Henry David Thoreau, in Walden, states that "I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up" (69). The fact to which Thoreau wishes to awaken his neighbors is the realization that they have become distracted and alienated from the true meaning of life. In effect, Thoreau wants Walden to operate as an extended metaphor of living according to his realizations during his two years of life in the woods. In the woods, Thoreau discovers what he believes to be the essential elements for living and, in Walden, extends the application of these elements to the whole world. He presents the drama of his own life metaphorically to demonstrate the tensions between himself, nature and town culture. Then, he attempts to offer his own original relationship as a guide to the relationship between man and man and between man and the universe.
Henry David Thoreau stated that he went to live in the woods because he "wished to live deliberately" (74). This concept of living deliberately pervades Walden because it is through his attempt to live so that Thoreau comes to the realizations whose articulation form the substance of Walden. One of the greatest concerns that led Thoreau to his two years in the woods was his fear that when he died he would discover that indeed he had not lived (Thoreau 74). He stated that he wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, "to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life" (Thoreau 74). He desired to force life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms so that he could determine whether life, at the bottom, were mean or sublime. If it proved to be mean, he stated, he would get the whole and genuine meanness of it and publish it to the world. On the other hand, if it were sublime, he would know it through his own personal experience (Thoreau 74).
One ...