Everybody Wants To Live The American Life, By Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau implies that if one is to live happily they must let go of all their obligations and responsibilities in favor of a simple life. For the most part, his suggestions are for one’s own happiness instead of others’ happiness. He does not take into account if the “accounts” that people have are for others instead of themselves. Thoreau assumes that everyone is living a life where they have no dependents and all the obligations they have taken upon themselves are for their own

In Walden, Henry D. Thoreau presented a radical and controversial perspective on society that was far beyond its time. In a period where growth both economically and territorially was seen as necessary for the development of a premature country, Thoreau felt the opposite. Thoreau was a man in search of growth within himself and was not concerned with outward improvements in him or society. In the chapter entitled "economy," he argued that people were too occupied with work to truly appreciate what life has to offer. He felt the root of this obsession with work was created through the misconstrued perception that material needs were a necessity, rather than a hindrance to true happiness and the

Instead, Thoreau built a simple but efficient cabin and furnished it with the basic necessity of a bed, table, chairs and desk. He also didn't waste his time and energy trying to keep up with the latest fashions; he wore comfortable and long lasting clothes. Thoreau explained to his readers that this simplistic way of life decreased the dreariness of every day life and left more time to explore one's meaning of life and his role in the world. Freeing oneself from the economic race, Thoreau argued, allowed for individual to be inspired by nature and focus on the genuine concerns of life.

Thoreau wished to live with only what was essential. He felt that how people in society were living was not how a man should truly live. At one point Thoreau described how most people go through the day as people who are sleeping.The text reads”The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive”(14).The people who are sleeping just go about their day not really living, but just getting by. In order to keep himself awake, Thoreau distanced himself from society and decided to “drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”(16) McCandless held a similar view. He wanted to get out of the simple suburban life he had been raised in and live on his own away from others. In a letter to Ronald Franz, one of the many people touched by McCandless’ company, the young man encourages the older man to drop everything and do the things he may never have thought of doing before. he continues in saying,”So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure

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 is basically rallying for the absence of government in the lives of the citizens. He believed that everyone should govern himself. He also believed that no one should have to ride on the shoulders of the government, but instead rely on himself. He thought people should treat other people the way they wanted to be treated, and follow the natural laws of society. Martin Luther King Jr. believed there should be laws or it would be total anarchy. Thoreau believed that without the

These hypocritical lines make the tone appear to be jealous or that he's hard to please materialistically. The tone in these statements become more clear in the final paragraph when he says that his favorite "room" is the woods in his backyard. The tone becomes more clear that he was not jealous or hard to please, but he was quite the opposite. He didn't want any possessions, or larger rooms inside of his house. Thoreau wanted to be able to have a distant but close conversation in the comfort of his

     Henry David Thoreau was man of simplicity, and if he were to experience life in Cary, he would not only be surprised, but disappointed in humanity itself. Thoreau believed in the necessities of life, nothing more, and the people of Cary live lives exactly the opposite. Cary residents live lives of material possessions, business, and over-complexity. These traits of society are precisely opposite of Thoreau’s

Industriousness was heralded as a strong and virtuous quality in a man. 'Idle hands do the Devil's work' was a favorite saying of the hard working people at the time. Yet Thoreau saw this logic as flawed and actually an abomination of society. He stressed that one could be ascetic without being lazy. Reasonable necessity, not fashion, was the most important to Thoreau. Understanding the difference between what we want done and what must be done is a tremendous first step in Thoreau's mind. And this confronting our own

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

Thoreau discusses the issue of how we spend our time and energies. It is obvious that his townspeople are not as economical as they spend many hours working very hard to accomplish very little, showing a false sense of economy. Thoreau believed that all attempts to redeem mankind form its problems were

Thoreau's main concern is that the accumulation of wealth, and the desire to obtain it, distracts humans from recognizing their true essence, which is spirituality. In the chapter "Economy," he urges us to learn to live life by ourselves, without the pressures of monetary consumption, and reevaluate ourselves in order to obtain its true necessities. He states, "It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what the gross necessaries of life are and what methods have been taken to obtain them" (9). Thoreau reduces the necessaries of life to four things: food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. Anything beyond these four necessities serves as a wall dividing physical from spiritual realities.

For Thoreau, the escape from society was a way to deeply learn about himself and human nature. He writes, “Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself” (Thoreau 72). This simple way of life allowed Thoreau to analyze himself and tendencies within society. He explains the effects of this solitary life on a person: “In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness” (253). Thoreau was able to discover flaws in society. He states, “... men establish and conform their daily life of routine and habit every where, which still is built on purely illusory foundations” (78). Unlike Hester and Sethe, the societal norms Thoreau experiences are not painful punishments or dehumanizing treatment. However, the “opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe … through poetry, philosophy and religion” (80), can still have a profound and often negative effect on individuals and society as a whole. Thoreau is able to overcome these societal norms because he separates himself from them. Thoreau explains of humankind, “When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence,-that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the

He argues that colleges which many called as modern improvement is not so positive at all. While children learn at school, the families might be suffering from running into debt for college fees. Thoreau states “Our Interventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things.” (41) Many student, for example, strike to go to the best colleges for better education, but Thoreau believes that this system is wrong. The purpose of going to colleges is to gain knowledge; and no matter what kind of colleges we go to, we need to comprehend the materials that are given to us and use them to improve ourselves. He argues that many children are merely studying life, not living life at all. Thoreau’s argument of how a “pretty toy” may distract us from “serious things” relates to modern society. For example, there are many varieties of phones and I believe phones are necessities for communication to interact with people around the world. However, many people are spending too much money on the phones based on design and brand. Every year the new design comes out, and many people use their money which they saved to get a new design of that phone even though there is nothing wrong with phone with the old design. With that money they saved, they could spend that money on something that could be useful to

In one of his Transcendentalist essays, Life Without Principle, Henry David Thoreau addresses his personal issues within society and explains the solutions to those issues. Throughout the essay, Thoreau argues that society as a whole is on a decline. In order to prove this deterioration of society Thoreau assumes that the best situation transpires when people work for pleasure instead of money, nature is preserved instead of destroyed, and the daily times phased out. If the society is not participating in these practices, the society is therefore in a state of deterioration, or already has deteriorated. Out of Thoreau's claims, some side with my personals conclusions, and others conflict. Therefore it can be deduced that Thoreau has a multitude of beliefs, and with each belief, a different level of relevancy to the reader. If a reader was to agree with all of Thoreau's points, he or she may find themselves somewhat detached from society and placing less emphasis on monetary objects, but in no way in a poor situation. If a reader was to disagree with all of Thoreau's points, there would be a worse consequence: he or she could find themselves unhappy, focused on wealth and insubstantial events, and without care for the environment. Individual thought is required to interpret the many messages presented by Thoreau and find the proper equilibrium between the thoughts of Thoreau's and those of personal origination.