Reading this book can be mentally stressful. For some, Thoreau is a genius with revolutionary ideas and philosophy. For others, he is just a hermit and social reject who was angry at the world and wanted his voice heard. After reading the book, I believe that Thoreau makes a good point in many cases and presents ideas that are worth attention. Determining the effectiveness of the argument, however, is left to the individual. Debra Polaski, a proffersor of english literature at Louisiana State University, would argue that Thoreau was an entirely original writer and philosopher, not to mention convincing. In an essay by Polaski entitled Woods and Walden she writes "Thoreau took what was seen but not understood and gave it meaning. Nature is where life begins and starts, and Thoreau wante

In a review after listening to Thoreau's lectures, Patrick Liefy a critic for a Concord newspaper, wrote "[Thoreau] evidently is not deficient in ability and might very probably attain to a more respectable rank [as a lecturer], if he were satisfied to be himself, Henry D. Thoreau, and not aim to be Ralph Waldo Emerson or anybody else. Even Thoreau's ideas and style were, for this reviewer, "mostly Emersonian, with occasional interludes in which the lecturer gave us glimpses of himself."

d to let society know of their ignorance"(Polaski).

Before Thoreau wrote Walden, he had set up a profession as a newspaper columnist and lecturer. To those he lectured, they thought he was an outstanding speaker and highly intellectual. On February 12th 1843, four days after listening to Thoreau read his lecture on Sir Walter Raleigh, Lidian Emerson wrote to her husband and told him that "Henry ought to be known as a man who can read a lecture." Even Emerson's wife saw something she liked in Thoreau. This was due to the influence from which he was speaking. Lidian liked what she heard, because it was her husbands style, presence, and delivery.

Thoreau was the son of a successful pencil maker, graduated from Harvard in 1837 with respectable study in the classics, and six languages, and later founded his own school. In the 1820's Thoreau invented a machine that ground the plumbago for the leads in the pencils into a very fine powder and developed a combination of the finely ground plumbago and clay that resulted in a pencil that produced a smooth, regular line. This invention was so successful that Thoreau pencils and leads were the direct American competition to the big German pencil manufacturer, Faber.

Many of Thoreau's entries from Walden had already been thought of when Emerson had earlier wrote "Self-Reliance." On the issue of clothing, Thoreau tells us that what you have on is all you need, as long as it traps in heat and keeps you dry. He mocks the nobility and upper class for having fancy outfits with brass and lace. The argument is that people of society have placed their identity in how their clothes make them look as opposed to who they are on the inside. It is a shallowness and in a form, shows weakness. The heavy competition for who can look the best, have the most clothes, and the nicest shoes sickens Thoreau. He believes that a patch or two on the clothing is alright, and for what it's worth, I agree with him. Where Thoreau falls short in convincing the reader is that he never tells us what's wrong with spending the money you have? Emerson maintained a life of refinement yet acknowledged that ideally all one needs to survive is the basics. Emerson focused largely on non-conformity in Self-Reliance and first addressed clothing by saying "We conform when we pay unearn

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Approximate Word count = 1885
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)