stock215

In the first sentence of the exert of Walden, Thoreau says specifically that he “wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.� Obviously he chose the woods to conduct his experiment because it offered the only place for him to examine life or to live it deliberately. Otherwise, in a village setting, Thoreau would be otherwise incapable of living a deliberate life because the social norms that society requires human beings to conform to.
One of the best social norms is time, and Thoreau himself refers to it specifically. Time presents a constraint because it makes us live by the clock instead of deliberately. I personally think that it was Thoreau’s intention to live life in a sort of naturalistic way or to live by instinct, or desire alone (waking up when you want to, being able to read outside of an institution.) Time did not allow him to do this, and because time is one of the biggest parts of living in a society, or a least our society, he felt like he needed to get away from that fact. The woods helped him to separate himself from constraints like time and allowed him to live how he chose. In addition, while I am sure there are many other reasons that Thoreau decided to conduct his experiment in the woods, I feel that that getting away from constraints like time are the most significant.