He is a Hypocrite

When Thoreau wrote Walden, he was expressing the need for society to go back to the basics of life. To do this Thoreau lived in the wilderness surrounding Walden Pond for two years. He used items that he found in nature to sustain himself during his two years in the wilderness, by doing this he cut himself off from the luxuries of modern civilization. Thoreau analyzed the beauty of everything in his surrounding area, from the animals around him to the effect of the change of seasons to his home. Thoreau analyzed everything to such an extent that he usually contradicted himself. Thoreau stated that people do not need to travel, and that everything that they need is in their current surroundings. Toward the end of his two-year stay at Walden Thoreau realized that he was wrong he wrote, “I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct.” By making this statement Thoreau showed his understanding for the need for change and simplicity.

When Thoreau stated, “It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves” he was expressing the necessity of change in one’s life. As an example of a person who had fallen into such a route, Thoreau used himself. He wrote about how he had dug a path to Walden Pond from his home which he used everyday of his stay at Walden. Thoreau was using this statement as a metaphor for how people should not be close-minded about change, and instead should embrace it or else they will dig a “rut” in their daily routine that will be impossible to get out of. This is most commonly seen in people when a person is offered a new job at a new location. The person is so afraid of changing his daily routine and losing his current friends, that he will not take the new job for fear of change. An example of this was Thoreau leaving Walden Pond. Though Thoreau was content with his life in the wilderness, he knew there might be better places for him to be at that point in his life, yet he did not leave for two years. Though Thoreau was reluctant to leave at, after some consideration he left his “rut” and dug a path to a location at which he could be content.

Thoreau’s other reason for leaving behind the “route” he had dug at Walden was that by occupying it too long he was helping it lose its simplicity. Walden expressed his fear that Walden would lose its simplicity by stating, “ I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped keep it open”. When Thoreau wrote this passage he was referring to the route that he had dug for himself. As his route became more traveled, it would have become more inviting for society to follow. As more people followed the route that Thoreau had dug, the simplicity, which Walden Pond had, would have been overrun by the complexity of civilization. For this reason Thoreau abandoned his route which he had traveled for two years, thereby preserving the simplicity of Walden. The risk Thoreau had taken (though it contradicted what he said earlier about traveling) helped preserve what this whole novel was about, It helped preserve the simplicity of land not touched by civilization.
Though Thoreau contradicted himself through out all of Walden, he did actually end up preserving the simplicity of the pond by leaving it. Thoreau’s two years in the woods were spent exploring himself until there was nothing left to analyze. Though he went into the wilderness with the intention of living a simple life, Thoreau actually infected the wilderness in his vicinity with reasoning and deductions on everything around him. The only time when Thoreau actually acted out his philosophy was when he left his so-called “route” on Walden Pond.