jul 3, 1854 - walden
Description:
written by henry david throeau, Passage 1
Thoreau claims he is writing to Americans here
Workers inadvertently punishing themselves for not going out into nature
“So occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.”
“He has no time to be anything but a machine.”
Machine of life is corrupting us
Our ‘finer fruits’ don’t cost money, so why are we trying so hard to make money?
Passage 2
“The necessities of life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under several heads of food, shelter, clothing, and fuel.”
“It would be some advantage to line a primitive and frontier life.”
The only essentials to life are food, shelter, clothing, and fuel
Find necessities from frontier, not urban areas
Passage 3
“None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage round of what we should call voluntary poverty.”
Go into voluntary poverty, only using the 4 necessities mentioned before of food, shelter, clothing, and fuel
Anything other than those necessities rupture humanity
Passage 4
“But mainly to the mass of men who are disconnected, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them.”
“I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.”
Paradoxical
Thoreau is speaking mainly to the working class here
Thoreau claims that the ich are the poorest of all and are chained with shackles of gold and silver
Passage 5
“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.”
Added to timeline:
Amstud exam review timeline
Date:
