Walden

Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854) by Henry David Thoreau

Study Guide (1992) for Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Written by David Barber, Associate Professor of English, University of Idaho About the time that Huck Finn and Jim were floating down the Mississippi in

search of a home, Henry David Thoreau build a cabin on the shore of a small explains its motives.

lake and lived there alone for two years. Walden describes the experiment and

vulnerable to criticism by those who dislike his character, ideas, or life-style. He and woods-burner, accused of "sneaking" back from his cabin at Walden Pond poll-tax, because some one paid the tax. However valid or invalid these charges (For example, in a Chicago Tribune) column in late 1991, Jon Margolis writes that "Thoreau was a snob, a fraud, something of a fool and a pernicious influence on the life of the mind in America." But Margolis also admits that can be anything but awed by the way he did it.") has been called hypocrite, egomaniac, sponger, snob, fraud, misogynist, prig,

contest. His faults and the thorny aspects of his personality leave him

Thoreau is certainly a "character," the kind that will never win a popularity

to Concord for dinner, and condemned for leaving jail, when protesting the

are, the main point is that people still care about Thoreau and his influence.

"Thoreau was a decent, educated, hard-working person, and no one who writes

Walden is a difficult book. It is full of outrageous exaggerations and teasing twists and turns excessively and uses too many of them, in paragraphs that

paradoxes. Thoreau loves words, uses them beautifully, but at times loves their threaten never to end. His philosophical reflections often begin clearly but end in unresolved complexity; and a little later he may turn around and express an opposing view. ("A foolish consistency," wrote his friend and mentor Emerson, "is the hobgoblin of little minds.") Thoreau's descriptions of ponds and woods, too long and lose some of their effect. beans and woodchucks, ice and rain, winter and spring, are vivid but may go on

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Add to these qualities Thoreau's controversial opinions and ways of living, and it's easy to see why readers so often get furious with him. He challenges our ways of living, so of course he makes us mad. But because he confronts us at God—people keep reading him. We don't ignore him because he highlights 1862.

the core of our lives—our goals and our relations to others, society, nature, and certain areas of our lives whose importance has only increased since he died in

A lifelong bachelor, Thoreau is the father, or at least uncle, of several modern other ways). These are some major areas of Thoreau's importance:

ways of thinking and acting (and therefore, of course, the fierce enemy of some

found American applications in the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. In his circulated which quoted parts of his famous essay, "Civil Disobedience" Mexican war; Thoreau's protest of 1848 applied aptly in 1968.

Civil rights: Thoreau's ideas influenced Mahatma Ghandi in India and

own time he supported John Brown. During the Vietnam War a pamphlet (or "Resistance to Civil Government"), substituting the Vietnamese for the Conservation and concern for the environment: Thoreau's amazing

sensitivity to the details of physical world and to the whole world as a it. No one could observe the natural world more perceptively than the world:), and he knew that we could destroy it.

living organism has taught many how to observe nature and how to value Thoreau. He knew that we need nature ("In wildness is the preservation of

Social and political criticism: In his critique of the social and economic values which doom so many to "lives of quiet desperation," and of the silly, destructive ways in which society acts, Thoreau is a major critic of

American life. He tries to get us to reconsider the nature of democracy, and values.

the effects of technological change, and, most of all, our communal goals

ability to find a meaningful life, if only one looks independently and self-

The philosophy of individualism: Thoreau's firm faith in the individual's

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reliantly, has inspired generations. Thoreau is nowhere so "American" as when he affirms the power and autonomy of the single person.

up—and for Thoreau, being fully awake is what living means. E. B. White made the ultimate comment on Walden, as far as 20th-century readers are concerned. Walden, he wrote, "gains a little each year as the world loses

At its worst (or ours) Walden may put us to sleep, but at its best it wakes us

individuals in it, might recover some of that lost ground. The vehicle of he could see the world more clearly.

ground." The reason, of course, is that Walden tells us how the world, or

Thoreau's advice is his account of living at the lake, from which vantage point

He chose a place away from neighbors but within a couple of miles of his intent; he relished visitors (up to a point) and often walked into town. He wanted to test his idea that the key to living a full life was to simplify it.

hometown, Concord, Massachusetts. Becoming a hermit was clearly not his

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the 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.

(Evidently it worked, for Thoreau's state of mind through the months of his accepting.) dying, fifteen years after he left Walden, was peaceful, contented, and

Walden is also a book about America. Thoreau wrote about himself because, as he said, he knew no one else so well; but he wrote to his countrymen, about their way of living and "whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is." It was the Fourth of July. The experiment itself was not just a commentary on kind of Declaration of Independence.

probably not accidental, though he says it was, that he moved into his cabin on American life; it was a new version of the whole American experiment, a new

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two-week period, here is a plan for reading some of Walden. The capitalized chapters are the ones on which the group discussion may wish to focus.

Suggested Chapters: Because reading all of Walden might be too much in a

"ECONOMY" By far the longest (and most difficult) section in the book, this

chapter is essential to read, despite its difficulty, because it explains Thoreau's basic beliefs about how to live, and because he tells us the story of how he got started at Walden.

"WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR" Thoreau describes the setting of his cabin; then he reflects on the ideas of possession, work, wakeful living, and reality, all in relation to the purpose of his experiment.

"READING" This chapter begins by defending the classics, starting with Homer, and ends with an appeal for the American village to take on the role of patron of the arts and liberal education.

"SOUNDS" Reading is an indoor activity; this chapter balances it by pointing outside the cabin to the sounds of nature and of humans: the railroad, for commerce. instance, which leads Thoreau to some unexpectedly positive comments about

"SOLITUDE" This chapter discusses the delights of being alone; solitude, Thoreau says, is his best companion.

"VISITORS" Nevertheless, Thoreau was no hermit, kept three chairs in his cabin, and claims to have had together under his roof "25 or 30 souls, with their bodies." This chapter discusses notable visitors.

"THE BEAN-FIELD" This delightful chapter is a discourse on farming, on using the land, on hearing the town's silly military displays from afar (with special reference to the Mexican War); but mainly it is about beans, their cultivation "You don't know beans!).

and care. "I was determined to know beans," he says (reversing the expression:

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"THE VILLAGE" This short chapter makes it clear that Thoreau went often into Concord, though he is equally as interested in how dark it could be coming home at night. He also refers to his famous night in jail, offering a brief

explanation of why he refused to pay the poll-tax and of why he did not make a more extensive protest. (But to get a full discussion of this well known event Civil Government.”) you have to read the essay "Civil Disobedience," also known as "Resistance to

order to emphasize the pond's symbolic centrality in the book. In any case, you can see why he chose to live there from his loving description of Walden and other lakes in the area. How much more beautiful than our lives . . . are they!" "BAKER FARM" This chapter meditates on the immigrant family who live at Baker farm, who came to America, Thoreau believes, because they wanted the coffee, tea, and meat that they could get here. Thoreau fells, however, that "the only life as may enable you to do without these (coffee, tea, and meat)." true America is that country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of

"THE PONDS" Thoreau may have placed this chapter in the middle of Walden in

"HIGHER LAWS" You will enjoy, perhaps even agree with, Thoreau's comments on fishing, hunting, vegetarianism, and eating generally. He is exploring a tension between "an animal in us" and a "higher nature" which is pure and therefore at odds with "this slimy beastly life, eating and drinking."

"BRUTE NEIGHBORS" Forget the "hermit/poet" dialogue and concentrate on the in this chapter, and the descriptions themselves have the purity and clarity of crystal.

glorious descriptions of animals. Thoreau is not worried about slime vs. purity

"HOUSE WARMING" You will like this chapter if you are interested in Thoreau's

cabin and how he got it ready for the winter. Though he spent two years at the in late autumn and into winter.

lake, Thoreau presents his experience as the cycle of a single year. We are now

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"FORMER INHABITANTS; AND WINTER VISITORS" The title explains the chapter well enough.

"WINTER ANIMALS" This chapter describes Thoreau's "brute neighbors" almost as memorably as the chapter "Brute Neighbors."

"THE POND IN WINTER" Thoreau describes the winter qualities of Walden and its ice. He also develops his concern about the bottom of Walden. Walden's bottom seems to symbolize for Thoreau the hard foundation of reality, the a symbolic bottom, even though it was "long lost" before he fathomed it.

ultimate truth about life. Most readers agree that Thoreau believes there is such

"SPRING" Thoreau exults: "Walden was dead and is alive again." This chapter

offers us much to think about, notably in the section where he meditates on

"the forms which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a

deep cut on the railroad." His observations of the thawing sand lead him to the Nature." It is a striking example of Thoreau's faith in universal wholeness.

conclusion that "this one hillside illustrated the principle of all the operations of

"CONCLUSION" Thoreau sums up: he tells why he left the lake and what he

gained from his experience there. He also has much to say about the individual and society (this chapter contains the famous "different drummer: statement), one of his "wake up!" pitches, of "the strong and beautiful bug." We too can "Only that day dawns to which we are awake." about living well, about finding the truth. And he ends with the wonderful story, enjoy a "beautiful and winged life." But we have to be alert to the possibilities:

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For Further Reading
By Henry David Thoreau (Dates are original publication date.)

Journal (1906, 1992) The Maine Woods (1864)

"Resistance to Civil Government" (1849) "Life Without Principle" (1863) "Slavery in Massachusetts" (1854) About Henry David Thoreau (Cambridge, 1986)

Lawrence Buell, New England Literary Culture: From Revolution to Renaissance Harding, Walter. The Days of Henry Thoreau: A Biography (Knopf, 1965) Myerson, Joel, ed., Critical Essays on Thoreau's "Walden" (Hall, 1988) Illinois, 1958) Paul, Sherman. The Shores of America: Thoreau's Inward Exploration (Univ. of

The Writings of Henry David Thoreau (Princeton, 1971-; ongoing project, the standard edition of Thoreau; volumes completed to date include Walden and most of the journals)

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Discussion Questions
1. What "American characters" -- in both the individual and the cultural senses -- do you find in Walden?

2. Consider what you knew and thought about Thoreau and his Walden images relating to Thoreau and Walden?

experiment before starting your reading. What were your ideas, attitudes, and

3. And now, after your reading, how have these ideas, attitudes, and images changed?

4. What is Thoreau saying, in "Economy," about the "necessaries" of life, those things that we need to have? What are those necessary things? And what happens after one gets them? What is the next step?

5. Thoreau is a very funny writer, although you have to be alert to his humor to get it. He loves word play, such as using the same word in different contexts, you are committed to a farm or to the county jail". He also loves humorous which change the meaning. (For example, "It makes but little difference whether comparisons, of animals to people, for example, or of his life to the lives of

others. Thoreau enjoys making fun of people and social groups; nor does he spare himself. Of course, there is always a serious point lurking somewhere also a satire on the business goals that drive most Americans. His playful attacks of the Mexican war. What other examples of word play, satire, humorous description, or other forms of humor, do you find? description in "The Bean-Field" of the sounds of the Concord guns, sharp nearby; for example, his playful account of his "enterprises" and "business" is

6. What do you think of Thoreau's economics? For one thing, he regrets the and sense of life's wholeness. For another, he says, "the cost of thing is the

division of labor which makes specialists of people and narrows their abilities amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it." Acting

on this principle, he decides that it is cheaper for him to walk 30 miles than to

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spend the time to earn the money to buy a ticket to take the train the same applicable in our time?

distance. He also considers that buying a house is a waste. Is such thinking

7. Do you think Thoreau misrepresents his situation at Walden Pond by not Emerson's land?

mentioning that he built his cabin, with Ralph Waldo Emerson's permission, on

8. Why does Thoreau make so much of the images of dawn, sunrise, and morning? What attitudes do they carry?

9. There are many, many passages that we could profitably examine in detail, though we might not agree on what they mean. One such rather notorious passage occurs at the end of "Spring" Thoreau's reflections on a dead horse. with him?

What do you make of this passage? What is Thoreau trying to say? Do you agree

10. Find a similar passage of your own, and interesting one, preferably group interpret it the same way you do.

controversial or unclear to you. Find out if the other members of the discussion

11. Imagine that you met Henry Thoreau some time after the publication of

Walden. What would you want to ask him? What would you want to tell him? If you want, bring him into the 21st century and tell him how the world has and has not changed since his time.

12. In your own words, how does Thoreau explain his reasons for going to think it was successful enough. Do you agree?

Walden, and for leaving it? How does he justify his experiment? He seems to

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