Henry David Thoreau -- Walden

Discussion Questions:

1.) After reading these selections from Walden, what thoughts come to mind concerning Thoreau? Particular passages? Particular ideas? Thoreau as a person? Thoreau as a writer? Any applications to your own life? Any applications to contemporary society? Too idealistic?

2.) Which images, if any, stick in your mind?

3.) Thoreau’s book is meant to be inspirational. Did you find it so? Why or why not? What other literature has inspired you?

4.) Which elements, ideas, or ideals of literary Romanticism do you see in these selections from Walden?

5.) Which elements, ideas, or ideals of Transcendentalism do you see in these selections from Walden?

6.) Explain the following assessment: “Thoreau uses analogy as both a method of introspection and a method of religious meditation.”

7.) How does Thoreau’s meditation compare to Puritan mediation (of Bradstreet, Taylor, Edwards, and others) or to Enlightenment meditation (of Franklin and others)?

8.) Compare and discuss these two quotations from Walden:

• “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
• ”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.”

9.) With which of the following assessments of Walden do you most agree?

• “It is the work of an arrogant preacher, a pantheistic egoist, an antic stranger opposed to stability and order.”
• “It is a literary masterpiece, a great document of social dissent, a spiritual testament.”