Thoreau and True Solitude

When documenting his time living by himself in a self-made home on Walden pond, Henry David Thoreau decided to do much more than simply transcribe events in a linear, logical order. He wanted to engage his audience and force them think about the society they lived in. To do this,  Thoreau would often take his own experience and use it as a stepping stone for much bigger concepts and observations. While there are many instances throughout Henry David Thoreau’s Walden where he clearly and smoothly transitions from experience to theory, one of the most interesting and thought provoking examples occurs in the fifth paragraph of  Solitude.

In this passage, Thoreau discusses the time he spent alone in the woods and how it affected him.  While many of his peers probably expected him to feel lonely and isolated from the world during his experiment in the woods, Thoreau actually observed that, during his time on Walden pond, company was all around him.  Earlier in the passage, he talks of even the pine needles showing him sympathy and befriending him; Thoreau is making a claim that no one is ever truly alone and that loneliness is all relative.  When one takes the time to see and appreciate the life around them,  it is impossible to be lonely. Company isn’t just the presence of other people, it’s the presence of nature and one’s self realization.

What finally inspires Thoreau to move up one level of abstraction is the skeptics who constantly ask him if he ever felt lonesome, and Thoreau responds with asking a question of his own.  What does it truly mean to be lonely? When looking at our planet as a whole, and even the entire universe, in a sense we are all lonely. We are millions, if not billions, of light-years away from the closest non-human organism in our solar system. The human race is indescribably distant from other species in the known universe, and yet people are surprised when Thoreau, who is only a few miles away from the closest town, maintains that he never felt lonesome. He presents his experience living “alone” in forest to introduce the theory true enlightenment is not found in the company of like-minded human individuals, such as a town hall or grocery store, but in the company of what he calls “…the perennial source of our life… as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction.”  I found this whole passage utterly fascinating because it challenges everything about the very idea of solitude. If Thoreau can rejoice in the simplicity of solitude and nature, why couldn’t I do the very same thing with my own life? Somehow Thoreau managed to reach me as an individual while talking about something has grand and encompassing as the entire Milky Way galaxy. A task not many would have been able to accomplish.

Thoreau’s transition in this passage is necessary in that he not only needs the reader to understand him and his actions at Walden pond, but he needs the reader to identify with the larger ideas at play in his book.  The first step is the reader grasping why Thoreau’s solitude can be seen as a pure way of life, the second is them realizing the trappings of modern society and how one can live away from it successfully. If Thoreau’s personal experiences are how lived off the land for two years, he must transition into theoretical thinking to explain why he did this. Many would agree that it’s an author’s purpose to speak to his audience through their work, so it is vital that he makes such a transition as the one he makes in “Solitude.” Without this new level of abstraction, his tale could be seen as nothing more than an autobiography, but with it, Thoreau can give his reader reason to stop and reflect so that they may enrich their lives; just as living on Walden pond has enriched his.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.