Waldo

Character List

There are no major characters in Walden other than Thoreau, who is both the narrator and the main human subject of his narrative. The following list identifies figures who appear in the work, as well as historical figures to whom Thoreau refers.

Henry David Thoreau -

Amateur naturalist, essayist, lover of solitude, and poet. Thoreau was a student and protйgй of the great American philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson , and his construction of a hut on Emerson's land at Walden Pond is a fitting symbol of the intellectual debt that Thoreau owed to Emerson. Strongly influenced by Transcendentalism, Thoreau believed in the perfectibility of mankind through education, self-exploration, and spiritual awareness. This view dominates almost all of Thoreau's writing, even the most mundane and trivial, so that even woodchucks and ants take on allegorical meaning. A former teacher, Thoreau's didactic impulse transforms a work that begins as economic reflection and nature writing to something that ends far more like a sermon. Although he values poverty theoretically, he seems a bit of a snob when talking with actual poor people. His style underscores this point, since his writing is full of classical references and snippets of poetry that the educated would grasp but the underprivileged would not.

Henry David Thoreau (In-Depth Analysis)