Self-Appointed Inspector of Rain Storms

Thoreau starts Walden off in a very anthropocentric state of mind. In Economy, Thoreau is very focused on how he believes man should live, and speaks about how he is following his beliefs in conducting this experiment where he moves away from civilization and into the woods to live for two years. He claims that he is moving away from civilization to become more connected to nature, but he does not yet speak from an ecocentric view. He spends time noting that he can not speak for anyone or anything else but seems to be trying to tell his audience how to live. He comments about how the rich man is truly the one with the least amount of material objects, and about how living simply is both more rewarding and more freeing than having many possessions. He declares that man should live deliberately, even going so far as to say “As if you could kill time without injuring eternity”. The focus is truly on him and the start of his journey. A great deal goes into his writing about how he built his house and how he is self-reliant. He goes into detail about how capitalism is bad-okay, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch, but he does spend time outlining how much his necessaries cost and the cost of his house. He says it is rewarding to dig his own cellar (saying the house is merely a porch at the entrance of the burrow) and to put up his own walls. He tries to be as self-reliant as plausible, even going so far as to grow his own food.

In speculating while gardening, he also spends some time focusing on how small we are in comparison to the universe but comments that if we live deliberately and simply then we can make a difference and have impact on the Earth. He seems very connected to the heavens and often makes remarks like “I never assisted the sun materially in his rising”, seeming to acknowledge his smallness but feeling connected to it all in being able to be there to see it and more so to contemplate it.

When he gets into Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, we see his view shift slightly to thinking more about nature, though he still focuses a bit on the self. He begins to say that he views the outdoors as “Olympus”, home of the gods. He feels more connected to the animals, especially the ones that are rarely seen in more populated areas, very similar to Timothy Treadwell. He finds himself immersed in his horizons and poetically describing his environment. He expresses a want to live life as simply and innocently as Nature herself (63), saying that to truly live, one must make an art of observing and contemplating, and to have “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” (65) in having less affairs but more meaningful ones. He asks that we stop hurrying through life and slow down enough to take in our surroundings and appreciate them. He believes the news is worthless as one tragedy spans a thousand and the rest of the news is but gossip.

“Let us live each day as deliberately as Nature.” (69) is truly Thoreau’s motto. He values not material art, but natural and thought art, and places a great deal of emphasis on living simply. He believes that man should not have many possessions, or rush through life, but find something they are passionate about and follow it wholeheartedly, as he did with his experience at Walden.