Summary The chapter opens with a dramatic dialogue between a Hermit (who seems to represent the narrator) and a Poet. The Hermit sits alone and muses upon a familiar question: “Why will men worry themselves so? He that does not eat need not work.” The Poet approaches him and asks […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 12 – Brute NeighborsSummary and Analysis Chapter 11 – Higher Laws
Summary While coming home from fishing one night, the narrator was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of rank, primitive animality, a feeling of wildness. Seeing a woodchuck cross his path, he felt “a strange thrill of savage delight” and was “strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw.” This same […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 11 – Higher LawsSummary and Analysis Chapter 10 – Baker Farm
Summary As the chapter opens, we again see the narrator freely roaming the countryside, enraptured with the beauty of the landscape. It is like a dreamland: pine groves stand “like temples” and a hemlock tree seems “like a pagoda in the midst of the woods.” He sees other trees that […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 10 – Baker FarmSummary and Analysis Chapter 9 – The Ponds
Summary Having returned to the woods and resumed his solitary, tranquil life, the narrator spent most of his time being continually “refreshed” by rambling about the surrounding countryside. He climbed Fair-Haven Hill and enjoyed the “ambrosial” flavors of ripe huckleberries and blueberries. Occasionally, after his hoeing was done for the […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 9 – The PondsSummary and Analysis Chapter 8 – The Village
Summary After hoeing, reading, or writing in the forenoon the narrator bathed, and “every day or two,” strolled to Concord to hear the latest news. He found that the news of the town, “was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of the leaves.” Unfortunately, the townsmen did […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 8 – The VillageSummary and Analysis Chapter 7 – The Bean-Field
Summary A principle activity of the narrator was tending his bean-field. It was a large one, “the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles,” and it provided him with food and a source of cash — beans and other vegetables gave him a profit of $8.71?. Early each […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 7 – The Bean-FieldSummary and Analysis Chapter 6 – Visitors
Summary “I am naturally no hermit,” begins the narrator, “I think that I love society as much as most.” Although much of his time at Walden was spent in solitary communion with nature, he did from time to time entertain visitors. In fact, he once had twenty-five people under his […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 6 – VisitorsSummary and Analysis Chapter 5 – Solitude
Summary As the chapter opens, we find the narrator has seemingly forgotten the railroad incident and is once again in ecstasy. He feels so much in harmony with nature that he declares that he is “a part of herself.” The evening is so “delicious” and his sense of oneness with […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 5 – SolitudeSummary and Analysis Chapter 4 – Sounds
Summary The narrator begins this chapter by cautioning the reader against an over-reliance on literature as a means to transcendence. While it does offer an avenue to truth, literature is the expression of an author’s experience of reality and should not be used as a substitute for reality itself. We […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 4 – SoundsSummary and Analysis Chapter 3 – Reading
Summary In “Economy,” the narrator advised his readers to cast off the inessential baggage of civilization so as to be free to adventure upon the great experiment of living. Great books, however, are one of the inheritances that men should not discard. While most of what men inherit from previous […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 3 – Reading