Thoreau Response

Nature is arguably one of the most powerful forces on earth. It can be serene and stunning in one instant but become mankind’s worst enemy in the next. Henry David Thoreau’s excerpt from Walden Pond beautifully describes nature and how amazing it can be to live simply in. What Thoreau did not account for was the vastly growing population of America and just how rich the resources are. He was not able to take a look into the future and see how strong America would become. Humans need to have interaction with one another. It is the nature of almost every living thing on the earth. Wolves travel in packs, birds in flocks and so on. It is as if that need was programmed into the minds of everything that breathes. If every person in America were to attempt to live like Thoreau describes the community would suffer because of the growing population, isolation from necessary help, and restriction on the mind.
Around Thoreau’s time there were a smaller number of people who lived in America. Free and untouched land was vast and easy to come by. He says, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life…” (Thoreau 1). He was able to basically walk into his backyard and build a cabin there. Today the population has grown so much that many people are lucky to have a backyard. In having tighter spaces people have learned to come together and be civil with one another. They learned to work with and around obstacles and one another. Friendly neighbors are made; rival ones forgotten. People have learned how to make others smile and cheer up the gloomier ones. If they were all to have built an isolated, self-sufficient cabin in the woods, this would not have been possible. They would have to rel...

... middle of paper ...

...create life altering inventions. This story, to Thoreau, would not have been known and the invention may have become useless if everyone lived in isolation. Also everyone has different skill sets. Some can hunt while others can sew. If humanity tried to be self-sufficient, it would not work. Nobody can do everything. It takes a community of different people combining their talents to create a better place.
It is very important to have a community and not be in isolation. Thoreau’s ideas may be perfect for a utopian society but the fact of the matter is that it just simply cannot be done. Everyone is different with different skills. They have different ideas and have evolved to help and respect one another. It is jeopardizing to the community to live in isolation because people would not survive for very long. It is better to have a community than constant silence.