In Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, spending time in solitude is important to the narrator because it gives him the opportunity to analyze the necessities, frivolities, and anxieties in human life.
During his time in solitude at
Frivolities are what society has said will improve a person’s life, yet for someone trying to live more fully, these things only get in the way. The problem with the meaningless things society gives people is that they push the truly important things out of the way. “As for Clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we are lead oftener by the love of novelty, and a regard for the opinion of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility,” (pg. 120). The novelty and men’s opinions of an article of clothing are not nearly as important as the clothing’s use in the person’s life. If the sole use of a piece of clothing is for other people to admire the wearer, then there is not any true point in buying it, for the novelty does not last long and people’s opinions change often. Humans have the strange ability to worry more about the state of their clothes than about the state of their mind. “No man stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is a greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience,” (pg. 121). People who place too much value on outward appearances lose their ability to think rationally and to properly judge character. When the frivolities of society have more control over a person’s daily life than their conscience, then they will lose sight of what really matters.
Anxiety is like a human craving, such as chocolate. People know they do not have to have it and would be better off without it, but they still give it to themselves. Humans have made their own lives busy. “It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not,” (pg. 173). People believe that the only way to live is if they constantly have to do things. However, a continually full schedule keeps people from enjoying and exploring life. “Our life is fritted away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest,” (pg.173). When a person simplifies their daily routine, they will have fewer things to remember; therefore they will not have to worry about forgetting something and they will have more time to relax and have fun. The key to decreasing a person’s anxiety is to simplify what a person has to do so that they can spend more time doing what they want to do.
Thoreau makes the point that when a person steps back from society for a time, they can see the world for all its silliness when it comes to people’s obsession with unneeded items and unnecessarily long “to do” lists. Walden may at first seem to the reader to be a personal record of a hermit’s random babblings and opinions. However, once the reader enters into Thoreau’s world through the pages of the narrative, they realize that he is challenging people to break the social laws and etiquette, if only for a few moments, to see what they can discover. The reader is given the opportunity to explore life; the narrator is simply daring them to try. However, the decision is completely up to the reader.
