Indians building wigwams. In considering building a house that would not become an elaborate trap for him, Thoreau took inspiration from a six foot by three foot box he saw by the railroad, in which a man could sleep comfortably and compares it to an $800 house in town for which an unmarried laborer would have to save for ten to fifteen years to purchase. Most farmers in his town have inherited their farms and mortgages that go with them and are thus trapped in their slaving to pay for their houses. Others are "needlessly poor" because they compare their homes to those of rich people rather than to what is necessary. Comparing the rich to pharaohs who spent their lives building their tombs, Thoreau wishes people could live with the simplicity of the Indians in their wigwams or the early American settlers who built dugouts in hillsides. In March 1845, Thoreau himself bought an axe and went to the woods near Walden Pond to cut down pines for timber. In these "pleasant spring days," as the ice of the pond melted and birds sang, he continued cutting wood for the house he would build. He compares a half-frozen snake he saw to men who remain in their "primitive and low condition" because they haven't been aroused by spring to rise to a "higher and more ethereal life." He becomes a friend of the pines, eating his bread-and-butter lunch in pitch-coated hands, while reading the newspaper at noon. By mid-April, he has framed his house. For $4.25, he has also purchased the shanty of James Collins, an Irish laborer, for boards which he transports to his hillside, in which he digs a cellar. In early May, a

Maubhowmick111055 Ba5sem few friends help him raise his house, and after that, he boarded and roofed it. He moved in on the fourth of July, built the chimney in the fall, baking his bread on an open fire outside before then. Thoreau suggests that if men built their own homes, as birds build their own nests, "the poetic faculty would be universally developed." The profession of architect he finds to be an unnecessary division of labor, for it is natural for a man to build his own house and allows him to think for himself. The appearance of a man's house would mean something if he made it himself and put his spirit in it; without his spirit, it is only a coffin. By winter, Thoreau had a "tightly shinged and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a large window on each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and a brick fire-place opposite," all for a cost that totals $28.12 _ -a lifelong dwelling, Thoreau boasts, in an era when a man would pay $25 to $100 for rent and less than the cost of a student's room at Cambridge College ($30 a year). Students would have more real wisdom if they built their own houses and tried the experiment of living rather than studying it from afar. Thoreau remarks on his own surprise at realizing he had studied navigation in college when he would have learned more if he had gone out once in the harbor. Likewise, students in college are taught political economy rather than the economy of living and thus put their fathers in debt. "Modern improvements," Thoreau says, are illusions. A telegraph across the Atlantic would only aid in the transmission of gossip. A railroad around the world "is equivalent to grading the surface of the planet." These improvements are only comparatively good; it would have been better to dig in the dirt. Before finishing his house, Thoreau planted two and half acres with beans, potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips. From the eleven acres he had purchased, Thoreau used deadwood from the woods, driftwood from the pond, and stumps from his vegetable patch for fuel. After paying for a team and a man to help plow the field, Thoreau ended up making $8.71 _ by selling those vegetables he didn't eat himself. The next year, he spaded only a third of an acre and realized if he grew only what he would eat, he could get by spending odd hours on it without needing oxen. Farmers, he believes, are less free than oxen. It is the oxen who have the biggest building in town, and Thoreau wishes there were as many halls for free worship or free speech. From doing odd jobs as a surveyor, carpenter, and day-laborer in Concord, Thoreau made $13.34 during the year, spent $8.74 on food over eight months to supplement what he grew, and with the costs of clothing, his house, farmland, and oil, spent $61.9 _. From day labor and selling his produce over two years, he made $36.78 total, leaving him with a balance of $25.21 _, which is about what he had to begin with. Through his experience of two years at Walden, Thoreau realized how simply and easily he could eat sometimes just boiling a wild herb called purslane for his dinner or some ears of corn. Even yeast for his bread, which he made of his own grain, and salt for seasoning he ultimately found to be unnecessary luxuries. Therefore, he could avoid "all trade and barter" except to get clothing and fuel. He offers his "experiment" eating only vegetables to those who believed it wouldn't be possible to survive that way. Thoreau made some of his own furniture and got the rest for free from people's attics all together he had a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. Excessive amounts of furniture, Thoreau also sees as a sort of trap, which should be burned as the Mucclasse Indians do annually with their possessions, instead of an opportunity for increasing possessions, as when a dead man's furniture is auctioned off to his neighbors. Thoreau worked for five years supporting himself by his own labor and found that he could support himself working only six weeks a year, giving himself plenty of time for study and thought. Previously, he had tried schoolteaching and trade but was unsuccessful. He values freedom above all else and found being a day laborer was the most independent occupation. He urges everyone to pursue his own particular way of living and not his parents' or neighbors'. Furthermore, he expresses his preference for the solitary life and his belief that most cooperation is superficial and only possible if a man has faith and does not depend on the ways of his community. In response to his townsmen who have criticized his solitary way of life for excluding philanthropy, Thoreau says he cannot forsake his calling to do "good" for society even if it meant he could save the universe from annihilation and says that he is suspicious of those who attempt to do "good" for him, for it is unnatural and often hypocritical. As for the poor, he believes their problem is not necessarily a lack of possessions since he has shown he can live without them

Maubhowmick111055 Ba5sem but a lack of "taste," in deciding how to spend the money they have. In conclusion, Thoreau wishes for some straightforward praise of the gift of life, rather than overblown praise and cursing of God and urges people not to endeavor be "overseers of the poor" but instead "worthies of the world." He ends by referencing the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik Sadi of Shiraz, who compares the cypress, the only tree called azad, or free, because it bears no fruit, to religious independents, who are always flourishing "if it affords nothing to give away, be an azad, or free man, like the cypress." Summary:-Thoreau believes that if men were more deliberate in choosing their pursuits, they would all become students and observers, because that is in their nature. When he reads an ancient philosopher, it is as if no time has passed, because truth is immortal. He finds Walden a better place to read than a university. During his first summer, he didn't have much time to read because he was busy planting his bean crop, but he kept the Iliad on the table and sometimes flipped through it. The thought of having time to read it in the future sustained him. He also read a few shallow travel books but afterwards felt ashamed of having done so. Even with the many translations of heroic and ancient epics, modern man is still placed at a great distance from the language of ancient times. Thoreau believes it is worth learning even a few words of an ancient language as a means of inspiration to transcend everyday life. The classics, "the noblest recorded thoughts of man," must be read deliberately. There is a difference between spoken language, "the mother tongue," which is brutish and unconsciously learned, and written language, which Thoreau calls "the father tongue," which must be learned with maturity. Even at the time in which the classics were written, many of the common men who spoke the language in which they were written would not have truly understood them. Now only a few scholars do. Just as the orator speaks to the few people in the mob who truly understand him, the writer speaks to the few people across time who do.Thoreau finds it fitting that Alexander the Great carried the Iliad with him in a "precious casket" because books are more universal than all other works of art. They can continually be translated and "breathed from all human lips" and are therefore "the work of art nearest to life itself." That is why they are kept in every cottage and are read by rich men striving for the "inaccessible circles of intellect and genius" when they retire. Only the great poets and not the majority of mankind can truly read and understand the works of the great poets. Most great books "have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically." Most people learn to read only for convenience. They feel satisfied with one great book, the Bible, and then waste their minds with "easy reading" mindless reading of novels and other unoriginal tales that Thoreau compares to a four-year-old with a copy of Cinderella. Most of the so-called educated men in Concord don't even read the classics of English literature. They are like a French-Canadian woodchopper Thoreau knows who reads a French paper to keep up his knowledge of French only these college-educated people read English papers to keep up their English. Most men don't even know that sacred scriptures of other traditions than the Judeo-Christian exist and so forego great insight and knowledge. Thoreau wishes to know more educated men than these and compares having a copy of Plato's Dialogues on the shelf but not reading it to having a neighbor he never sees or hears him speak. "We are underbred and low-bread and illiterate," he concludes. There are probably books that would speak directly to these people's condition and explain and reveal miracles to them if they would read them. The village of Concord provides well for the education of children but accept for a Lyceum that is open in the winter, does nothing for the education of adults. Thoreau wishes to seethe village become a university, with the elder inhabitants as the fellows. He wishes to see the village take up the role nobility did as patron of the arts in Europe but people see spending money on something far more important as farmers and trade as utopian. The town has spend seventeen thousand dollars on a townhouse, but Thoreau thinks that the hundred and twenty-five dollars spend on the Lyceum each winter to be its best investment. Nineteenth century New England has the ability to choose not to be provincial to skip the building of one bridge and force people to walk further to get around and have the ability to "throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us."