Walden Economy Notes

Walden Economy Notes

1. Summary/Analysis

   • Introduced to the narrator, the first words allude to his stay at Walden Pond as he highlights an "experiment" conducted for 2 years.
     • We come to figure the narrators identity as Henry David Thoreau, one who craves the rural life, and the connection between himself and nature.
     • Expressing the opinions of those who surround him, his decision to conduct this experiment possibly could've been premeditated considering his ability to maintain himself in the relative wilderness
     • Thoreau shifts from an introduction to a means of expressing his philosophical desires, criticizing the men in his town for being straightfoward as they work the labors day-to-day.
       • "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" (Thoreau 5)
       • In a pursuit for a simplistic lifestyle, Thoreau calls to the conditions of primitive men, believing in the bare necessities to survive.
         • Food
         • Shleter
         • Clothing
         • Fuel
         • Thoreau recalls a day in March of 1845 where
       • Man should not be persuaded by the notions of others, but rather find their own calling
         • Luxuries blind one from viewing the true virtue life offers, Thoreau preaching his life guided by nature.
           • Any item worth more than the baseline serves as a distraction, the need of excess housing comes as a means to pad oneself.

2. Characters/Background

   • Henry David Thoreau
     • Author of Walden
       • Written as a recollection of his "experiment" to be free out in the wilderness
       • Notes concern of the individuals who care for him
     • Used to the employment landscape, he used to work various jobs.
       • Reporter
       • Inspector
       • Surveyor Of Highways
   • Walden Pond (Concord, Massachusetts
     • Log Cabin
       • Resided for 2 years and two months
     • Original stem came from wanting to conduct private business

3. Figurative Language

   • Attempting to prove his points, Thoreau constantly uses Idioms and exaggeration as his words brings both a literal and underlying meaning. Applied in his writings, he manages to promote a life of simplicity, taking jabs at the unnecessary lifestyles of the masses.
     • The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us. What pains we accordingly take, not only with our Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our beds, which are our night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to prepare this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow!. (Thoreau 15)
       • Idiom
       • Aims to demonize the "luxuries" of personal comfort, "robbing the nests and breasts of birds"
     • "I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both North and South. It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a divinity in man...but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion". (Thoreau 5)
       • Hyperbole: One's self opinion proves more deadly than the likes of a man in slavery