Walden

After reading this chapter, one would probably not guess that it reveals the beginning of a crisis in the narrator's life. It is only after reading the next three chapters, the so-called winter chapters, that one can see that "House-warming" introduces the narrator's spiritual trial. Until now, we have seen the narrator happily living through the spring and summer — the seasons of nature's rebirth and fruition and the narrator's spiritual seasons of rebirth and maturation. Inspired by natural influences, he has been renewed and vitalized. Now, with nature's season of inactivity fast approaching, natural stimuli are being removed from the narrator's experience. Without external stimuli to keep up his spirits, he had to depend solely on himself for spiritual survival. He had to turn inward — metaphorically indicated by his preparations to move indoors — and keep alive his spirit with the strength he has "stored up" within his soul. As fall moved into winter, "the character of each tree came out"; likewise, the narrator's true character will "come out" and its spiritual strength will be tested. As the "winter set in in good earnest," the narrator prepared to preserve his spiritual life: "I withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavoured to keep a bright fire both within my house and within my breast."