Chapter One: ‘‘Economy’’
Thoreau begins by telling readers that he is writing to answer why he chose to live alone for more than two years in a small, simple cabin near Walden Pond. Much of the chapter is devoted to explaining that the way most people live, spending all their time and energy working to acquire luxuries, does not lead to human happiness and wellbeing. Thoreau writes that he prefers having time to walk in nature and to think much more than working long hours to pay for big houses, large tracts of land, herds of animals, or other property. He goes so far as to say that the ownership of such things is actually a disadvantage, as one who owns them must take care of them, while one who owns little has more freedom to do as he or she pleases. This is why Thoreau chose to live simply and cheaply in a house he built for himself: in simplicity and economy he found freedom. Finally, Thoreau describes how he built his house. He includes exact figures showing how much he spent on materials (twenty-eight dollars and twelve and one-half cents).
Chapter Two: ‘‘Where I Lived, and What I Lived For’’
Continuing the idea set forth in the first chapter, Thoreau writes that he once considered buying a farm. He realized, though, that a person did not have to own a farm to enjoy those things about it that are most valuable, such as the beauty of its landscape. Thoreau concludes: ‘‘But I would say to my fellows, once for all, as long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.’’ He urges his readers to simplify their lives as well so that they may live fully and freely.
Thoreau describes the area around his cabin and how much he enjoyed the peaceful natural surroundings. He answers the question why he lived there:
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.
Chapter Three: ‘‘Reading’’
Here Thoreau makes a case for reading good books. He points out that the best books are ‘‘the noblest recorded thoughts of man’’ and that such books can take readers nearer to heaven. He complains that hardly anyone reads these books. Instead, he writes, people who are perfectly capable of reading the classics waste their time on unchallenging and worthless popular stories. He calls society to task for failing to be a ‘‘patron of the fine arts.’’
Chapter Four: ‘‘Sounds’’
Thoreau writes that reading must be complemented by direct experience. This is in keeping with his transcendentalist philosophy, which emphasizes direct, intuitive experience of nature, truth and the divine.
In this chapter, Thoreau focuses on the sounds he experiences at Walden, from the singing of birds to the whistle of a train, and on how these sounds affect his mood. The sounds of animals especially cause him to feel the unity and joy of all things.
Chapter Five: ‘‘Solitude’’
Thoreau makes his case that the companionship of nature is more fulfilling than that of humans, and that he could not possibly be lonely in nature because he is a part of it. The plants and animals are his friends and, amid the peace of nature, God himself is the author’s visitor:
I have occasional visits . . . from an old settler and original proprietor, who is reported to have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods; who tells me stories of old time and of new eternity; and between us we manage to pass a cheerful evening with social mirth and pleasant views of things.
Chapter Six: ‘‘Visitors’’
Calling himself ‘‘no hermit,’’ Thoreau writes that he did have visitors during his years at Walden. He describes at length a Canadian woodchopper who often did his work in the woods around Thoreau’s cabin. Thoreau got to know the man and liked him because he lived simply and in harmony with nature. However, Thoreau eventually realized that ‘‘the intellectual and what is called spiritual man in him were slumbering as in an infant.’’
Other visitors included children, whom Thoreau liked for their innocence and enthusiasm, and ‘‘half-witted men from the almshouse.’’ The latter, Thoreau writes, were in many cases wiser than the men who were running the town, and he ‘‘thought it was time that the tables were turned.’’
Chapter Seven: ‘‘The Bean Field’’
The author describes his bean field and how he worked it. As usual, Thoreau gives both practical details and a mystical report of his agricultural project. He explains just how he worked his field and how much profit he made from it. He also asserts that the sun and the rain are the true cultivators and that woodchucks and birds have as much right to their share of the harvest as Thoreau has to his.
Chapter Eight: ‘‘The Village’’
Thoreau often walked into the village, he reports, to hear just a little of its incessant gossip. A little news and gossip, he found, was entertaining, while more than a little numbed the soul. He did not like to stay long or to partake in too much of village life.
He reports that on one visit to the village he was arrested and put in jail (but soon released) for failing to pay taxes. He refused to pay, he explains, as a protest against the legality of slavery.
Chapter Nine: ‘‘The Ponds’’
Most of this chapter is devoted to a detailed description of Walden Pond and the idyllic times Thoreau enjoyed in and around it. The author again describes the unity of nature, self, and divinity that he experiences there. He makes clear that the pond has a special kind of spiritual purity, calling it ‘‘God’s Drop.’’ He also describes other nearby ponds.
Chapter Ten: ‘‘Baker Farm’’
This chapter contrasts Thoreau’s joyful, contented, and easy life with the life of one of his neighbors in the woods, John Field. Field is an Irish laborer who works long days turning the soil for area farmers. Thoreau sees that Field works himself to exhaustion to pay the rent on his rustic hut and to feed his family. He explains to Field that there is another way to live—the way that Thoreau has chosen. Thoreau can see, though, that Field is not willing to give up the chase for ‘‘luxuries’’ such as coffee and beef, so he leaves Field alone, grateful that he himself has found a better way to live.
Chapter Eleven: ‘‘Higher Laws’’
Like the last chapter, this one presents a basic contrast. First, Thoreau acknowledges his own animal instincts, apparent, for example, when he sees a woodchuck and is ‘‘strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw.’’ Then he describes his spiritual instinct toward ‘‘higher’’ things. Both are to be accepted as part of human nature, he says, but as a person matures, the spiritual should wax while the animal wanes. In fact, Thoreau believes that the entire human race is evolving from animal to spiritual consciousness. Because killing and eating animals is an expression of the lower, animal instinct, Thoreau stopped hunting and ate very little meat or fish. ‘‘I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals,’’ he writes.
Chapter Twelve: ‘‘Brute Neighbors’’
Following what has become a pattern, Thoreau again takes up the same idea explored in the previous chapter, but explores it in a new way. This chapter begins with a dialogue between a Hermit and a Poet. Thoreau makes clear that these two characters represent himself and a visitor who used to come to his cabin. The gist of the dialogue is that the Poet—the visitor—tempts the Hermit to leave his meditations and go fishing. The Hermit wonders, ‘‘Shall I go to heaven or a-fishing?’’ and ends by going fishing. In this battle between the animal and the spiritual natures of man, the animal has won.
The rest of the chapter describes many animals that lived around Thoreau. In observing them, Thoreau concludes that both the animal and the spiritual natures coexist in animals and that animals experience no conflict between the two.
Chapter Thirteen: ‘‘House-Warming’’
Thoreau prepared for winter by collecting wild apples, grapes, and nuts and by winterizing his house. He built a chimney (he had been cooking on a fire outdoors) and plastered his cabin to keep out the cold wind. By the time this work was finished, the pond was frozen, and Thoreau delighted in observing the ice itself and the bottom of the pond, which he could clearly see through the ice.
Chapter Fourteen: ‘‘Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors’’
In deep winter, nature slept and visitors rarely came to Thoreau’s cabin. He acknowledges that this extreme solitude was a challenge. ‘‘For human society I was obliged to conjure up the former occupants of these woods,’’ he writes.
The author tells about three former slaves and their homes in the woods; about the Stratton and Breed families, the latter ruined by rum; and about Wyman the potter and Hugh Quoil, an alcoholic who was said to have fought at the Battle of Waterloo. Walks in the dark, quiet winter woods, and the infrequent human visitors of winter are also recalled.
Chapter Fifteen: ‘‘Winter Animals’’
Thoreau describes walking on the frozen ponds, from which he could see the woods at new angles, and his observations of wildlife in winter. Squirrels, rabbits, and other creatures lived around, under, and above his cabin, and he threw them corn and potato peels to help them through the winter.
Chapter Sixteen: ‘‘The Pond in Winter’’
Thoreau recalls using his surveying skills to map Walden Pond and to measure its depth—one hundred seven feet. He tells of a large crew of laborers coming to harvest the pond’s ice, which would be shipped to faraway places and sold. This idea of Walden being spread over the Earth is mirrored in Thoreau’s writing. He read the Bhagavad Gita (a Hindu scripture) in the mornings, which made him think of ‘‘pure Walden water mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.’’
Chapter Seventeen: ‘‘Spring’’
The thawing of the pond and the stirring of animals signaled spring, and Thoreau reports that he felt in himself the same revitalization that he saw taking place all around him. Once again, he exults in nature. At the end of this chapter, Thoreau gives the date on which he left his life in the woods but does not say why he left.
Chapter Eighteen: ‘‘Conclusion’’
Near the beginning of this chapter, Thoreau summarizes what he learned during his time in the woods:
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. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him. . . . In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty, nor weakness weakness.
Thoreau ends his narrative by urging readers to apply to their own lives what he has shared with them. He counsels them to explore inner, rather than outer, worlds: ‘‘Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.’’ He is confident that new ways of thinking will lead to new, fulfilling ways of living.
