Walden by Henry David Thoreau-A Leading Transcendentalist Thinker
    Superficially, Walden is an account by Henry Thoreau of a period he spent largely isolated in a house he built by Walden Pond. Thoreau compiles his observations on the area’s ecosystem and human and animal inhabitants and on the life he lived while near the pond. The book is chock-full of picturesque scenes of wildlife and natural harmony. But the book is far more than a nature-lover’s guide; interspersed with these scenes are observations on the quality of the life Thoreau was then leading, the lives led by city dwellers, and a compendium of his observations on the nature of life and humanity in general. While Thoreau believed that his life in the cabin he built in the woods was, at least in part, quite advantageous compared to the life led by many of his peers, he did not believe that it was the only one. “The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?” And again: “I would not have anyone adopt my own mode of living on my account...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.” He sought an opportunity by living in isolation to expand upon and clarify his ideas and thoughts in independence from society; and the result is a paean on the virtues of untrammeled wilderness and a biting critique of conformity in society. His cardinal theme is independence from society and from others and the virtues of self-determination and self-respect. After 2 years by Walden Pond in what Thoreau described as an “experiment” to determine the potential inherent in isolation and self-discovery, he returned to civilization to write the book-and to experiment further. “I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves...How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!” He believed strongly that, “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears.” The book remains, then, a tribute to independence, solitude, and simplicity.

A Personal Reaction to Walden
    While I may disagree sometimes with Thoreau’s analysis of society and its virtues and faults, or his observations on the virtues of “the simple life”, I cannot but admire his independence and complete lack of
regard for other’s opinions regarding his “experiment”. And while I would not myself retreat so fully from civilization, I cannot but admire his willingness to do so in order to attempt to live his philosophy and to carry out some of his ideas. Many of his observations on society’s flaws are both unusual and thought-provoking; for instance, “If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life... Philanthropy is not love for one’s fellow-man in the broadest sense...it may be that he who bestows the largest amound of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve. It is the pious slave-breeder devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sunday’s liberty for the rest...I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but his private ail.” His ideas, even if one disagrees, are original and
thought-provoking. This book is worth a read.