Thoreau’s Anti‐Hero and the Use of Polarities in Walden
Thoreau’s Anti‐Hero and the Use of Polarities in Walden

Summary/Abstract: This article is a treatment of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden as it reflects the inner struggle against a – perceived – universal inner dualism the author projects onto his character. His aim is to illustrate a concept which was part of the larger dualities New England Transcendentalists in the nineteenth century worked out to reconcile: soul-body, spirit-matter, Idealism-Materialism, Nominalism-Realism, idea-action, Reason-Understanding, consciousness-the unconscious, time-timelessness. In Walden, Thoreau’s anti-hero(es) is (are) featured to support the strong and important argument of the existence of an inherent animal-spiritual dualism in all human beings, but Thoreau closes the book in an optimistic key, stressing his belief in, and outlying the way towards, the possibility of redemption and overcoming of this “flawed” condition.

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