Luxuries only overheat: they corrupt and make everything worse. Yep, like blanket over your shoulders, fire at your fingertips warm.

And get this: if you want luxuries (meaning anything more than those four things), it's because – wait for it – you want to be warm.

All you need is food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. This transcendentalist has all the answers.

Now to the pressing question: what really are the necessities of life? Don't worry.

That way, his readers can see how much variety is possible if only we broke out from conformity.

Thoreau also thinks that there are a lot of different types of personalities out there, so there is something to be gained by showing how completely unique his personal experience is.That's why he's conducting an experiment on the edges of Walden Pond, to figure out whether there's another and better way of living your life.Instead, man (Thoreau isn't too good with the gender-neutral 'he or she,' but that's his time) is reduced to a mere slave or machine, living 'lives of quiet desperation' (Economy.9). Why is he spending so much time on himself? Well, he believes that most people work terribly hard, but that this work isn't personally fulfilling.

So that his English teacher doesn't scold him, Thoreau justifies his use of the first person 'I,' since it is his own very personal experience that he's writing about.

(It sounds like he was taping Survivor: Walden Pond.)

Thoreau explains that he wrote most of Walden while living by Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts where he spent a total of two years and two months before he returned to civilization.

Walden by henry david thoreau