Chapter 12: Student Online Work

David Thoreau’s solitary living experienced, influenced thorough that many people in society are too egocentric and do not enjoy life for what it is and spend their time doing the wrong things.

While David Thoreau was living in solitude in the wilderness, he constructed possibly one of the most influential pieces of literature of all time called Walden which was published in 1854. In this book Thoreau focused on many principles, which became the foundation for perfectionism and Utopian Communities around the nation. One of these principles that Thoreau expressed was this idea of egotism that everyone had, stating in Walden that: “We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.” It seems that Thoreau rejects this common egotism and is basically saying that we should all take into consideration each others’ interests as well.

Thoreau also expresses that: “I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a man’s life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and woodlot!” To basically sum up this excerpt from Walden Thoreau is telling us that from his solidarity he is convinced that he who must labor everyday on a farm is wasting his life away, whereas one who does not work and enjoys the many wonders of life may not have as many material things as he who labors but in all reality actually lives a happier life because he or she was able to live life to the fullest.

Living in solidarity in the wilderness influenced David Thoreau that being egocentric is a poor trait and that one must live life to the fullest and not focus so much on labor in order to live happily.

How did Henry David Thoreau’s solitary living experiment influence his perspective of society?