Reading Thoreau
Four SessionsA literary course for adult readers and writers · taught by James F. Mulhern
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Important Information & Course Materials▾
An Invitation▾
Henry David Thoreau went to the woods, he said, because he wished to live deliberately. What he wrote in the two years he spent at Walden Pond — and in the essay he wrote after a night in Concord jail for refusing to pay tax to a slaveholding government — remains among the sharpest American writing ever produced. It is also, more than 170 years later, still unsettling to read.
This four-session workshop reads Walden and “Civil Disobedience” slowly. Not for their doctrine — Thoreau was not a doctrinaire man — but for their sentences, their arguments, and their ability to make an ordinary life feel like an unlived life. Thoreau writes to unsettle. We honor that by letting him.
Three sessions on Walden (we cannot cover the whole book, but we can read enough to know it), one session on “Civil Disobedience.” No previous reading is required.
What This Course Is▾
- A four-session close-reading workshop
- Selected chapters of Walden plus the full essay “Civil Disobedience”
- Ninety minutes per session, discussion-based
- Non-graded, non-competitive, open to any adult reader
- In person or on Zoom, adaptable to any partner venue’s calendar
What This Course Is Not▾
- Not a nature-writing course (though Thoreau invented the modern form)
- Not a hagiography (we will disagree with Thoreau at times)
- Not a course in political theory (though the political implications are inescapable)
About the Instructor▾
James F. Mulhern is a Kirkus-starred novelist, Oxford Writing Fellow, and Professor Emeritus of English. Thoreau has been a lifelong reading companion, and Mulhern has led Thoreau study weekends for reading groups from Concord to Philadelphia. His novel Give Them Unquiet Dreams received a Kirkus starred review and was named a Kirkus Best Book of 2019.
Course Details▾
- Instructor: James F. Mulhern
- Location: in person or on Zoom
- Format: Weekly, 90 minutes per session
- Duration: 4 weeks
- Cost: Contact for current terms
- Enrollment: Open to all adults; no application required
- Grading: None
- Required texts: None to purchase. Free public-domain editions linked in this document.
- Materials to bring: This document (printed or digital), and something to write with
What to Expect Each Week▾
Each session follows the same shape:
- Read a passage aloud — Thoreau’s sentences work on the ear, not just the eye
- First response — what struck each of us
- Close reading — one paragraph or one sentence, unpacked
- The Thoreau question — what change would honoring this passage require of me?
- Craft takeaway — one move in his sentence-making
Readings▾
All texts are available free online through Project Gutenberg. No book purchase is required.
A Companion Volume▾
Coming soon — an annotated Thoreau reader with James F. Mulhern’s marginal notes.
A Few Promises▾
- Every session begins on time and ends on time.
- Every discussion is generous. Nothing said in the room leaves it.
- No one is asked to speak. Silence is a legitimate contribution.
- We disagree with Thoreau where we should, and honor him where he earns it.
A Few Asks▾
- Read the assigned chapter before the session.
- Bring the text with you, printed or on a device.
- Come to as many sessions as you can; Walden rewards a whole reading.
Registration▾
To register or bring this course to a partner venue, please email jamesfmulhern@gmail.com. The course can be delivered as a four-session workshop, a Saturday intensive (two sessions), or four evening lectures.
About the Use of These Materials▾
These materials — course descriptions, reading lists, syllabi, discussion questions, session pages, and prompts — were written and designed by James F. Mulhern for Silver Current Press. Readers are welcome to read, print, share, and quote them for personal use and study.
Teachers, program directors, and institutions who would like to use any of this material in a classroom, syllabus, publication, or paid program are asked to write first — a short email is enough. The answer will almost always be a warm yes, with a note on attribution. Please contact Professor Mulhern at [email protected].
The Sessions▾
Session 1 — Walden, "Economy"
Focus: The opening chapter — the longest in the book, and the most demanding. Thoreau begins with a scathing indictment of ordinary life in mid-nineteenth-century Massachusetts. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Not a slogan. A diagnosis.
Main Points of the Lesson
- Walden opens as social criticism, not as pastoral. Thoreau attacks his neighbors before he retreats from them.
- His sentences carry the weight of scripture. Read aloud, they sound biblical. This is deliberate — Thoreau is proposing a new gospel.
- The economics is literal. He documents his expenses to the penny. This is not metaphor: he is showing what a life actually costs.
- He anticipates readers who dismiss him. Every objection you might make, he raises first — and answers.
- The chapter is a prosecutor’s brief. By the end, ordinary American life stands accused. What is the verdict?
Reading
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Chapter 1: “Economy” (excerpts) — Project Gutenberg
- Focus for first pass: the opening 15 pages and the closing 5 pages of the chapter.
Critical Reception
- Henry David Thoreau — Poetry Foundation biographical entry — for context on Thoreau, Concord, and the Transcendentalist circle.
In-Class Practice
Take “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Read it aloud three times. Now read the two sentences before it and the two after. What does the sentence do inside its paragraph that it cannot do alone? (10 minutes.)
Discussion Questions
- Who is Thoreau’s implied reader in “Economy”? Is he writing to us, or writing to himself?
- Thoreau’s tone shifts between prophetic and self-mocking. Find a moment of each. How do they support each other?
- “The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it.” Is that true? Is it useful?
- Where in the chapter is Thoreau most persuasive? Where is he most annoying? Are those the same passages?
- Is Thoreau attacking his neighbors, or defending them from themselves?
Homework
Read the next chapter, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For.” Bring one sentence you would engrave on your wall.
Session 2 — Walden, "Where I Lived" and "Solitude"
Focus: Two of the shortest and most quoted chapters. Thoreau’s argument for living deliberately, and his answer to the question every reader wants to ask him: are you not lonely out there?
Main Points of the Lesson
- “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” The most famous passage in American nature writing. We read the whole paragraph, not just the phrase.
- Deliberate life is a discipline. It is not what happens when you retreat from society. It is what you have to build.
- Solitude is not loneliness in Thoreau. He distinguishes them exactly. Read Chapter 5 for how.
- Thoreau writes with a listener. He is always in silent conversation with an imagined companion.
- The prose has the rhythms of walking. Read a paragraph aloud and count the pauses.
Reading
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Chapter 2: “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” — Project Gutenberg
- Chapter 5: “Solitude” — Project Gutenberg
In-Class Practice
Read the “live deliberately” paragraph aloud. Then in pairs, take turns finishing the sentence “I would also want to live ___” — one phrase per person, ten seconds each. Write down the best answer that comes up. (10 minutes.)
Discussion Questions
- Read the “live deliberately” paragraph aloud. What are the four things Thoreau does not want to have done at his death?
- Chapter 5 opens with a walk in the rain. Where does the argument of the chapter first appear? Which sentence?
- Thoreau says he is “no more lonely than the loon in the pond.” Do you believe him?
- “It is a great art to saunter.” What kind of art?
- If you had to live one paragraph of Thoreau, which paragraph in these two chapters would you choose?
Homework
Read Chapter 17, “Spring,” or Chapter 18, “Conclusion” — either one. Bring a passage.
Session 3 — Walden, "Spring" and "Conclusion"
Focus: How Thoreau ends the book. “Spring” gives us the winter thaw at Walden — one of the most extraordinary passages of natural description in English. “Conclusion” gives us Thoreau’s parting counsel, including “if you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost.”
Main Points of the Lesson
- The thaw is the whole book in miniature. Watching ice melt, Thoreau watches the possibility of new life come back. Read the sand-flow passage; it is the heart of the book.
- “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” The refrain of the closing chapter — but simplicity in Thoreau is not lack. It is concentration.
- The ending refuses to conclude. Thoreau has taught us for 300 pages, but in the last pages he keeps opening rather than closing.
- The famous “castles in the air” sentence is often quoted out of context. Read the whole paragraph. It is more radical than the phrase makes it sound.
- Thoreau leaves us with our own work. The book ends with the sun rising — a beginning, not a conclusion.
Reading
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Chapter 17: “Spring” — Project Gutenberg
- Chapter 18: “Conclusion” — Project Gutenberg
In-Class Practice
Take the sand-flow passage from “Spring.” Read it aloud slowly. What is Thoreau saying about the earth? What is he saying about writing? What is he saying about the reader? (10 minutes.)
Discussion Questions
- The sand-flow passage in “Spring” is Thoreau’s most virtuosic writing. What does the geology teach him? What does he teach us with it?
- “Only that day dawns to which we are awake.” Is this a metaphor? A demand? An accusation?
- “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” — the triple insistence. Why three?
- If you had never read Walden and only read the “Conclusion,” would you feel invited to read the rest? Why or why not?
- What single sentence from Walden do you carry with you after this session?
Homework
Read “Civil Disobedience” in full before Session 4. It is about 25 pages.
Session 4 — "Civil Disobedience"
Focus: The essay Thoreau wrote after being jailed for refusing to pay poll tax to a government that supported slavery and waged the Mexican-American War. Read for two centuries as the founding text of nonviolent resistance — Gandhi read it, King read it, every conscientious objector since has read it.
Main Points of the Lesson
- “That government is best which governs least.” The opening line — and immediately contested by every paragraph that follows.
- The essay is not about anarchism. Thoreau accepts government. He refuses only what conscience refuses.
- The one honest man makes majorities. “A wise minority is stronger than the majority.”
- The essay defines a new kind of political action. Not revolution, not compliance — refusal.
- Thoreau’s ethics come first, always. He is willing to be inconvenient. He is willing to be jailed. He is willing to be misunderstood. What he is not willing to be is complicit.
Reading
- Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” (1849) — Project Gutenberg
In-Class Practice
The essay has been read in ways Thoreau might not have intended — by Gandhi, by King, by conscientious objectors, by tax resisters, and by many others. In pairs, share one use of the essay you find persuasive and one you find troubling. (10 minutes.)
Discussion Questions
- What is Thoreau’s argument for withholding tax? Is the argument still available to us?
- “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” Is that a slogan or a program?
- Compare “Civil Disobedience” to Walden. What does the essay make possible that the book does not? What does the book make possible that the essay does not?
- Thoreau distinguishes between civil disobedience and revolution. What is the distinction? Is it stable?
- King, in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” draws on this essay explicitly. What does King add? What does he leave behind?
Homework
None. Instead: think about one small act of quiet dissent — legal, civil, personal — that this essay asks of you. Do or do not do it, as you choose. But do not misplace the question.