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Thoreau's Baker Farm

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In the tenth chapter, "Baker Farm," of his memoir Walden, Thoreau regards the Fields, the family whose home in which he sought refuge from a rainstorm, in a rather negative manner. The reason why this is believed to be so is because he concludes they are poor not because they do not know how to overcome their poverty, but because they are of Irish descent. Thoreau feels since the Field family has “inherited Irish poverty,” they will forever remain living the way they live, and therefore, will never be capable of becoming as independent as he considers himself to be which indicates he believes one's ethnic background determines how much wealth one possesses (Thoreau 170). Such views are more than unexpected coming from Thoreau considering he
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Christopher McCandless admired Henry David Thoreau and espoused many of Thoreau´s principles into his own life. McCandless understood the importance of each individual moment and wanted to live without following societal norms. Along with these similarities between Thoreau and McCandless, their thought about people discovering themselves through hardships also corresponds. These key similarities between McCandless and Thoreau lead me to believe that McCandless lived by the same words that Thoreau wrote about in Walden. To illustrate my point, Thoreau once stated ¨rather than love, than money... give me truth…

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David Thoreau believed that material possessions were the biggest problem of the world he believed people should return to nature and live off the land. Thoreau believed that people should find what they love to do and do it. He believed that most people in the world didn’t live because most people were always off chasing material possessions and not ever stopping to smell the roses. Thoreau’s idea of a good life would be completely opposite of the life that Andrew Carnegie would have envisioned as a good

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Perhaps the purpose of Thoreau’s excerpt is to prevent us from overlooking the possibility of living a simple lifestyle without extra accommodations. Most of the things people pay for are more or less likely to not be necessarily needed, and it's highly probable that people end up miserable as they are left to pay off their education’s expenses, which could be the reason why McCandless felt influenced to abandon his privileged lifestyle. Although McCandless had the wealth to cover these costs, it wasn’t enough to make him feel as if he was actually living a meaningful life, let alone a simple one. In addition, the author Jon Krakauer of the book ‘Into The Wild’ states how McCandless had previously spent four years preparing to leave behind "the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence" (Ch. 3). Krakauer describes the surroundings of McCandless’ life as something asphyxiating with very little value, and it happened to be overwhelmingly bothersome to him.

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What Thoreau means by the Civil Disobedience is that every person should be govern more by his own moral compass that gives him much clearer answer to his deeds, rather than some laws of a government. “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward.” (1)

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