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 tinkering
upon
our lives to
improve them, who will want railroads?
And if railroads are
not built, how
shall we get to heaven in season? But if
we stay at home
and mind our own
business, who will want railroads? We do
not ride
on the railroad;
it rides upon us. ...
Why should we
live with such hurry and waste of time?
We are
determined to be
starved for we are hungry. Men say that
a stitch in
time saves nine,
and so they take a thousand stitches to-day to save nine
to-morrow. As for work, we haven't any of any
consequence. We have
the Saint Vitus'
dance and cannot possibly keep our heads still. ...
Hardly a man
takes a half hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes he
holds up his head
and asks, "What's the News?" as if the rest of mankind
had stood his
sentinels. Some give directions to be
walked every half
hour, doubtless
for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell
what they have
dreamed. After a night's sleep the news
is as
indispensable as
the breakfast. "Pray tell me
anything new that has
happened to a man
any where on this globe," - and he reads it over his
coffee and rolls,
that a man has had this eyes gouged out this morning
on the Wachito
River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark
unfathomed
mammoth cave of this world, and has put the rudiment of
an eye himself
(174-175).
The tone of these words conveys a
feeling of anger and passion. Thoreau
felt that
Americans had deceived themselves about what is valuable in life and
were wasting the
precious time they had. His answer to
wasting time is nothing
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more than
simplifying your life and it becomes more valuable. He said, "We are
as rich as the
number of things we can do without"
(160). By liberating
themselves from
the shackles of material things, people can find the time to see
what is important
and worthwhile about reality (178).
If you stand
right fronting and face to face of a fact, you will see the
sun glimmer on
both sides its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel
its sweet edge dividing
you through the heart and marrow, and so you
will happily
conclude you mortal career. Be it life
or death, we crave
only
reality. If we are really dying, let us
hear the rattle in our throats
and feel cold in
the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our
business (178).
True independence is achieved by finding the
time to trust the instincts
people are born
with, in conducting their business, which is to throw off their
sleepy condition
and awaken themselves to the possibility of elevating their own
existence to a
higher level.
We must learn to
reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by
mechanical aids,
but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which
does not forake
us in our soundest sleep. I know of no
more
encouraging fact
than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his
life by a
conscious endeavor (172).
Thoreau saw the need of man's awaking to an
awareness of three possible
levels - Animal,
Intellectual, and Spiritual - each with rewards. The book opens
with spring and
ends with spring , the awakening of nature, of renewal, and of
purification. By getting rid of the frantic pace dictated
by technology and the
enslaving grasp
of material luxuries, man has the chance to purify himself through
communion with
nature (13). The renewal of the day,
signaled by the dawn, also
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becomes a signal
to renew the dawn in us, and rise with the sun to an intellectual
level, by reading
the best works of the best writers (184). Finally, by studying
nature closely,
Thoreau discovered the divine pattern of all creation, a simple leaf.
"Thus it
seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle of all operations of
Nature. The Maker of this earth but patented a
leaf" (332).
Henry discovered that his experiment in
independent living had proven that
an individual
could live his life on his own terms, and still pursue happiness by
being free and
living "deliberately" (172).
I learned this,
at least, by my experiment; that if one advance
confidently in
the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the
life which he has
imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in
common
hours. He will put some things behind,
will pass an invisible
boundary; new,
universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish
around and within
him; or the old laws will be expanded, and
interpreted in
his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with
the license of a
higher order of beings. In proportion as
he simplifies
his life, the
laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude
will not be
solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness
(343).
Once upon a time, a voice came to the town of
Concord and whispered the
answer to the
problems of materialism and technology that were speeding up and
complicating life
for all the townspeople to hear. The
voice said, "Simplify,
simplify"
(173). But they all told the voice that
it was impossible and that it was
crazy. Then years later, as they were on their death
beds, these same townspeople
looked back upon
their lives and they all realized they truly "had not lived" (172).
Finally they all
died, not knowing true happiness.
The words in Henry David Thoreau's Walden form
this voice that can save
modern man from
the illusions of life. Critic Joseph
Wood Krutch comments,
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Yet most of those
who read that account, even those who read it with
sympathy and
admiration, do not follow his advice-either because,
they say, they
cannot or because the conclude that only for that very
special sort of
person Thoreau happened to be, would it work (1).
Thoreau lived in an age of rapid change and
increased complexity. Today it
is
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