![]() ![]() In Walden, he embarks on a journey to find universal truth in nature instead.A follower of Transcendentalism, he thought that people enslaved themselves by seeking ever greater material gains. ![]() Thoreau rebelled against the status quo at a time when his native New England was rapidly industrializing and the United States was embarking on a massive territorial expansion.For two years, he grows crops on a small piece of land observes plants and animals and reflects on one’s purpose in life, divinity in nature and humans’ role on Earth. On July 4, 1845, Thoreau moves into a self-built cabin at Walden Pond near his hometown to live the simple life, spurning the luxuries of civilized society.Henry David Thoreau’s Walden or Life in the Woods is one of the great classics of 19th-century American literature.As canny today as it was in antebellum America, Thoreau’s book shows how far people have come and how little the human condition has changed over the decades. ![]() Writing during the early Industrial Revolution, just when the railroad had reached his hometown, he struggles with the purpose of life, the ever-quickening pace of work, the futility of materialism and the neglect of appreciating the beauty in the natural world. Henry David Thoreau may have escaped to the wilderness to write Walden or Life in the Woods nearly two centuries ago, but it wouldn’t be hard to imagine his book sitting on a bestseller list next to Eat, Pray, Love or Under the Tuscan Sun. ![]()
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