The Industrial Revolution is a period of time in which there was a large and rapid change in the way things were produced and handled. Consequently, this meant more factories, steam engines, and mining. None of which were a quiet process. Henry David Thoreau, the author of Walden, lived in Concord, Massachusetts, right near a railway and soon got tired of all the commotion. He started to doubt whether these technological advances were truly “progressive.” In order to figure out human nature, Thoreau decided to take a step back and live two years away from humans, impressing upon the reader that progress was just an illusion. Thoreau shows the reader that economic advances cannot bring peace and contentment through the dehumanization of man,
