Getting started on Walden
Where: 1 mile outside of Concord, MA – 20 miles from Boston, Lowell – not wilderness,
Walden Pond is a 65-acre glacial kettle pond; property was owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Now a popular state park with swimming, hiking, etc. In the mid-19th century, Concord was the center of American Transcendentalism and home to Emerson, Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, and Louisa May Alcott.
When: Thoreau stayed in residence at his small cabin on Walden Pond for 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days during 1845-47. During this time he was revising the manuscript for his book A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers and generating material that would later become Walden, or Life in the Woods, the philosophical naturalistic memoir he published in 1854. The time is pre-Civil War America—slavery is a major social issue – The Fugitive Slave Act becomes law in 1850, Uncle Tom’s Cabin appears in1852. And Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859. By this time Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1830) had showed that the Earth was ancient, and many changes had occurred over time. Railroads were taking over from canals/rivers as principal means of transportation/commerce, and the telegraph was beginning to shrink the distance between far flung peoples.
Who: Henry D. Thoreau was educated at Harvard and became a disciple and friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the main founders of American Transcendentalism. Thoreau was a pencil maker, teacher, journalist, lecturer, author, handyman, and surveyor. Thoreau is considered by many to be the grandfather of an original American environmental consciousness. Walden is an undisputed sacred text for those studying nature and the environment. Thoreau was 28 when he went to Walden Pond, 44 when he died from tuberculosis in 1862.
What: Main themes throughout include: (1) study of himself, his own philosophy, how to live; (2) natural science/nature observation; (3) humans’ relation to nature and society; (4) the tension between two basic kinds of wealth—material wealth and spiritual wealth; (5) simplicity and waste.
Why: Thoreau is one of the most original of American voices, one that continues to ring in the ears of environmentally-sensitive people worldwide. Walden is a seminal text with an urgent message that endures. To read Walden is to encounter one of the most essential books in the history of American culture; to know Walden is to uncover important roots of the modern environmental consciousness.
To begin, we recommend that you try a little “Economy.” Thoreau is writing to college students, but college students at Harvard in the 1840s and 1850s. For many 21st century college students, Thoreau is a challenge—dense, long, contradictory, and full of words and references alien to the minds of modern readers. But try. Walden is a trip, but a trip worth taking. It’s worth it. If you don’t read every word it’s not the biggest sin you are likely to ever commit. A bigger sin is to not find a way into the work, to not discover some of what Thoreau raises so urgently in the book and question what you think about his assertions. So your challenge is to engage some valuable aspects of “Economy.” Below are some juicy quotes as possible ways in. But be warned, he wants to piss you off.
Chapter 1 – “Economy” – the practice of household management – domestic economy
Page 2. “I should not talk so much about myself if there were any body else whom I knew so well”
Page 6. “Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion”
Page 7. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”
Page 13. “Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind”
Page 16. “…to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment”
Page 19. “My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest possible obstacles”
Page 23. “I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.”
Page 26. “Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new”
Page 38. “But lo! men have become the tools of their tools” (similar thoughts on p. 59)
Page 48. “Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter?”
Page 53. [about students] “…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”
Page 75. “I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or his neighbor’s instead.”
Page 80. “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root”
Page 83. “All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear; all disease and failure helps to make me sad and does me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it.”