Unexpected Critiques in Walden

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Unexpected Critiques in Walden

In Walden, Henry David Thoreau utilizes many different styles and themes to explain his ideas about shelter in further detail. Thoreau uses lists, long and short sentences, imagery, and different narrative voices. But out of all the things Thoreau uses to strengthen his argument, the most powerful is his unexpected comparisons and his sarcasm towards shelter. Thoreau uses these to get the reader interested, but more importantly it gets the reader to reconsider his/her contentment and think about how ridiculous society was then concerning shelter.

Early in "Economy", Thoreau writes about shelter in regards to how humans first came to use and later need shelter. The passage starts off by explaining how some person a long time ago decided to dwell in a cave for shelter. Through Thoreau's word usage and imagery, his idea that humans do not need shelter is clear. He starts this argument with the topic of child rearing. He states that since a child "loves to stay out doors, even in wet and cold," the instinct to have shelter is not biological (Thoreau 28). It must be something that is taught to children, most likely from observation. At the same time no one, even Thoreau, knows where and how this instinct originated. He just knows that "in the infancy of the human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter" (28). In using words and phrases like "primitive," "the infancy of the human race," and "most primitive ancestor" the reader understands how important shelter has become to the human race because it is so deeply rooted in human's minds (28).

From here Thoreau dives into a long list of how humans have developed their shelter over time, from "roofs of palm leave...

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... afford just to be "civilized." He states all the, "benefit[s] of the improvements of centuries, [like] spacious apartments... [and] Venetian blinds" (31). He finishes off this long list of expensive luxuries with the main idea of this passage: Why is the civilized man making himself more poor by renting while the savage lives in relative luxury in his "wigwam."

Thoreau's main tools in persuading the reader are his uses of light sarcasm and comparisons and critiques based on animals, savages, and civilized people. When backed up with logical reasoning, these two tools make the reader really step back and think about his/her happiness in regards to shelter. In making the reader reevaluate everything about shelter, Thoreau keeps the reader interested and in turn, the reader keeps on reading the book. Which, in fact, is all Thoreau really wants in the first place.

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