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Analysis Of Why I Went To The Woods By Henry David Thoreau

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Why I Went to the Woods by Henry David Thoreau is a piece of literature taken from the book Walden that discusses Thoreau’s desire to experience life and it's meaning by living by the most simple terms possible. Thoreau lived off the land, built his own home, hunted and fished his own food. Through these things, Thoreau experienced how life is lived without luxury and only with the raw basics. Although his passion for the natural world shows through his writing his goal is not to persuade others to follow in his footsteps by going out and living in nature. Thoreau wanted others to follow him by living their best life which would be achieved by following their passions and the things they enjoy. Other works by Thoreau include Civil Disobedience, Poems of Nature, Life Without Principle and many more. …show more content…

It was his lifestyle. Henry David Thoreau lived from 1817 to 1862, a time with technology as advanced as cameras, the bicycle and dynamite. Shortly after his death in 1876 came the telephone. One hundred and fourty-two years later, the telephone has advanced from lines and dials to touch screens and voice control. Why I Went to the Woods is a piece of writing that is many a times the view of modern day Americans engulfed in the constant cycle of the technology takeover. Thoreau went to the woods to live and live deliberately. Living deliberately entails living consciously and intentionally. Thoreau’s intent was to live without regret of not living enough. In today’s society the focus is on living through others with a constant need for validation. Thoreau first published this piece of literature in 1854, 164 years

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Chris McCandless looked up to Henry David Thoreau’s ideas in his Walden excerpt. John Krakauer went on to make McCandless’ journey a novel of its own. However, Chris McCandless and Henry David Thoreau’s ideas on how one should live their life didn’t always compare as much as contrast. Thoreau does not like the outdoors as much as Chris does, “I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one” (Walden).

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He suggests that you might look around yourself and really take into consideration as to how you are spending your short time you’re given in this life. Much like Chris McCandless, Henry David Thoreau looks around him and finds himself to be displeased. To quote Thoreau, “ I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Much like McCandless, Thoreau thought very little of money, jobs and other things of the civilized world. Henry Thoreau concluded that to live, not much is needed.

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(Walden) This belief quotes relates McCandless belief of living deliberately. This belief connects them for going into the woods. McCandless’ and Thoreau’s belief supports themes of a true Transcendentalist.

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