Henry David Thoreau's Walden

Author, Henry David Thoreau and Mary Oliver are both very passionate about nature and what it has to offer in life, as well as the symbolism behind nature and its creatures in their works of literature, in “Walden”, and “The House of Light”, Both authors discuss their views of nature and the beauty of the world that they want to make familiar to their audience. In this essay, I’ll provide my reasoning behind this statement.

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

The excerpt Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, is a piece that explores the purpose of life, especially if it isn 't lived to the fullest. Thoreau starts by sharing the meaning and value of life. His idea of his personal achievement was to live life and die with a sense of peace and knowledge that he did not waste a single moment. He wanted to live life while being true to himself regardless of whether he would find life to be cruel or a wonderful place, and this was a risk he was willing to take. In a modern sense we are intrigued by technology. Although those in favor of technology may say that the new devices and applications do not affect human interaction and our way of living we are, are unable to see that, even in a room filled with people, there is an isolation barrier and an inability to live life to the fullest.

After spending a night in jail, after nonpayment of Massachusetts poll tax, Thoreau wrote his essay “Civil Disobedience”. He states that governments are mostly “inexpedient” (1577), or not practical. At best, Thoreau pushed the idea that the government isn’t useful because it is not our own. He writes “What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army” (1580). Americans listen to the rules established by the government, but it is not necessary, because the government is just the majority of people with whom are living off a different countries rules. The reason the government is even there, is because it gives the citizens some type of stable structure to live by. Thoreau feels that the government is unjust and the citizens of America should not follow rules. He feels like a reform is in need; “It is not a man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous, wrong” and “not to give it practically his support” (1582). Thoreau and Emerson both push for social reform of the individual. Emerson wants the individual to be reliant on themselves, and not fall into the conformity of the American society. Thoreau, also teaches the individual to think different then the governmental established rules. Both authors want the readers to trust themselves, before they trust the

Within the passage of Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, it demonstrates multiple examples of Romanticism. The concepts being mentioned are ideas about going transcending ordinary societal beliefs, following ones’ intuition, and creating a new moral law.

However, Thoreau sees the problem with in the government and how we as Americans do not need to be a society that demands so much from its people. “Government show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves” (Thoreau 965). The government does more than just impose on us. It imposes on our thoughts, our ideas and treats us unjustly. We have a government in order to make sure that the people are equal and treated justly, but that is not what the government is doing. It is putting their own ideas and thoughts into our heads. We do live in a country where we are free to voice how we feel and speak what is on our minds, but the government is telling us other wise. We as Americans should feel like we live in a place where we do not feel like we are constantly being watched for every little thing we say or do. We want to live a in a society where we feel free think our own ideals and not have ones put in our head by the

1. “For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, where it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.” P.383 What is the “it” that Thoreau is referring to when he says people are in a strange uncertainty about “it” AND what does the rest of the quote in mean?

Writer Henry David Thoreau wrote about his time spent alone with nature in the woods near Walden Pond in Concord, MA. His writing of his simplified, solitary life for two years, two months and two days is what earned him to be one of the famous Transcendentalist writers of the nineteenth-century. He started this journey with no personal material items and no money. Yes, he even began building his home with a borrowed axe. The materials he had to purchase were very minimal. Not needing much in materialistic items, he didn’t have a lot of furniture and he even made those. He did have three chairs because company may stop in and visit.

          T.E. Frazier is a former classmate of Burris' at his graduate school,      and is one of the founding members of Walden Two.

Into the Wild, a book about a man who ran away from childhood problems and decided to walk into the wilderness by himself after getting rid of all of his materialistic items like his car and money, and Walden, a book about a man who ran towards simplicity and solitude to understand what life was really about, are two incredible. The stories are timeless and will still be talked about in fifty years. The protagonists, Thoreau and Chris, had their differences and similarities. A big difference between them is their motives for leaving the city and going into the wilderness; Thoreau wanted to live life to the fullest, while Chris wanted to leave the problems at home. Both Chris and Thoreau rejected materialism, and they both respected animals.

Henry David Thoreau's life began on July 12, 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts. At a young age he began to show an interest in writing. In 1833, at the age of sixteen, Thoreau was accepted to Harvard University. Although his parents could not afford the cost of tuition, his family offered to help with the funds, and in August he entered Harvard. In 1837 he graduated and applied for a teaching position at a public school in Concord. However, he refused to flog children as punishment. He choose instead to deliver moral lectures. The community looked down upon this, and a committee was asked to review the situation. They decided that the lectures were not ample punishment, so they ordered Thoreau to

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an American philosopher, author, poet, abolitionist, and naturalist. He was famous for his essay, “Civil Disobedience”, and his book, Walden. He believed in individual conscience and nonviolent acts of political resistance to protest unfair laws. Moreover, he valued the importance of observing nature, being individual, and living in a simple life by his own values. His writings later influenced the thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. In “Civil Disobedience” and Walden, he advocated individual nonviolent resistance to the unjust state and reflected his simple living in the nature.

In April 1992, a young man named Chris McCandless, also known as Alexander Supertramp, stepped into the Alaskan bush on a journey to escape the materialistic society he came from and to pursue a life of adventure. Over a century earlier in 1845, another young man, Henry David Thoreau, built himself a small cabin in the wilderness with similar intentions. Both their adventures were recorded in Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, and Walden, by Henry David Thoreau, respectively. Although they had some similar beliefs, their mindsets were often different; both disregarded advice of others, though for different reasons, neither connected solitude to loneliness, and both men had different reasons for choosing materialistic free lifestyles.

At various points during one's life, the individual comes at a crossroads regarding their morals, purpose, and self-actualization as dictated by their experiences throughout life. These existential paradigms and ponderings of our place in the world are common topics in our lives, as well as in classical literature in its yearning to explain the intricacies of humanity. Henry David Thoreau's novel, Walden, offers interesting into the nature of human desire and the pith of our struggle for happiness and inner peace. I strongly agree with one of Thoreau's most poignant messages which lies within the quote: "Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." Within the novel, this quote is accompanied by the visual imagery of a feast, a

The Journey from Enslavement to Freedom, from Society to Nature: A Cross-Examination of Themes in Thoreau’s Walden and “Slavery in Massachusetts”