Walden; or, Life in the Woods

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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear.

Not a plot novel but a seasonal-philosophical structure—Economy through Conclusion—the 'narrative' is Thoreau's two-year experiment compressed into a single arc of awakening, so plot scores 72.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.

Thoreau himself as sole consciousness; visitors appear as foils not characters; the pond, the bean-field, the loon, the ants are more vivid presences than any human except the narrator—by design, so cast scores 70.

For numbers and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two killed on the patriots' side, and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why here every ant was a Buttrick,—"Fire! for God's sake fire!"—and thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was not one hireling there.

Meditative and recursive—the same pond, the same cabin, the same seasons revisited from different philosophical angles; the ant-battle and ice-cutting passages provide vivid set-pieces but long stretches require patience, so pace scores 76.

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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear.

Transcendental precision and aphoristic brilliance—'I wished to live deliberately,' 'The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation'—sentences that became American scripture, so prose scores 94.

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only.

Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts, 1845–1847: a mile-square universe rendered with cartographic intimacy—depth, color, ice, surrounding hills, the Fitchburg Railroad—the pond as microcosm of nature and the self, so world scores 88.

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only.

Economy opening immediately establishes the experiment and the voice—less dramatic than Ishmael or Huck but philosophically inviting—so hook scores 88.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or an oak.

Foundational text of American nature writing; the two-year-experiment-as-book format, the economic accounting of simplicity, the civil disobedience appendix—created the template for every subsequent back-to-nature memoir, so innov scores 92.

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. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Conclusion refuses closure while opening outward—the worn path metaphor, 'The sun is but a morning star'—the ending is invitation not resolution, so ending scores 90.