“Walden” a Book by Henry David Thoreau

The life of a person has always been filled with worries and apprehensions, the majority of which do not actually play any important role. Henry David Thoreau provides a brilliant explanation of this argument in his book Walden, or, Life in the Woods. The thing that motivates the author to simplify his life and live in the woods is the decision “to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,” which he did not consider as possible in the society (Thoreau).

The narrator mentions that he “did not wish to live what was not life” (Thoreau). In this statement, he provides an explanation of why and how he would like to make his life easier and more pleasant. Thoreau is unhappy about the fact that people’s “life is frittered away by detail.” He emphasizes the benefits of living simply: “An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers” (Thoreau). In a variety of ways, the author discloses how the absence of complication can be achieved.

For instance, instead of three meals, it is possible to eat one, and other similar proportions might be used to reduce the person’s needs. Thoreau remarks that the nation is “cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps” and “ruined by luxury.” It is impossible to disagree with these arguments. Indeed, modern people are so much concerned about consumerism and think so much about various things that they forget to pay attention to the very process of living.

It is both funny and sad to read Thoreau’s suggestion of what sleepers underlying the railroad are: “Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man.” The irony is that people’s strenuous efforts to follow the industrial progress leaves them to space for rest and observation of the nature and the world around them. Thoreau wrote his book in the time when mobile phones and the Internet were not discovered. He would have had many more topics for discussion if he were to live at present.

Thoreau mentions that the nation “lives too fast,” and this definition could not fit better the modern people’s existence. In a constant pursuit of getting to know what is new in the world, individuals neglect the events happening in their families or even within their heads or souls. The author asks a rhetorical question that directly relates to the world today: “Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?” (Thoreau). Too much time is wasted on social websites, communication with people who do not even mean anything in one’s life. Too many efforts are spent on gaining financial profit, but then, there is no opportunity or time to spend this money with pleasure.

Indeed, maybe, if a person spent at least a few days in the woods, without gadgets and worries, without the need to update one’s social website page every few minutes, he or she could appreciate the life for what it is. Thoreau remarks that life would be like a fairy tale if people “would steadily observe realities only.” If everyone listened to Thoreau’s advice and spent their lives “in conceiving,” the possibility of making the existence worthy would become more realistic. “Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature,” as Thoreau pleads in his book.