# Walden-LitChart  ## Metadata - Author:: [[readwise.io]] - Full Title:: Walden-LitChart - Category: #articles - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/25031087 ## Highlights #### BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU > Harvard College, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp71ypjg73tv1vz6chbb0qpz)) > rhetoric and philosophy. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp71yy13mmtdpvdkan5xc0mb)) > befriended Ralph Waldo Emerson, who became his mentor, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp71zkbpqnc768nbbts0bbhj)) #### HISTORICAL CONTEXT > Ellery Channing, Transcendentalist poet and friend of Thoreau, advised him, "Go out upon that, build yourself a hut, & there begin the grand process of devouring yourself alive. I see no other alternative, no other hope for you." ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp726xh2ejq6wks0pxrjhg6j)) > The Transcendentalist movement had its roots in Unitarianism, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp7211qxf4aq5qnfqzbhfzff)) #### PLOT SUMMARY > abandoning the notion of inherent human depravity and placing value on the intellect as the path to spiritual wisdom ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp721xsv6a2k41fgbpwdvnn5)) > Thoreau designs a life of "voluntary poverty" for himself, determining the absolute necessities of man's existence to be: food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp7280ecb83t33cjv0w78rys)) #### RELATED LITERARY WORKS > Criticizing society's spiritually empty obsessions with clothing and elaborate homes, as well as with formal education, travel, and the use of animal labo ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp728zgx4zdhw1cbjfjkcbns)) - Note: Buying a life one trinket at a time > indebted to Eastern thought, notably the Bhagavad-Gita ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp724yz0f4bpfzsx9qbrd8nc)) > Discussing his intellectual life, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72g2kpxmtfg0gd3b7x98bd)) > reading, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72g8pe4w1zt9t698r7azdp)) > seer and listener, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72gmqw9nh1swtrs34xk141)) > Thoreau's daily work in the bean-field, he says, dignified his existence and connected him to the earth through the ancient art of husbandry ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72htetzvx2d8vw7k4s592n)) - Note: Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. > John Field – An Irishman and neighbor of Thoreau's living at Baker Farm. Once, in a rainstorm, Thoreau retreats into a hut for shelter and finds John and his family there. John complains about how hard he works, but when Thoreau tells him it is possible to work less and live a better life, John demurs, not seeing any other way to exist. Thoreau describes John as honest but unambitious. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72rm9ebzb2rqbcpx9wdx9d)) ##### MINOR CHARACTERS > The Hermit ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72snnezk61sftkb8512kca)) > James Collins ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72stek63wyw8t40jpfcf80)) > Cato Ingraham ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72syjwe44v2n14yxv0e9z7)) > Zilpha ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72taejz1ez7nvp925561at)) > Brister Freeman ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72tm5febzeq92t8chjkb15)) #### CHARACTERS ##### MAJOR CHARACTERS > Fenda ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72tw7sqxq14npdrn9crzvx)) > Henry David Thoreau ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72qgrvyqqtbn2jeeag68w0)) > Stratten family ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72v7b6detbb8p2zek7bfv2)) > Breed family ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72vcj71fc12gepx7kmkyyt)) > Wyman the potter ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72w186z6j2d4t7tf5n0q3q)) > Hugh Quoil ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72w8appwj0h08vja1dwv9a)) #### THEMES > Thoreau believes that work should not be difficult or excessive or distract from one’s proper pursuits but instead be indistinguishable from leisure, because all parts of life should be rewarding. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp7344a5g5kcmver1yvhp111)) ##### SELF-RELIANCE > Thoreau’s life atWalden Pond embodies a philosophy set out most famously and directly in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, "Self-Reliance." ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72xx9ncsg4jycaz7nrvdca)) > He focuses on two kinds of work: physical labor and intellectual pursuits. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp734q7b0nrrghj3pjxjn5q8)) > Selfreliance is a set of ideals according to which one must live one’s life, combining abstract philosophy with practical advice. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72ykx6qkvv1zj60ey58b5w)) > one must have unfailing trust in oneself and confidence in one’s faculties, choosing individuality over conformity to society. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp72zfgfydc3qtxyjmwa33by)) > perpetual students ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp735mmd1hhj7ga1fpbsa5c1)) ##### SIMPLICITY OVER "PROGRESS" > "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp7327z0zkjv178j69et43xp)) > He suggests that material advancements trick people into thinking that their lives are improving or are better than their ancestors, but in reality such value placed on material things burdens them financially, binds them to their land, makes them work for their animals rather than makes their animals work for them, and leaves them exhausted and spiritually empty. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp736v018w3ced5wd3fankyb)) ##### WORK > vegetarianism, which lets him avoid the trouble of catching animals and the moral dubiousness of killing them. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp7380badyd59aa6ywpk4t8r)) ##### SOLITUDE AND SOCIETY > Thoreau deeply values both solitude and society and brings these two seemingly contradictory impulses together in creative, paradoxical ways ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73b28prj9qv0rtbgt3xq0j)) #### TRANSCENDENTALISM, SPIRITUALITY, AND THE GOOD LIFE > Eschewing organized religion, he opts to search on his own for what living a good life means, and he tries to live it as he searches ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73d8p5nbvbrqyn5czmbwz6)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Every morning he washes himself inWalden Pond and calls his bath a "religious experience," quoting Hindu scripture and writing that the pond is part of the sacred water of the Ganges River ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73e3a70b33hw8wmwhnajwd)) ##### NATURE #### SYMBOLS > nature, he sees an inexhaustible source of wisdom, beauty, and spiritual nourishment. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73amfe2fqeca2babacz4jx)) ##### WALDEN POND ##### THE BEAN-FIELD > For Thoreau, the bean-field symbolizes man's capacity through work to become self-reliant. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73gwcfw16ng5pmrkqbb090)) > The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73jkxva78cr9t1at8e8sr8)) #### QUOTES ##### Economy Quotes ##### With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. > The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the > problem itself. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73mwbqkac30pp6vq1x5st1)) > All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73mdgdf02sxvjeqh7n71aj)) > While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73nakez8mjd7mmxjkc466x)) > Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73pen1b2wcd61btfzjj69n)) - Note: All the apps on the App Store are toys, solve no problems, do no work. > The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual > exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73s7hqx9wy52mjpvg3xbvt)) > I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, 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. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73sgtgn9hgyp3xqn2t2mah)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73t94td00rfn7sgyn74ztw)) > Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73ssyhhaqq9ry0aez437y0)) ##### Reading Quotes > Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73vt3ndvac4qjkykd39vcn)) > I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found > in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of nature. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73x0e6b71y77fmb7hdkdys)) ##### Sounds Quotes > Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73waqkmtzsb08j8mvt0v8t)) ##### Visitors Quotes > I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp73xs9ycm32e7v01wgk65kn)) ##### The Village Quotes > was never molested by any person but those who represented the State. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp748vn5dpjd5hkf0wdcajn3)) > Objects of charity are not guests. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp747c2p81n9fhab73eby6yp)) ##### The Ponds Quotes > A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive > feature. It is the earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp749nbc60wst310dwptx9zf)) ##### Winter Animals Quotes > I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp74bg9f33ymvrsmgftzf7x7)) ##### Baker Farm Quotes > My Good Genius seemed to say,—Go fish and hunt far and > wide day by day,—farther and wider,—and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures... Grow wild according to thy nature. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp74abq4d6s8qrrbd50akq35)) ##### Conclusion Quotes > Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within > you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought... It is easier to sail many thousand miles... than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp74c3m58a97whhv8ea0gjkd)) > I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances 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 themselves around and within him... 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. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp74dg8p84qgxsw8etp5sydf)) > 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. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp74d2e9q99s0xe5zagk7swh)) > 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, however measured or far away. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp74dv6fnmf4kczdnmf68hj3)) > Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp74e756nrqmh4vhynn3km8e)) #### SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS ##### ECONOMY > Most men, says Thoreau, work too much ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp74hhackr588jbpasben6b1)) > inherited farms suffer personal and financial restrictions and spend their lives toiling on many acres when they could have survived on planting a few square feet. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp74hxgn2tk77xhdbkhbhrj8)) > Addressing the poor, he denounces the lifestyle of worrying about one's debt and living in fear of not being able to make enough money, comparing it to slavery and advocating for "self-emancipation." ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp74jkrgv0b0jnkge1h825kf)) > Human advancements throughout time have not changed "the essential laws of man's existence." ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp74kyb5wb6ycdrzsqw76n93)) > directed to those who are strong and have mastered their lives, nor to those who are happy with the current state, but to those who are discontented and overworked, and also to those who are wealthy but poor in spirit. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp74nt018s5kws92qv49fw3n)) > Thoreau notes that, like the Indian, he did not realize he had to sell work that other people wanted ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp74q6csx708qd1wkfz6n43e)) > Organized religion is about consoling man's fears, not nourishing his hope ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp74zwhm65kvq5qfgfjr6nec)) ##### WHERE I LIVED, AND WHAT I LIVED FOR > On Independence Day, 1845, Thoreau begins living in the woods full-time, during nights as well as days. The house, not yet finished, is glorious because it is a part of nature, with the wind blowing through it and the company of birds. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp7527jdbyr144tz89hmjb7a)) > Men often confuse the appearance of things with reality, Thoreau believes, but with true wisdom and unhurriedness it is possible to get past "petty pleasures" and perceive matters of true worth. God is in the present moment. In order to experience spiritual truth, one must spend one's days as deliberately as nature. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp754asm1p7rcrymr7kex3zh)) ##### READING > Reading, Thoreau writes, is the pursuit of truth, which is immortal, while wealth and material possessions are petty and fleeting. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp7557g4725fw9qznrv3a2q4)) > people should learn ancient languages and read the classics. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp755p5jdmpg6am3zc9zg4x9)) > Thoreau calls on people to strive to read well. Instead, he says, most people aim too low, ignoring the classics in favor of easy reading, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp756jt63skntyx9cdygap9b)) ##### SOUNDS > hard work and low ambitions ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp758jwdfk69kqp4rdc10zsk)) > After the train passes, Thoreau is more alone than ever, he writes. He listens to the bells of the nearby towns, the lowing of cows that he experiences as great music, the clucking of birds, the melancholy hoots of owls which sound like men moaning in grief, the rolling of wagons, the bark of dogs. He celebrates that there are no domesticated sounds, not even a tea kettle, and "no path to the civilized world." ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp75a1ew69rac656y2afwaq5)) ##### SOLITUDE > Loneliness is a state of mind, he believes, which cannot necessarily be cured by being physically close to someone ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp75bxky9g42t8skzrzcvxcx)) > even the best company becomes wearisome after a while ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp75cfx5cqhaga64rz5mea40)) > Thoreau believes that people are distracted by being polite and that they spend too much time around each other, which actually makes them respect each other less. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp75d1y7x3qs7xca38p1saye)) ##### VISITORS > Canadian woodchopper ... "In him the animal man chiefly was developed," Thoreau writes. "But the intellectual and what is called spiritual man in him were slumbering as in an infant. ##### THE BEAN-FIELD > Thoreau does his work in the bean-field daily, in the early morning. The pigeons and hawks and other birds that fly overhead while he works, as well as the other animals, offer him "inexhaustible entertainment." ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp75kw3tw37tyn4tkfxy69vn)) ##### THE VILLAGE > Thoreau's decision to isolate himself from society is not just a philosophical choice. It's also political, signifying a distrust in all forms of institutions, which are forms of society's excesses. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp75rxqb0y7devjd4sbqw4x6)) > He decided not to flee, but to let the state do harm to him, and he was released the next day. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp75qpqez97xzgaqx1cjr1c0)) ##### THE PONDS > He sometimes goes fishing on the pond with a companion but they do not talk on the boat, and experience an "unbroken harmony" between them that is better than if they had spoken. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gp75tcqcc9k5ygssw80hbsq3)) ##### BAKER FARM > John Field, an Irishman, and his family waiting out the storm. Thoreau describes John as honest and hardworking but unambitious. When Thoreau describes his simple, independent existence to John and his family and tells them that they do not have to work hard to support themselves but can escape the big expenses that trap them, they see what Thoreau describes as a difficult life to maintain and are not interested. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gpa4fbht2f3tcqh2x5ef566y)) ##### HIGHER LAWS > He finds in himself a spiritual life and a savage life, and he loves and respects both sides. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gpa4g8eqav5nm2e2e6ezamga)) > limiting what one drinks to water, the only thing a wise man should drink. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gpa4h3tqdfc5be0a1pntgexh)) > What defiles a man is not food, however, but the appetite with which he consumes it, Thoreau believes; the animal inside a man wakes insofar as his higher faculties sleep ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gpa4j3rezmm2xtz9n49ssw4e)) ##### BRUTE NEIGHBORS > animals, who, he says, "are all beasts of burden, in a sense, made to carry some portion of our thoughts." ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gpa4k8q6qdsp4ws5a1j6v49r)) > ants, ... compares them to ancient warriors for their determination and heroism ##### HOUSE-WARMING > He likes to look into the fire and says you can always see a face there. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gpa4qsyswdc2m0e2ny5rcjnj)) ##### FORMER INHABITANTS; AND WINTER VISITORS > Once, when he walks a long way in the snow, he returns home to find the smell of someone's pipe in his house and smoldering logs on the fire ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gpa4t8ph38d4d9qp3t5b6nw3)) > farmer wanting a social visit; a poet, whose company he enjoys greatly and with whom he creates a theory of life that combined mirth with sober intelligence; and a religious man, whom Thoreau deeply respects. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gpa4txfvc1g98xrbb7y80v4m)) ##### WINTER ANIMALS > Thoreau wonders if there is a kind of civilization among animals as is there is among men. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gpa4vz57gjrb4egw5qezsbxc)) ##### THE POND IN WINTER > finds a pattern: the intersection of the widest and longest parts of the pond is generally the deepest part of the pond ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gpa4z9bxtdfn996t4wwxbsnv)) ##### SPRING > Nature calls on humankind to live blessedly in the present moment, he believes; spring can teach men forgiveness and how to treat each other well. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gpa5245d9rxayezwar9ym3x0)) ##### CONCLUSION > The universe is wide and no man needs to be tied down, Thoreau believes. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gpa53a3d0n9q7kdmdamzb89d)) > any man can find himself opposing society by following higher laws. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gpa5502xgvhpdqywz62scr7c)) > Thoreau says he left the woods because he had "several more lives to live." ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gpa55pgjcgptefvq173k18j8)) > Poverty, he says, is actually good because it prevents one from trifling with the excesses of society ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gpa589e230ytsgc41edy2bj2)) > The bug is proof of resurrection and immortality, Thoreau says, and man must always strive to renew himself, because he can never know what new life will emerge from him. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gpa59aatkq1cj7mhw83hkcfv))