Examples Of Transcendentalism In Walden

Like “Nature” there are many recurring themes of Transcendentalism in Henry David Thoreau's piece “Walden”. In this story Thoreau begins by explaining why he went into nature. He left society to avoid consistency and to learn things about himself from nature. He wished to simplify his life to the bare minimum and to discover the only things that he needed in his life to survive. He says “Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers… and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” (253) Thoreau believed that people complicate their own lives too much. People always stress and complain about everything that they have to do and everything that they have to take on but what they don’t realize is that most of
Thoreau doesn’t believe in the news or the mail system. He believes that always paying attention to the news of things around him will blind an individual from himself and keep him in the dark. He also writes about how he has “never received more than one or two letters that were worth the postage.” (254) Henry David Thoreau left the woods for the same reason that he arrived. He believed that he learned all that he could from the situation and in order to avoid consistency he was going to open a new chapter in his life and see what he learns from the new path. He learned that the world follows so much tradition and conformity, which he did not want to participate in. One of the most important things that he learned from living in the woods was that “if one advances confidently in the direction of their dreams… he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” In other words if someone works are hard as they can they will always be successful and they will be capable of putting the past behind them and embracing the