Thoreau

’s Walden Essay, Research Paper

Henry David Thoreau was a rebel. Walden can be seen as an account of his

rebellion. By the 1840’s, life had changed throughout New England, even in the

heart of America’s rebellion, Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau wrote that “I have

traveled a good deal in Concord” (Krutch 108). He knew what he saw there, and

what he saw, he began to despise. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet

desperation” (111). In 1775, ordinary men had dared to take up arms of rebellion

and strike a blow for independence and freedom (Bowes 123-124). Yet, in the

space of few decades, the combined forces of materialism and technology had

subdued the children and grandchildren of these freedom fighters and reduced

them “to slave-drivers of themselves” (Krutch 110). Henry rebelled and

deliberately sought a new life in which he could be free and independent. He

decided to leave Concord and seek answers to the mysteries of life in the solitude

of the woods and the beauty of the pond. On July 4, 1845, the anniversary of the

proclamation of the United States’ independence, Thoreau went to Walden pond to

proclaim his own independence (Literary 397). If the people of Concord had been

swept up by the speed of technology and the lure of money and property, Henry

would separate himself from these attractive deceptions and seek out the reality of

nature’s truths, and “not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did

not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did I wish to practice

resignation, unless it was quite necessary” (Krutch 172).

The quality of life throughout America was rapidly changing when Henry

cast his critical eye on Concord. Where others saw progress and prosperity, he

saw wastefulness and poverty. “We live meanly, like ants” (173).

The transcendentalists were deeply concerned about the quality of life

in America. A great tide of material prosperity, checked only

temporarily by the crises of 1837 and 1839 and the ensuing

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depression, had overtaken the country. Everything was expanding by

leaps and bounds. Virgin territories were being opened to settlement

from Illinois to Oregon. Turnpikes, canals, steamboats, railroads were

rushed into being. The fur trade, overseas commerce, whaling, the

cotton culture of the South, the factories of the North were bringing

wealth to a happy nation. It was an era of good feeling, a time when

the common man seemed to be getting his share of creature comforts.

Yet sensitive observers feared that all was not well. It appeared not

likely that care for man’s intellectual and spiritual nature might be

submerged into the rush for easy riches. What would be the profit in

all this material advance if it were not matched by an equal progress in

humanity. So the transcendentalists pondered (Damrush et al. 6-7).

Thoreau’s response was to awaken from the deadly sleep brought on by the

hum of the machine and the pillow of the dollar bills.

Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to

count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten

toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let

your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead

of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb

nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the

clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be

allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the

bottom and make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a

great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of

three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred

dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. (Krutch 173)

Thoreau believed life to be too complicated and such things as internal

improvements to be nothing but furniture cluttering up a room. Americans were

being confused and believed the illusions of luxuries of life to be beneficiary to

their happiness, but the people of New England could not tell what an illusion

looked like. They hadn’t the time to notice nature or to distinguish illusions from

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the real thing (173). Unlike Thoreau, New Englanders lacked “a passion for

observation” (Literary 394) for focusing in on nature. Life in New England moved

too fast to notice anything. Thoreau’s answer to these problems was always to slow

down and separate what one needed from what one merely desired (Krutch 173).

Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export

ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a

doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons

or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get our sleepers, and forge

rails, and devote days or nights to the work, but go to tinker

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