“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I want to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
-Page 906
I’ve always loved this quote, even before I read this chapter of Walden and learned the context surrounding it. The idea of being alive but not really living is one that interests me; in this passage, Throreau is separating “life” and “living” so that they become two entirely different concepts. In Thoreau’s mind, a person can be alive but that doesn’t mean they are necessarily living. What I find most interesting, however, is that Thoreau himself doesn’t even know what it truly means to “live,” and he has this fear that he won’t know what it means until he is dying--how depressing! He references “what was not life” because he doesn’t know what life actually is. It’s almost like he’s trying to use what isn’t life to define what life is and vice versa because he can’t put the definition into words himself; it's beyond him. This is similar to what he does with the concept of being awake versus slumbering on page 905, right before he shifts to talking about life. He seems to have a better grasp on this one, though; he believes that while we are considered “awake” when our eyes are open and we are moving about, we aren’t truly awake:
“The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only on in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic and divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?”
While discussing this concept, Thoreau seems to voice an idea of what living is—being alive is “being awake.” But again, his definition of awake isn’t a simple one. The final sentence of the passage makes it even more complex. What does he mean when he says that he couldn’t look an awake, or alive, man in the face? I’m wondering if it means that a man who is awake is so far removed (mentally more than physically, but perhaps both since Thoreau is looking for "life" in the woods) from the rest of society that they wouldn’t cross paths. Or, maybe he is referencing the divine. But how would Thoreau be able to distinguish a man who is awake from a man who isn’t awake if he doesn’t know what it means and hasn’t experienced it himself? Perhaps the problem is that he wouldn’t be able to distinguish for himself.
Anyway, I feel as though the paragraph on life is the thesis of the whole chapter and possibly the book itself because Thoreau is directly telling us WHY he chose the means of living that he has introduce to his readers while posing a question that he is hoping to be able to answer after his time at Walden—what is it like to truly live, and what is life?
I totally agree that this sounds like the heart of Walden/Thoreau's thesis. This passage also gives us a clearer sense of his true purpose for going to Walden Pond in the first place and for writing the book. He wants to share what he has learned with the world because he thinks it could be valuable. After all, he's discovering LIFE!!
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