Lecture Notes to Thoreau's "Economy," from Walden

• Title: as Thoreau explains later in the chapter, the title means something like "philosophy of
living," economy meaning "the thrifty management of resources"—hence one of the major
themes: materialism versus economy.
• The first chapter of Walden is an introduction to Thoreau's philosophy that led him to live at
Walden Pond for two years and two months. It gives the reader a background argument for this
dramatic step, diagnosing what he perceives to be the major drawbacks of the Industrial
Revolution and the American quest for materialist definitions of success (a Franklinian concept).

Para.1
• Thoreau explains he wrote Walden while living on Walden Pond. His philosophy is already
evidenced in the first paragraph in his radically simplified lifestyle: he lived in "a house which 1
had built myself and "earned my living by the labor of my hands only."
• Irony: At the present Thoreau considers himself a "sojourner in civilized life again." The word
sojourner means a temporary resident, someone passing through—a word that accrues meaning
when coupled with his ironic use of the word civilized. As we see, he spends the rest of the chapter
deconstructing our notion of "civilization" and "civilized" life.

Para.2
• Thoreau exhibits a self-consciousness in using the first-person "I," for fear of "egotism" and going
against the literary conventions of the time. Still, while Thoreau appears to humbly undertake "the
narrowness of my experience" as his main subject, he does feel inclined to address those readers to
"accept such portions [of his writing] as apply to them ... for it may do good service to him whom
it fits."
• In this sense Thoreau, like Franklin, writes in full self-consciousness that he is offering himself to
others as a representative "type," a contrast to Franklinian ideas of success; this contrast is
meaningfully (and intentionally, I think) invoked in the structure of his opening paragraph, which
clearly patterns itself after Franklin's introduction to The Autobiography, but with satiric intent.
As Brian Barbour has said, "he aims to destroy the false economy that results in a mere
accumulation of goods, and substitute for it a true economy, focusing life toward a spiritual end, a
reality not eroded by time" ("Franklin, Lawrence, and Tradition," 2).

P ara .3
• Allusions to the religious self-torture of high-caste Hindus in India and to Hercules and the 12
labors, each apparently impossible: this is an all-out satirical attack on his neighbors' endless labor
• These allusions establish Thoreau as a well-rounded intellectual man, not just some mindless
loafer

P a ra . 4
• Inheritance is a burden, adding to one's burden of keeping up with more stuff.
• Hvberbolic words—"serfs of the soil," "condemned," "digging their graves as soon as they are
born," "crushed and smothered under its load"—reflect Thoreau's opinion regarding society and
"civilization" in the wake of the Industrial Revolution.

Para.5
• Biblical allusion from Matthew 6:19: it is a "fool's life" to lay up treasures that are corruptible—
an indictment of materialism
• Satiric tone: Thoreau criticizes people who live a life of hard work without questioning what they
are working for—compelled by the "necessity" of material things, theirs is "a blind obedience to a
blundering oracle" (i.e.—Franklin? The dream of monetary success and happiness?)

Para.6
• Symbolic imagery: laboring man as "a machine"
Para.7
• Sardonic wit: people "trying to get out of debt" (yet who continue the cycle of more things, more
debt, more work) are "still living, and dying"

Para.8
• Too much work can lead to a kind of self-imposed slavery worse, in his view, that "Negro
slavery," and leading to a life of "quiet desperation" (f 9). These men are trapped and enslaved by
their own employment or possessions.
• Rhetorical persuasion through imaRe of slave: The image of the slave was particularly powerful in
Thoreau's time, when the debate about slavery in the South escalated and during which the
abolitionist movement was powerful in Massachusetts. His consideration of how a man enslaves
himself is primarily a rhetorical move, meant to emphasize the spiritual enslavement all people
face and not to de-emphasize the horrors of slavery.

Para.9
• Thoreau's prognosis: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" and "resignation"

Para.10
• Thoreau seeks to discover what "is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessities and
means of life."
• Thoreau is skeptical of traditions that are blindly adhered to out of a fear of change; in other
words, just because we have "always done it this way," does that make it right? Or beneficial? Yet
most people are unwilling to accept the possibility of change, or consider taking the risk toward
change, and this, he believes, is wrong.
• He disputes the "wisdom" of old people, mostly of whom have not truly "tried life"

Para.11
• The farmer, "with vegetable-made bones," lumbering along with plow and oxen, is morbidly
comic image of an individual who is set in his ways and refuses to accept the possibility of
change.

Para.12
• Thoreau laments that there is nothing that hasn't been done to the earth, but "man's capacities
have never been measured"—reflects the Transcendental belief that true virtue and happiness
depend upon self-realization and intuitive inner reflection that coincides with man's relationship to
nature/the world—basic optimism in the immeasurable resources /knowledge of mankind.

Para.13
• Thoreau invites us to think outside the box: "Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?"

Para.14
• Reverses the categories, or logic, of good and bad to continue to force us to think outside the box
and question social mores and customs of the time: "The greater part of what my neighbors call
good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good
behavior." Thoreau questions the validity of ethics when based on social, not moral conventions.
Slavery is a good example for this point: many in society justified this practice, but just because
society accepts it doesn't make it sound morally or ethically!

Para.15
• Thoreau refers to our "incessant anxiety and strain" as an "incurable form of disease. We are made
to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us!"—
Thoreau questions our progress: how much are we really accomplishing here?

Para. 16-18
 • Living "primitive or frontier life" will allow him to shed off life's un-necessities and discover
what he calls "necessaries of life" for humans: food, shelter, clothing, and fuel, the latter three
which he argues are not fundamental necessities because the sun can provide warmth enough in
some climates.

Para. 18
• Thoreau parodically refers to the "luxuriously rich" as "cooked"; they seek not to be "comfortably
warm" but "unnaturally hot"—this morbid image is a satiric assault on those who have been made
slaves to materialism which dries up their spiritual essence.

Para. 19
• "Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable,
but positive hindrances to the elevations of mankind": suggests that riches and possessions are
responsible for the degeneration of the human spirit.
• Appeal to ethos: People who live by "conformity, practically as their fathers did,...are in no sense
the progenitors of a noble race of men."—contrast to the philosopher who maintains "his vital heat
by better methods than other men."

Para.20
• Metaphor / Parable of soil, seed, and "nobler plants"—here Thoreau appeals to a higher way of
living—one where man's spiritual faculty may be developed and he may "may rise in the same
proportion [as a plant shooting out from the soil] into the heavens above," "far from the ground."

Para.21
• Thoreau, finally, addresses his words about their destructive power specifically to the discontented
"mass of men" (f 9) who complain about their lots in life yet have "forged their own golden or
silver fetters."