Two symbolic statements are made by the narrator which seem to be the theme of this chapter: "Walden was dead and is alive again" and "It is glorious to behold this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full of glee and youth." As we already know, the pond is a symbol for the narrator's self, and these statements — and, indeed, the entire chapter — symbolize the happy rebirth of the narrator's spirit. Like "The Ponds," this chapter is a highly compressed collage of metaphors and symbols that reveals the narrator's glowing feeling of spiritual elevation. It would be difficult to find one sentence in this chapter which does not fulfill this function.
In a final paragraph, the narrator informs us that he left Walden Pond on September 6, 1847. And, although the narrator earlier informed us that he left the pond because he had other lives to lead, it is not inappropriate to wonder why he did leave this marvelous world that he describes in these chapters. Some critics believe that Thoreau's actual experience at the pond was not as successful as the narrator's experience in Walden — a point which serves to emphasize the fact that Walden is an imaginative, artistic creation and not a strict biographical account of life in the woods.
