That the narrator does not read much while at Walden will be seen as significant if the reader recalls Emerson's three-part description of the transcendentalist's activities: he enriches himself with the wisdom of the past; he is ennobled by the experience of nature; and he attempts to renovate society. Apparently the narrator has already fulfilled the first requisite of the transcendental life and has "skimmed off" much of what is valuable to his life from the literature of the past. This chapter constitutes a description of what the narrator has gained from reading and an exhortation that the reader "mine" the same vein of spiritual truth.
That literature has proven to be a very rich vein for the narrator is indicated by his repeated use of the "new day" metaphor, which indicates spiritual awakening and rebirth. He tells us that the classics are "as beautiful almost as the morning itself," and that he devotes his "most alert and wakeful hours" to the reading of them. He advises his readers to "consecrate morning hours" to Homer and Aeschylus, and promises that spiritual rejuvenation will result: "How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book." Images quite the opposite of rebirth are associated with the easy reading of the "sleepers": "The result is dulness of sight, a stagnation of the vital circulations, and a general deliquium.
The reader should especially note the narrator's call for social reform at the end of the chapter. This image of the narrator as a man with a real sense of social concern is one that critics of Thoreau usually manage to overlook when they term him an anti-social recluse.
