Jeffrey Cramer argues that if you read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden as an autobiographical record, you are bound to be disappointed. (After all, Thoreau was selective about what he included, and the bits he didn’t write about – such as having his sisters do his laundry – seem to undercut his message.) Instead, Cramer says, Walden could be read as mythology about a “representative” man who is looking for a “home for this imagination.” When read as a parable about a person who wishes to discover the meaning of life, this book then does become a 150-year-old guide for the perplexed.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer, Yale University Press, 2004, p. xxii.