What I Lived For | Social Concerns/Themes
Joyce Carol Oates takes the title of this novel from a chapter tide in Henry "David Thoreau's Walden (1854), "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For." Lurking behind Thoreau's description of his simple life that made him fully awake to the sustaining power of nature is his protest against the materialism and exploitation of nineteenth-century America. He was not just escaping to Walden Pond but also escaping from a society that built mills and railroads and canals that worked laborers long hours in unhealthy and dangerous conditions so that the upper classes could wear fashionable...
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