[Justin Mignemi]

Setting plays a major role in Walden. Nature is one of the key components in the book. Thoreau is constantly in or making references to nature and how it affects his life. Thoreau is surrounded by nature in his cabin, and it has become a big part of him.

[Justin Mignemi]

In The Village, Thoreau writes “Sometimes I bolted suddenly, and nobody could tell my whereabouts, for I did not stand much about gracefulness, and never hesitated at a gap in a fence.” Chris McCandless does something extraordinarily similar to this, going on his way and not looking back. Chris bolted off, no one knew who he was or where he was going except for him. He made many stops on the way, similar to Thoreau talking about the lack of gracefulness in Walden. Chris never hesitates either, parallel to the story, Chris burns his money and ditches his car just to get where he wants to go.

[Justin Mignemi]

If Thoreau were alive today, he would still see the hustle and bustle he hates, but now with the added technology of the 21st century. Thoreau says “Why should we live with such hurry and waste life?”, he would still see many of the same patterns he saw all those years ago. People today are not only just as busy, but they are even more involved with the lives of others like in social media, and the materialism that is so supported in today’s society. He would not be excited about the world we live in and the lack of self assessment and evaluation we have today. Not only that, but nowadays we are even less involved with nature, so much so that many people would rather take a picture off the internet of a beautiful place and make it their wallpaper instead of going out to those places and just enjoying the view.

[Justin Mignemi]

I feel like reading this book will won’t be beneficial or difficult but instead just educational, at least for myself. Learning about new ways of thinking is interesting and seeing it from the point of view of someone who lived so long ago is very different. I think that collectively as a group it’s going not going to be beneficial for us to be using this technology out there for all of our classmates to see. I think that when you have things like this out there people are just going to either write to please the teacher or to not sound unintelligent in front of all their classmates, which is not at all the point of abandoning all worldly possessions and being with nature like in Walden.

[Justin Mignemi]

My Walden is in the shower. It’s my only true place with no distractions, and helps me think clearly and make decisions. Every time I’m in the shower and feel the warm water on my head it’s like all of my emotions are just gone and I can think about things and not be angry or upset about them. There are no people to interrupt my me-time, my Walden, in the shower.

[Author]

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