Henry David Thoreau - Walden Answers

Which best states the overall structure of Walden?

Read the excerpt from Walden.Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.Which best describes the purpose of the “thumb-nail” imagery?

Read the excerpt from Walden.Hardly a man takes a half-hour’s nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, “What’s the news?” as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels [soldiers].Which best describes the “man” Thoreau refers to in the excerpt?

Read the excerpt from Walden.[A]s the sun arose, I saw it [the pond] throwing off its nightly clothing of mist, and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle [secret meeting].In the excerpt, Thoreau uses imagery to describe

In the first paragraph of “Conclusion” in Walden, how does Thoreau explain his departure from the woods?

Read the excerpt from Walden.Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry—determined to make a day of it.How does Thoreau use the imagery of bells in the excerpt?

How does the progress of the last paragraph of “Where I Lived and What I Lived For” communicate the main idea of Walden?

In the second paragraph of “Spring” in Walden, how does the contrast of two time periods aid the development of a theme?

Read the excerpt from Walden.Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet is well as over our heads.Which best describes the purpose of the imagery in this excerpt?

Read the excerpt from the “Conclusion” of Walden.I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.What belief about life is being described in this excerpt?