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Have you ever woke up in the morning and asked yourself, “Why am I living this life?” Throughout the book of Walden, Henry David Thoreau questions the lifestyles that people choose; he makes his readers wonder if they have chosen the kind of lifestyle that give them the greatest amount of happiness. Thoreau stated, “Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them().” This quote is important because most of society these days are so caught up in work and trying to make ends meet that they lose the values in life. Thoreau was forced to change his life when he found himself unhappy after a purchase for a farm fell through. On Thoreau’s journey he moves to Walden and builds a house and life from nothing but hard work, symbolizes many different objects.
Thoreau begins by moving to Walden Pond, near Concord Massachusetts on July 4, 1845 and returns to “civilized society” in 1847. Thoreau thought that by living simply with...
To Thoreau, life’s progress has halted. It seems people have confused progression with captivity driven by materialism. To Krakaeur, people are indifferent to pursing the sublime in nature. To Christopher McCandles the world around him is forgetting the purpose of life. People are blind to nature. In the eyes of these men the world is victim to commercial imprisonment. People live to achieve statuses that only exist because man made them. Fame, money, and monotonous relationships do not exist in nature; they are the pursuits of soulless fundamentalism. The truth is that people pursue meaningless goals, and people don’t want to hear or know how they are foolish. When exposed, reality is so unsettling that it seems wrong. Yet, to be free of the falseness in life is in essence the point of singularity that people realize if there is no truth in love then it is false, if there is no truth in money then it is worthless, if there is no truth in fame then it is undeserving. Without truth everything is a worthless pursuit of a meaningless glass ceiling.
Chris McCandless does not wish to follow defined life structure that society enforces to simply be alive, instead, he chooses to take a seek a path to live a life with purpose. Such an eagerness to seek detachment from what is expected by society, is enforced by not only McCandless but also Thoreau. A primary factor resembling this, is McCandless’ view that many people “live within unhappy circumstances...yet will not change…they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism...damaging to the adventurous spirit(40).” The detesting tone risen through the confliction of “unhappy circumstances” and “damage,” to “safety, conformity and conservation,” emphasis his will to separate from a lifestyle lacking change. This is done
To conclude, Thoreau believed that people should be ruled by conscience and that people should fight against injustice through non-violence according to “Civil Disobedience.” Besides, he believed that we should simplify our lives and take some time to learn our essence in the nature. Moreover, he deemed that tradition and money were unimportant as he demonstrated in his book, Walden. I suggested that people should learn from Thoreau to live deliberately and spend more time to go to the nature instead of watching television, playing computer games, and among other things, such that we could discover who we were and be endeavored to build foundations on our dreams.
In the novel Walden, Henry David Thoreau states that the classics are the noblest recorded thoughts of man. He also believed that the written word is the work of art nearest to life itself. Walden fits this description through many elements in the novel including relevance, universality, and beauty. The novel is a collection of essays Thoreau wrote commenting on his experiment of living in the woods for two years. He lived in a hut off the shore of Walden Pond in Massachusetts between 1845 and 1847. The essays include his encounters with people, animals, and nature along with his philosophies on different subjects.
Henry David Thoreau was born and for most of his life lived in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817. After taking a leave of absence from his studies at Harvard, he was a schoolteacher at Concord public schools in 1837. Yet he resigned weeks later for not administering corporal punishment to his pupils. He went on to work at his brother John’s school for grammar one year later. However, John died in Henry’s arms in 1842 of tetanus. Thoreau returned to Concord and became the protégé of his longtime mentor and neighbor Ralph Waldo Emerson, a New England Transcendentalist, who was a paternal figure for Thoreau; he pushed him to get his essays published. Emerson even let Thoreau build a small cabin on his property at Walden Pond in 1845. This is where Thoreau documented his story in Walden. In the excerpt entitled, “Where I Lived and What I Lived for,” Thoreau expressed his Transcendentalist opinions and views. He relayed why he lived like this, leading a simple lifestyle and being happy is plausible, and that li...
In chapter two of Walden, called “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” Henry David Thoreau asks the philosophical questions of why we are living and why we are on Earth (Davis). Thoreau says,
Although we might think we’d have it all, if and when we have it all, Henry David Thoreau and Herman Hesse’s readings show how we don’t have anything until we have next to nothing. A test of perceived happiness versus real happiness was done to the main characters in both readings. The naturally complacent way through life for these two was obviously one that was chosen for them but rich (either by society or by parents). Instead of taking the wealthier and “more fulfilling” ways of life plus short term benefits, they chose to question what they were given and yet somehow stay appreciative. Through doing so, they benefited with skills from endeavors that you, or me the “civilized” could have never accomplished – even with modern technology.
In Thoreau’s Where I Lived and What I Lived For, he talks about planning where one lives in society and eventually leaving behind items that may inhabited a place before moving to that land which is why “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone” (53). The fewer objects blocking one and his/her independent thought, the happier they are. One should know that objects don’t associate with happiness, but what one defines happiness is about how one feels about themselves and society, which means that the person should believe anything they do not want to believe, without the interference of society to change that. One must know that these objects can make an impact on a person, which can possibly change their perspective on life, which does not necessarily mean that one will be
Thoreau seemed to feel that with solitude one could understand the beauty of living in a ‘natural state’. Concerning the way we live, that is ‘unadulterated and uncontaminated by modern society and the complexities of modern life’(Mateusek). Thoreau’s experience with solitude gives the example that in society we are often too distracted with the fast paced and ‘short intervals’ (1052) of life that we do not stop to appreciate the life around us and develop individual perspectives outside of the societal conformities that society has
In Where I Lived and What I Lived For, Henry David Thoreau details his move to Walden Pond and the reasons he went there. He starts the chapter by imagining all of the possible places he could have lived but he settles for his small hut by the pond where he is free from paying a mortgage. As the chapter goes on he describes his goals for the experiment and how he thinks a life should be lived. He often makes criticisms of civilized society throughout the chapter in order to justify his reasons for moving to solitude.
However, Thoreau doesn’t propose a lifestyle, he proposes change in ones mindset. “It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look” (Thoreau 1101). To live a simple life we just need to readjust our eyes and mind onto greater thinking and realize that we governor what will become of our lives for the individual benefit in realization of what is of importance in our
When Thoreau departed for his believed to be two week sabbatical from society he lived in a log cabin in the woods where he hoped to find freedom. Thoreau was first unimpressed by his new dwelling in the woods until he found relaxation in the upcoming spring season and as he said in Walden “One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity so see the spring come in. The ice in the pond at length begins to be honey-combed, and I can set my heel in it as I walk” (Thoreau 385). What Thoreau looked at for comfort in his time, would today be taken granted for today as the comings and goings of the seasons would mean little to nothing for modern people. It is very difficult to believe that modern humans would find any kind of luxury by simply going to a log cabin and living there. As La Ferle said in his excerpt “It occurred to me that things were vastly different for Thoreau. The comforts of life in the 1840’s were not exactly cushy by today’s standards”(La Ferle 389). La Ferle’s quote is significant because it draws another difference between the comfortable lifestyle Thoreau would have lived in and what kind of comfortable lifestyle we live in today. The glamour of going to the woods to find peace and relaxation has diminished a lot since Thoreau’s age and due to this a modern human, who probably has been pampered in their lives by the electronics provided by society, wouldn’t be able to be at peace in a secluded place like the woods without one of their cherished electronic
In 1854, Henry David Thoreau wrote the novel Walden. While this book was not overwhelmingly popular while Thoreau was alive, Walden has since gained much popularity and praise. A section of this book describes Thoreau’s will to live “deliberately,” living life to the fullest.
The main element of “Why I Went to the Woods” is nature and to live without distractions. In order for Thoreau to be able to do this, he went into the woods to be one with nature to make sure he was not missing what was really important. Thoreau presents his point by stating, “I wanted to live deep and suck out the marrow of life, to live so sturdily” (Thoreau 579). Thoreau wanted to live deep within nature, to take in all nature has to offer, and to get a deeper understanding of his own life. We all have an opportunity to have the same tranquility as Thoreau. Nature is one of the greatest gifts that is given to us freely. We could all have a deeper fulfillment by consuming the same peacefulness in our own mind and souls that Thoreau had. The society we live in today is complex and very dependent, opposite of the life that Thoreau had wanted to live. You do not need to have material items to have a fulfilled life, but a fulfilled spirit. We as a society have become greedy and selfish
I can apply the message Thoreau is portraying in my personal life in many ways. Thoreau states that everyone has a different role in life. Their own talents, aspirations, morals, and intentions; essentially they hear their own music. One can not compare themselves or to others, as they lead a different life. We constantly try to rush everything in order to beat others, or in fear of being beaten. But Thoreau makes it clear that this comparison means nothing. If your goal in life is a longer path than others, it does not mean that you will be less happy or that you need to change it. What makes you happy should not have to be the same as others in society; as everyone is different. By conforming into roles society has made, you will be living