Walden Essay

*Author's note: These are being published to provide students with a fresh perspective on some frequently-studied works of American and British literature. Feel free to play around with my point of view but please do not plagiarize in part or in whole. Consider my text a stepping stone and allow your thoughts to flourish in your own writing.

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer," Henry David Thoreau wrote this famous line in his most recognized novel Walden in 1854. It was during this time that the Transcendentalist movement was in full swing, and Thoreau's wonderful memoirs easily fit into this fascinating literary category.

There are a few different elements and qualities that set Walden apart from other popular readings - both in Thoreau's time and today. These specific qualities also put Walden dangerously on the border of either being a novel or non-fiction. It is difficult to distinguish which category would best fit this classic. Even though Walden is based on Thoreau's true-life experiences, thus making it a non-fiction read, however the style in which Thoreau tells us of these experiences would characterize Walden as a novel. Walden does in fact tell a story - a story of the spiritual awakening inside himself.

One of the more obvious elements is found in the setting of the book. Thoreau spent two years living "deliberately" at the now famous and ironically over-industrialized Walden Pond. Before Thoreau, no other author had attempted to write a book in the same conditions he did, and after Thoreau, no one did it with the same amount of notoriety or success.

Probably the most unique element In Thoreau's story is that he is giving is the story from a first person point of view. Thoreau explained this best by saying, "I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well." - an excellent point.