Review of Thoreau's Walden
The Book Walden by Henry David Thoreau is not a novel, a narrative poem, or a play; there is no clear story line, and no plot line. Nor is it an autobiography, although much of it is based on Thoreau's life at Walden Pond. The question of its structure is it's a diary of Thoreau's life at Walden. Walden is a work of many contradictions, a work that seems to make the reader feel lost. New Hampshire is the sight of Walden Pond where Henry David Thoreau spent two years of his life. His goal was to rethink his life and reflect on society. It was a grand aim, but having read his book I can honestly say he does both justice. Walden is an extremely personal account of his day-to-day life around the pond and, more importantly, the thoughts behind them. As stated by Thoreau, the theme of Walden is self-realization and self-fulfillment. Self-actualization is attained through human unity with nature. Every aspect of Walden is focused on this idea.In Walden by Henry David Thoreau, Thoreau describes what is wrong with the American culture and society and how isolation can make the human pure. He believes that the soul needs to be whipped clean in order to learn the real meaning of life and be able to take pleasu
Thoreau calls for an "ideological revolution to simplification" in our lives. He enjoyed speaking to all who came. "The cost of a thing," he reasoned, "is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. He believed that a man is rich only "in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone. One thing that struck me as odd was how in the book more than once, Thoreau describes Walden Pond as a mirror. "Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvium which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin. By living this way, Thoreau did not deprive himself. Thoreau described everything from the sounds to the pond. Once we do this we can experience true "reality" and not what society has handed us to believe in. I truly believe that if I were open-minded enough to listen to his instructions, I could find my true self and who I really am. During the readings, Thoreau's choice of financial imagery demonstrates how tremendously our vision of life is subjected by commercial values. Personally I feel that Thoreau was a very intelligent man who thought in a way that others didn't, but I don't agree with a lot that he has to say and how to go about living life.
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