Walden Pond

Thoreau has very intriguing views and I can see how his writing influenced McCandless the way it did. He emphasizes exploring one’s life from the most simplistic stance. He states quite clearly that learning is best done by experience instead of unnecessary learning done at universities. A person learns only what is necessary and is thus “unburdened” by the things not important in this life. I like how he describes this by the boys that obtain a knife. The one that learns to do it and gets a knife from it, or the one who knows the process but hasn’t done it. “Which would be most likely to cut his fingers?”