In his novel, Walden, Henry David Thoreau details his expedition and life at Walden Pond. Ira Booker, in her essay entitled “Giving the Game Away: Thoreau’s Intellectual Imperialism and the Marketing of Walden Pond”, interprets Thoreau’s life in the woods as a conquest of nature, and that Thoreau has turned it into a philosophy of how to live that persists in today’s modern day marketing scheme “get away from it all.” Booker provides a description of a car advertisement to show her argument in her article, but we can view this similar commercial to understand what she is saying.
The American idea of “untouched paradise”, persistent to this day is what Booker would equate to the very act building of a cabin on a remote lake. The author argues that Americans today equate Walden Pond to “untouched paradise”, and therefore we will go out of their way to buy things that lead us to this elusive place.
Thoreau’s excursion into the woods has created the modern American mindset of getting away and blazing your own trail. He says, “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.” (209) Thoreau does not want us to follow the “beaten path”, but rather take control and strive for our dreams, which are ironically spoon fed to us by our consumer culture.
Works Cited:
Brooker, Ira. “Giving the Game Away: Thoreau’s Intellectual Imperialism and the Marketing of Walden Pond.” Midwest Quarterly, Vol 45 issue 2. Academic Search Premier. Accessed: November 23, 2009.
Thoreau, Henry. Walden; or, Life in the Woods. New York: Dover Publications, 1995.
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Interesting, but I would have to say that Thoreau was not doing this excursion to market Walden Pond at all. It was a known fact that he was a true Transcendentalist and it shows in his writing. It is highly unlikely one would make up these ideas to sell a viewpoint of 'getting away from it all'.
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