Walden Thought Piece

Walden Thought Piece

“How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!” (217)

If the conclusion of Walden is to be taken as a synthesis of the ideas implanted throughout the work, then Henry David Thoreau’s main exhortation to his brethren is to not become complacent in life. In this call to lead a deliberate life, nature plays an important part both as an example of stirring oneself up, and as a vehicle for transcendence.

Thoreau went to the woods because he wished to live deliberately. His lifestyle while he lived there revealed that he was not interested in becoming an ascetic, but rather, wished to gain something by trying to live in and appreciate every present moment. In the first part of Walden, Thoreau criticizes society for its love of superfluities. His issue with superfluities is that the accumulation of a great amount of them prevents one from moving, and thus from living a simple, genuine life. Men with houses run the risk of falling into an intellectual coma if they become too content with the ritual of daily life, and men with mortgages are in an even more dire situation, imprisoned by their inability to change their situation if they become discontent. Either way, Thoreau despises when men say that it is too late for them to change.

By relating the succession of the seasons to his fellows, Thoreau shows that Nature annually renews herself through the rite of spring, and analogizes this to men, prescribing the need for them to also go through periods of renewal and change. Like in the springtime, these periods of renewal help man to grow and find the intellectual nourishment he needs. Otherwise, man falls into a state of hibernation: his intellect begins to shut down, and will be rendered stagnant. Thoureau’s critique of old men, and their limited scopes of the world, belongs to this category.

However, Thoreau puts forward nature itself as a solution to this problem. Nature always offers up some food for thought. It is through observing nature that Thoreau finds his intellectual stimulus. He speaks of how nature draws him closer to God throughout the second part of the reading, but is explicit about man’s intrinsic need for nature with the words: “We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander” (213). Nature inspires a sense of awe in man of something beyond himself, and yet inextricably linked to himself as a creature within it.

Therefore, Thoreau’s great message for his friends and readers is to follow nature’s example (and within that example, man’s divine purpose) by taking the time every so often to shake off the dust, either by changing one’s living situation, or otherwise, and take cognizance of the life they are leading to make sure they are making every moment worthwhile. In this way, man lives as deliberately as Nature.

(Word Count: 457 without quotes included)