Conformity During The Middle Ages

Individualism helped validated uncommon personalities and unique groups of Europeans. It also helped cultivate people’s capabilities. Well-respected

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are still considered two of the most influential writers of their time. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was a lecturer, essayist, and poet, Henry David Thoreau is his student, who was also a great essayist and critics. Both men extensively studied and embraced nature, and both men encouraged and practiced individualism and nonconformity. In Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Self Reliance" and Henry David Thoreau's book "Walden" and essay "Resistance to Civil Government ("Civil Disobedience")", both thinkers speak about being individual and what reforms and changes need to be made in society. Thoreau stayed with Emerson for a while and was affected by his ideas, especially relating to the individual and

Thoreau galvanizes his reader into living self-dependently and being their own individual. A few ways of living with Thoreau’s virtues are to dabble with your life, and live without

As a student, I am often troubled by the rigid routines of the school day, despite the fact that I am actually a very habitual person. The constant ringing of bells, lectures, bellwork, classwork, homework, each a daily practice throughout the school year. Although all of these components promote conformity, which will ultimately support the balance of school and societal norms, they also tend to threaten each student’s own unique characteristics. This then poses the question; to what degree should schools encourage conformity versus individuality? Certainly, a level of conformity is required to achieve a balanced society however, the overall structure of the school day and class, including the methods used to teach and mandatory classes,

In modern-day society, there are numerous people who take pleasure in separating themselves from the typical standards of society; however, there are also people who feel uncomfortable expressing themselves in the own, distinctive ways. Because they feel this way, many adolescents believe that by camouflaging themselves into their peer’s behaviors and beliefs that they will fit in with social norm, accepted beliefs and behaviors in a social group or society, and the reason why they have this mentality, is because of the lack of confidence to express their ideas in their own unique ways. The belief that students and kids have to live up to social norms, are implemented on them by social influences, more specifically, their peers.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately…to suck the marrow out of life…and not when I came to die, discover that I have not lived.” Thoreau, Walden. Thoreau was not just a radical yet respected thinker for his time, but now as well. Thoreau has a very important lesson and idea to teach through the workings of a pen. Thoreau’s works have greatly influenced our culture for over a hundred years. Thoreau’s ideas have definitely influenced contemporary ideas, but we have also developed our own separate ideas in the past century and a half.

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau contributed greatly to the American society. First of all, Ralph Waldo Emerson pushed the idea of thinking for oneself, instead of falling into the norm of society and other people’s ideas. Emerson insists on learning by individual experience and not what you learn in textbook. In his essay “Self-Reliance”, this idea is evident in the quote “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude” (1337). Emerson shows that it is important, even when everyone else is thinking the same way that you create and persist your individualism and

The point of the essay is to encourage the reader to act upon their opinions. Thoreau believes that simply having an opinion or casting a vote doesn’t cause change in the world, so it is important that people take the necessary steps to fix the problems they face as a society.

Thoreau inspired countless people, including Jon Krakauer and Chris McCandless through his novel Walden. His main intent through writing this novel is to display that in modern society, most people, although free, have

His rhetorical devices of hypophora, parallelism, and allusion are hollow and contrived throughout the essay, and give little to no appeal. How one who is hailed as one of America’s great writers cannot put together a simple and concise argument is confounding. As Thoreau himself pointed out, “to be awake is to be alive”. However, he misses the most fundamentally obvious facet of being awake, for only then can one truly form a bond with his fellow man, and cherish some of the most essential aspects of life, the aspects of voluntary communication and harmonization with other individuals. At this point only can man consider himself truly alive, for what is life, without the influences, both positive and negative, of all those around you? Thoreau, through his own misguided experiences, has utterly failed in determining that for himself, yet claims the title of an individualist, all while attempting to pass his own collectivized view of society as all-encompassing. The hypocrisy is noted; noted and

Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12th, in Concord Massachusetts. Thoreau was many things, not simply just a writer; but he was one of the most influential writers America knows today. Early on in his life he grew up in a simple home with hard-working parents, and an abundance of siblings. His father and mother both had worked as teachers as well as investing in many other trades to get by. Henry started developing his talent for writing early on, by age ten he had written his first piece of writing, “The Seasons,” as well as many other academic achievements for somebody his age. He was articulate and mature beyond his years, these things developed into key traits that brought him to, instead of listening in on lectures at the Concord Lyceum- being the one leading the lectures in the later years of his life. He came back to Concord after graduating from Harvard University, starting to work at a public school he’d attended as a child. He was a man with morals; known to look at things in a more progressive way than many in his life. After being asked to conduct corporal punishment on a student he left the school he was teaching at to expand his studies and find further employment. His talents broadened further than essays and poetry, he gave himself away to a life of helping others, sheltering runaway slaves on their journey to freedom. He was a man of nature, not as much an adventurer, but he took two years to emerge himself into the depths of nature and not

In the end, much of Henry David Thoreau’s motivation for coming to Walden Pond was for the betterment of the self. Indeed, this desire for personal betterment could be boiled down to what I’ve surmised to be the three things Thoreau valued more than anything else. Of course, these three values, self-discipline, self-reliance, and self-reflection are themselves a part of the man’s own view that everyone should try their hardest to live deliberately. Though his value system seems constrained and stiff, Thoreau spends almost the entirety of the book living out these values, and finding purpose and fulfillment in doing so.

To begin, the main points of Thoreau’s essay must be analysed. Thoreau began by advocating a life that is simple and slow. This is summarized by the phrase from his book, “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand.” A philosophy such as this may be appealing, especially when one is overwhelmed by the problems presented by society. However, maintaining this simplicity in a community context requires ignorance of the needs and wants of other people. Many of society’s complicated demands, such as tax payment and jury duty, are necessary for the betterment of other citizen’s lives. In his essay, Thoreau dismissed the importance of community problems by claiming that they were a complete illusion, adding, “Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousands stitches today to save nine tomorrow. As for work, we haven’t any of any

Walden, by Henry David Thoreau describes the events and the thoughts that came to Thoreau all through his time living at Walden Pond in the eighteenth century. Henry David Thoreau was a poet and a theorist who experienced a life of ease so that he could create a relationship between nature, people, and God. His narrative in Walden depicted many themes, for example the significance of the natural world, the implication of development, the meaning of detail, and the connection between the body and mind. He also urbanized many theoretical ideas about living a simple and natural life, and

The theme of individualism is present in several of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s works. It was also his philosophical views on how to live life. He believed that human beings had remarkable capabilities, more than they can possibly identify. With these capabilities a person should govern themselves, not be governed by a society. Emerson also believed that nature played a large role in how man should act and to follow nature’s actions of growing without obstruction (“Nature”). This is why he lead the Transcendentalism movement in the nineteenth century, along with Theodore Parker, Frederic Henry Hedge, Amos Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller and Henry David Thoreau (Lewis). This philosophy was not only significant then, it was imperative throughout times in history.