Chapter 1: Economy

Chapter 1: Economy

1. Introduction

   • Lived alone when writing this novel
     • Setting: The Shore of Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts
       • Lived for two Years and two months
         • Thoreau is 30 years old during chapter 1
           • Has 10 Jobs
     • Is the narrator in the story, but shifts to his own first person right after
     • Is a man with so much wisdom he simply can not share it to the public
     • "I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtledove, and am still on their trail." (Thoreau 18 PDF)
     • Rambles too often, seemingly showing his mind

2. Life from Thoreau's eyes

   • Mainly rambling, but includes a bunch of farming topics, integrates it into life lessons
     • Enters more into the bashing/teaching phase. Almost like he is explaining to someone what life is
     • Mentions slavery in the North and South
   • Is very cheap
   • Mentions Egyptians a bunch
   • Talks about the efficiency of his living condition and how he learned from his mistakes while being successful

3. Life lessons and Power

   • Talks about the power of the mind on the individual. Transcendentalist mindset
     • "Public Opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate" (Thoreau 8 PDF).
     • Older people are also being ridiculed in this novel because he said they do not have any wisom compared to those who live in their time now
       • "We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us!" (Thoreau 12)
         • Uses examples from Sailors,Merchants, etc to justify his arrival in Walden Pond
         • Achieveent is measured that way
     • "To cooperate in the highest as well as the lowest sense, means to get our living together" (Thoreau 79).
   • We, as humans, deny change
     • Humans remain where they are because they are constantly in a lethargic state, waiting for something divine to wake them up and prefect them
       • "It appeared to me that for a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but If they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life" (Thoreau 46 PDF)
   • What you do on the Earth will not matter in heaven
   • People ask others to do things for them
     • Those who giv e their labor to other men recieve an unhealthy laziness in the world and learn nothing
       • " I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end" (Thoreau 56 PDF)
       • We are taught but we don't learn the subject
         • College is pretty usless and a waste of money, you learn more by just going out and doing the thing yourself
   • "Who bolsters you? Are you one of the ninety-seven who fail, or the three who succeed?" (Thoreau 42 PDF)
   • "Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants". (Thoreau 55 PDF)
     • "This spending of the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part" (Thoreau 59 PDF). (Thoreau on the leisures of retirement)
   • The more you have of something, the more poor you are

4. The Neccesities of Life

   • Mentions food a whole bunch, integrates human need into symbolism of the seasons
     • Uses the warmth of summer to talk about Human want and need, along with living life.
       • "The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot;" (Thoreau 15 PDF)
         • The wise are poor on the outside, but are the richest inside
           • The run for luxury kills people
             • What people chase in this world will go into thin air in heaven
       • To sell a product, make the customer think that he needs it, or make it worth buying
         • People worry more about the looks of their outfits more than having a stable and wise mind
           • Integrates clothes into the theme of royalty and respect, but to also live humbly
           • Food, Shelter, Clothing, and fuel

5. The Strength of the house

   • When people have houses, its not that the buyer owns the house, but the house that owns the buyers
     • Money holds you and captures you
       • Starts making his own house by Walden Pond
         • Explains every detail of his time building, like a journal even
           • Men dig into the Earth to cool down and be relaxed
             • Started living on the 4th of July
       • Civilized people are actually more poor than the savages because they spend all their riches on a "palace" of a home
   • Thoreau means that your house should be an extension of yourself and not vice-versa.
     • $28. 12.5 for the house
   • Very efficient farmer

6. The Industrial Revolution

   • Its because of new technology that we cut our "Spiritual Bread thinner than in past years" (Thoreau 44)
     • Some of it is bad but we should appreciate the advantages
       • Items, like building materials are more accessible in today's time
         • When you borrow items, you bring it back to thm in an even better condition so they help you out another time