Chapter 11 Summary and Analysis

Choosing the Image: Life/Style

Simplicity: The Power of the Minimal

Living the simple life, free of the burdens of wealth and possession, is the ideal and most satisfying. Man struggles with how to live his life—what lifestyle is most satisfying. Seneca writes that it takes man a lifetime to learn how to live. Robert Henri writes in 1923 that the most beautiful life contains three elements: freedom, happiness and value which can only be obtained through the sacrifice of many unnecessary things. Thoreau proclaims that to live the life of a philosopher means more than loving wisdom and founding a school—most importantly, it means living by the dictates of a simple life. The poet Walt Whitman sees the ideal life as living with animals which are placid and not "demented with the mania of owning things."