Walden — Outline
Thesis
“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.”
Development
- 1.
Introductory: the experiment and its rationale
Economy“I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life”
- 2.
Statement of purpose: deliberate living
Where I Lived, and What I Lived For“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”
- 3.
The value of serious reading over cheap literature
Reading“To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem.”
- 4.
The language of nature beyond books
Sounds“Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer?”
- 5.
Solitude as sufficient society
Solitude“I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
- 6.
Visitors and the limits of social intercourse
Visitors“I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”
- 7.
Labor as parable: the bean-field
The Bean-Field“I said to myself, I will not plant beans and corn with so much industry another summer, but such seeds, if the seed is not lost, as sincerity, truth, simplicity, faith, innocence, and the like”
- 8.
Civil society and its encroachments
The Village“wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions”
- 9.
Description and praise of Walden Pond
The Ponds“A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.”
- 10.
Simple economy illustrated by a neighbor's failure
Baker Farm“Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs.”
- 11.
The dual instinct: wildness and higher law
Higher Laws“I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both.”
- 12.
Wild creatures as neighbors
Brute Neighbors“I suspect that Pilpay & Co. have put animals to their best use, for they are all beasts of burden, in a sense, made to carry some portion of our thoughts.”
- 13.
Preparing for winter: warmth and simplicity
House-Warming“I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter.”
- 14.
Former inhabitants and winter visitors
Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors“For human society I was obliged to conjure up the former occupants of these woods.”
- 15.
Winter wildlife around the pond
Winter Animals“What is a country without rabbits and partridges?”
- 16.
Sounding the pond: depth as moral symbol
The Pond in Winter“What I have observed of the pond is no less true in ethics. It is the law of average.”
- 17.
Spring as renewal and cosmic type
Spring“The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree”
- 18.
Conclusion: the call to inward exploration
Conclusion“if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Conclusion
“Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”