BOOK 209: WALDEN: HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Walden first published as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is a book by transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and—to some degree—a manual for self-reliance.

First published in 1854, Walden details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau used this time (July 4, 1845 - September 6, 1847) to write his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. The experience later inspired Walden, in which Thoreau compresses the time into a single calendar year and uses passages of four seasons to symbolize human development.

The book can be seen as performance art, a demonstration of how easy it can be to acquire the four necessities of life. Once acquired, he believed people should then focus their efforts on personal growth.

By immersing himself in nature, Thoreau hoped to gain a more objective understanding of society through personal introspection. Simple living and self-sufficiency were Thoreau's other goals, and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy, a central theme of the American Romantic Period.

Thoreau makes precise scientific observations of nature as well as metaphorical and poetic uses of natural phenomena. He identifies many plants and animals by both their popular and scientific names, records in detail the colour and clarity of different bodies of water, precisely dates and describes the freezing and thawing of the pond, and recounts his experiments to measure the depth and shape of the bottom of the supposedly "bottomless" Walden Pond.

(From Wikipeadia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden)

MY VERDICT:

I feel like the universe has been telling me to read this book for a really long time, it popped up in films, references in other works of fiction and occurring on lists. I’d had it for years before I finally, in this time of isolation, felt it was time to sit down and read it. I read the majority of it on the unseasonably warm days of spring laying outside whilst listening to the birds and honestly can’t think of a better way to have read it.

Some parts are very dry, some betray their age but for the most part it is a most beautiful book that talks of nature and the seasons and the simplicity of living simply. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves to be in nature – it’s a perfect book to take on holiday especially if you’re camping, definitely if you’re going away for a bit of peace and quiet or a summer book for a summer spent in the garden with the birds.

REFERENCES IN CULTURE:

Shane Carruth's second film Upstream Color features Walden as a central item of its story, and draws heavily on the themes expressed by Thoreau.

The 1989 film Dead Poets Society heavily features an excerpt from Walden as a motif in the plot.

The Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish makes several references to Waldenon their eighth studio album Endless Forms Most Beautiful of 2015, including in the song titled "My Walden".

The investment research firm Morningstar, Inc. was named for the last sentence in Walden by founder and CEO Joe Mansueto, and the "O" in the company's logo is shaped like a rising sun.

In the 2015 video game Fallout 4, which takes place in Massachusetts, there exists a location called Walden Pond, where the player can listen to an automated tourist guide detail Thoreau's experience living in the wilderness. At the location there stands a small house which is said to be the same house Thoreau built and stayed in.

Is read by Rock Hudson’s character Ron Kirby in All That Heaven Allows.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky includes a reference to the book it is one of the 12 books the teacher assigns Charlie to read.

Featured in the film Capote as a book read in prison.

Chris McCandless, an American hiker who sought an increasingly itinerant lifestyle as he grew up. McCandless is the subject of Into the Wild, a nonfiction book by Jon Krakauer that was later made into a full-length feature film. In the copy of Walden found with McCandless in 1992, he had written TRUTH in the margins by the line,

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” — Thoreau, Walden