Thoreau's "Walden"

I don’t think Walden can be considered a memoir. It’s more a work on nonfiction because he writes about his time at Walden, as opposed to his life up until that point.  He does mention his life beforehand, the life he came from and what he’s giving up in order to live a life of simplicity. But those instances are rare, and most of the chapters in Walden talk about his observations and how he managed to survive through the days, nights, and seasons. He also includes his use of husbandry—which I learned about through the piece—carpentry when describing how he built his house/cabin, and mathematics when describing how he learned the varying depths of the pond.

Despite this, we can still learn pieces of information about Thoreau. He directly comments about his thoughts, actions, and beliefs. But those are more personal assertions that a reader cannot be sure are true or false. The reader can more accurately determine Thoreau’s character through his choices and observations, and the nature of his descriptions.  One such description in “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” is about the pond on a rainy day. He writes, “This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a gentle rain storm in August, when, both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and the wood-thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore.”

Here, we see that he considers the lake a living object by referring to it as his neighbor. He also seems to appreciate not only its beauty, but a duality of existence. He finds a moment in the day and relates it to night, somehow straddling the boundaries like twilight and living in both realities at once. If I remember transcendentalism correctly, this duality of existence is present in the philosophy. It teaches to live in and as both, any extreme or dichotomy, and use it to transcend the world. But not only that, the divine can be found in nature. Thoreau’s reverent descriptions of the nature around him reveal how he sees the divine in it. Walden contains many such descriptions, and indeed the whole experience began to connect with nature and live not only within it, but alongside it in a way that allows both to survive. He introduces a form of sustainability by using only what he needs, in addition to replanting and trying to preserve as much as possible. He also writes about being awake, and uses the metaphor of morning to explain it, but this idea slips through in his descriptions of evening and night. While he wants to be aware even at night, he wants to also be fully immersed in the world around him. Recognizing the value and beauty of evening hours and the effect rain has on his environment, he’s very much aware.