Walden is a journal of 18 essays by the American author Henry David Thoreau inspired by his stay on Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. The full name of the book is Walden; or, Life in the Woods. Thoreau built a cabin on the north shore of the pond and lived there alone from July 4, 1845, to Sept. 6, 1847. The book did not receive much attention in the years immediately after it was published in 1854, but in the 1900’s, it was praised as a classic of American literature.
In Walden, Thoreau stated that his goal was to “front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Thoreau records his observations of nature and tells how he built his house, paid his bills, and spent his time. He also tells about his visitors and reports on what he read and thought.
On a deeper level, Walden celebrates people living in harmony with nature. In addition, the book includes social commentary, self-examination, and philosophical observations on such themes as individualism, labor, leisure, and self-reliance. Thoreau criticized progress, industrialization, and what he saw as the American craving for success, possessions, and wealth. He believed people required fewer goods and comforts than they thought they did to become fully alive.
Thoreau insisted that his stay at Walden Pond was an experiment in simple living, not an idle withdrawal from society. He wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” He appealed to people to economize, to simplify their lives, and thus to save the time and energy that will allow them to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”
