All of
can be understood as a passionate argument in favor of living a
non-conformist, individualist life. This, according to Thoreau, is the only way to live life
fully.
Thoreau states in the first chapter that he has sought out the
simplest life possible, near Walden Pond, so that he can find out who he is as an individual and
what life is when stripped to its bare essentials. He argues that by accumulating material goods
and going into to debt to conform to society's ideas of an appropriate lifestyle, most
people
lead lives of quiet desperation.
He knows that spending a year at Walden Pond, not working,
subsisting in a tiny cabin, is a non-conformist choice. Nevertheless, he explains in one of the
most famous lines in the book that he
wanted to front only
the essential facts of life . . . and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not
lived.
Thoreau's goal is to "suck out all the marrow
of life," and he can only do this, he believes, by living in a way that does not conform
but is true to himself as an individual.
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