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Henry David Thoreau And Walden Comparison

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Concord, Massachusetts was home to many of America’s most influential writers during the 1830’s. Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, were two transcendentalist thinkers that pioneered a new philosophy that went beyond the fundamental principles of human knowledge and ultimately helped create a literary and philosophical independence from Europe (Jone Johnson Lewis). During this decade well-educated people around the Concord area turned to nature to understand spirituality, and wanted more than the rational perspective of philosophers preceding them. In the works of Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walden by Henry David Thoreau one can understand the roles of nature as to serve man in understanding the answers to life’s most perplexing questions through themes of simplicity, spirituality, duality, and unity.
Nature is a complex system where everything is working together with a perfect order. Yet the philosophers of the transcendentalism era believed in getting away from the hustle and bustle of city life to a more simple life in nature where one could find their self. Emerson believed that nature was and experience of solitude. In the quote, “A man’s power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is , upon his love of truth…” from …show more content…

Thoreau’s believes in simplicity to reduce problems of “trivial affairs”. In the quote, “Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.” Thoreau links simplicity with nature. Thoreau conveys the message that a person can live simply through wisdom and just because the smarter and more successful your life is does not mean that you have to give in to its complexity. By reducing your life’s problems and options into simplest terms Thoreau believes you can live happily and find

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