Summary of Walden; or Life in the Woods by Henry Thoreau

Description

Henry David Thoreau may have escaped to the wilderness to write Walden; or Life in the Woods nearly two centuries ago, but it wouldn’t be hard to imagine his book sitting on a bestseller list next to Eat, Pray, Love or Under the Tuscan Sun. Writing during the early Industrial Revolution, just when the railroad had reached his hometown, he struggles with the purpose of life, the ever-quickening pace of work, the futility of materialism and the neglect of appreciating the beauty in the natural world. As canny today as it was in antebellum America, Thoreau’s book shows how far people have come and how little the human condition has changed over the decades.

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Sujets

• Classics
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: GetAbstract AG
• Date de parution: 25 novembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798887271088
• Langue: English

Extrait

Walden; or Life in the Woods
Henry David Thoreau•First edition: Boston 1854

Diary
Transcendentalism

Take-Aways Henry David Thoreau’s Walden; or Life in the Woods is one of the great classics of 19th-century American literature. On July 4, 1845, Thoreau moves into a self-built cabin at Walden Pond near his hometown to live the simple life, spurning the luxuries of civilized society. For two years, he grows crops on a small piece of land; observes plants and animals; and reflects on one’s purpose in life, divinity in nature and humans’ role on Earth. Thoreau rebelled against the status quo at a time when his native New England was rapidly industrializing and the United States was embarking on a massive territorial expansion. A follower of Transcendentalism, he thought that people enslaved themselves by seeking ever greater material gains. In Walden, he embarks on a journey to find universal truth in nature instead. Thoreau expresses his spiritual awakening through metaphors from the natural world: the pond, the bean field and the changing of seasons. Contrary to popular belief, he didn’t live the life of a hermit. In fact, he went to town for good company and dining on a regular basis. His account is full of contradictions, reflecting how a complex individual lives in complicated times. Over the years, he’s been unjustly cast as either a noble saint or an egotistical fraud. “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.”

What It’s About
The Simple Life
Henry David Thoreau may have escaped to the wilderness to write Walden; or Life in the Woods nearly two centuries ago, but it wouldn’t be hard to imagine his book sitting on a bestseller list next to Eat, Pray, Love or Under the Tuscan Sun. Writing during the early Industrial Revolution, just when the railroad had reached his hometown, he struggles with the purpose of life, the ever-quickening pace of work, the futility of materialism and the neglect of appreciating the beauty in the natural world. As canny today as it was in antebellum America, Thoreau’s book shows how far people have come and how little the human condition has changed over the decades.

Summary
Trapped by a Fear of the Future
Most people live dull and desperate lives. Day in and day out, they toil away, just to eke out a miserable existence as a reward for their hard work. They claim that endless labor will liberate them, while in fact their fear of the future and relentless anxiety about impoverishment enslaves them. They’re under the illusion they have the freedom of choice, but they are, in fact, subject to their own needs and desires.
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called ‘resignation’ is confirmed desperation.”
The experiences of other people don’t help: Their insights are far too limited, so reduced in scope to each individual’s life that they lack any relevance whatsoever to another person’s existence. Faced with this dismal reality, Henry David Thoreau decides to live in harmony with nature, in order to identify the real necessities in life.
Fulfilling Basic Needs
Before embarking on such an experiment, you have to prepare wisely and make sure you have the four necessities of life: food, shelter, clothing and fuel. Pragmatism is paramount, and you soon realize which garments are comfortable and suitable for the change of seasons; after all, nature doesn’t care about your looks or the social status you’re trying to maintain. For most people, it’s the other way around: They worry more about a broken seam than a broken leg. The same is true for the shelter they seek: More often than not, owning a house is for representational purposes – rather than keeping you out of wet and cold weather. Building or buying your own house has become a heavy burden for life: You take on debts and pay them off over several decades, only to make sure that you can keep a roof over your head. And while in most savage societies every man owns his house, however modest it may be, in the modern civilized world, about half the population is reduced to paying rent.