The Naturalists Of American Literature

Henry David Thoreau was a great American writer, philosopher, and naturalist of the 1800’s who’s writings have influenced many famous leaders in the 20th century, as well as in his own lifetime. Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts in 1817, where he was later educated at Harvard University. Thoreau was a transcendentalist writer, which means that he believed that intuition and the individual conscience “transcend” experience and are better guides to truth than are the senses and logical reason (Prentice Hall 1174). Thoreau is well known for writing Walden Pond, Excursions, The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, and A Yankee in Canada. In 1849 Henry David Thoreau wrote an essay

Let’s take David Henry Thoreau for instance. He was an old poet who lived in the beginning of the 1800’s. He loved writing and most of all, he loved being in nature. He lived in the wilderness on Walden Pond for almost two years. He experienced nature, wrote about nature, and in all technicality, escaped from the real world and society he was raised in to go explore and see what nature had to offer to him. Thoreau loves the goodness in nature and states that society as a whole can and is ruining it. A fellow colleague named Emerson also thought similar to Thoreau, and also sought out to see how beautiful nature is. Emerson in his writings, talk about how pure he thinks nature is and how he (and also Thoreau) believes that people isolated provides them to be essentially closer to nature and see they can see how pure it is and the purity it gives to people. To Emerson, being in nature can get rid of evil for he thinks that god gave nature to people as a present. He sees nature valuably and believed that men could essentially be completely relieved if only in and connected with nature. (Brandon

“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.

We can’t live without nature. It’s our home and way of life. Henry David Thoreau wrote a piece about Walden Pond in the springtime. Thoreau discusses how nature has so much to offer. His use of anaphora, diction, and imagery helps to show not only his love for nature, but the impact it has on us.

Their passion for their love of nature was also influenced by numerous authors read by each man that depicted an ideology of naturalistic prose characterizing the transcendental experience. Authors stated as favorites by both men include Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Jack London. While these writers provided an appealing view of a carefree life, not one of them truly experienced the hardships of their stories. Thoreau’s depiction of his experiment of transcendentalism in his book, Walden, romanticizes the natural world even though his excursion was just a few miles from his family and the local community. One aspect of Thoreau’s definition of this solitary life was to embrace nature and live off the land, using wit and resourcefulness (Thoreau). “Thoreau As An Oblique Mirror” by Jose Sanchez Vera, provides a perspective that suggests Krakauer uses pieces of Thoreau’s ideals in order to embellish Chris’s endeavor (49). The promise of a simpler life has a tendency to make anyone long for tranquility. But, McCandless and Krakauer appeared to take their personal introspection to extremes, without regard of the hazards and possible doom that lay before them (Krakauer

     As imperative as individualism was to Emerson, developing one’s soul was even more so. The process in developing one’s soul was just as important. He states, “But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future (Emerson 157).” The word “heedless” means “carelessly” and by using the word “riches” Emerson means nature. What he meant by using these words together was that men forget about the beauty in nature because we see it all too often to notice it. Men are too wrapped up in their lives and thinking about the future that they overlook the splendor that nature has to offer. He also states, “These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today (Emerson 157).” With this, Emerson is trying to convey the fact that God is present in nature and all its beauty.

A Comparison of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Beliefs concerning Simplicity, the Value and Potential of Our Soul, and Our Imagination.Henry David Thoreau tests Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ideas about nature by living at Walden Pond, where he discovers that simplicity in physical aspects brings deepness to our mind, our soul to its fullest potential, and our imagination to be uplifted to change our lives. These two men believe that nature is what forces us not to depend on others’ ideas but to develop our own. Nature is ever changing so we must keep searching for explanations about human life. They feel that nature is the key to knowing all.Thoreau lives at Walden Pond to find the true meaning of life. He wants to experience

Nature is a major transcendental value which both Emerson and Thoreau thrive off of. Emerson

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

Thoreau wished to open the minds of many revealing the importance of nature “Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails” (Thoreau II). In the quote, Thoreau discusses how he learned to live deliberately in nature encouraging other members of society to do the same. He has learned that it can lead to harmonization with oneself, to

The chapter entitled “Conclusion” is a fitting and compelling final chapter to Thoreau’s Walden. Throughout Walden, Thoreau delves into his surroundings, the very specifics of nature, and what he was thinking about, without employing any metaphors and including none of his poignant aphorisms. However, placed among these at-times tedious sections, come spectacular and wholly enjoyable interludes of great and profound thought from a writer that has become extremely popular in modern America. His growth of popularity over such contemporary favorites as Emerson in our modern era stems from the fact that Thoreau calls for an “ideological revolution to simplification” in our lives. This

Similar to Emerson, he also mentions about a person’s thinking capability not to be limited but to be expanding further. He too makes a judgment on a person’s thought. In Walden, there is a paragraph whereby he talks about Walden Pond which men believed it to be bottomless. People came up with various stories regarding the pond being bottomless but no one tried to figure the truth. So, he, Thoreau went to discover the truth and he found out that the pond was not bottomless instead it had depth of “One hundred and seven” [Thoreau,1854]. Through this a person is able to understand that a man is not supposed to believe in stories created by other men because each man is an individual and have the right to know answers. Thoreau is trying to convince men to diverse their thoughts beyond the information given by the Europeans which in turn will help shape an American identity.

Furthermore, he evokes the notion of the embodiment of nature and how few are able to see it; claiming the ones capable of perceiving such enlightenment are the ones who retain a benevolent innocent spirit—such as child—and who has retained the concept in times of adulthood—the poet. The mind of a child responds emotionally rather than sensorial. As a final remark in Emerson’s first chapter of nature, he states: in order for man to see nature plainly and receive the benefits one must push aside the old ways of thinking and egotism to become, as Emerson states, a transparent eyeball. ‘I am nothing, I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am a part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental” (______). This form of vision represents the primary benefit of Nature, a form of ultimate transcendency where there is a spiritual real of reason beyond material understanding. Humanistic delight in the landscapes, which is made up of many forms, provides an example of this integrated vision in which the universal entity transmits itself into one’s consciousness and makes one sense oneness with God. Nature, is thereby a metaphor of the mind in Emerson’s eyes.

Renowned poets and philosophers Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, although being from different schools of thought, actually shared many of the same views about nature and mankind’s role in society. Whitman, being more of a ‘romantic’ poet, praised nature’s beauty and majestic qualities. Thoreau, on the other hand, was more of a Transcendentalist; The Transcendentalism school of thought emphasized individualism as a common theme and celebrated the ‘self’ as a separate, but equal, counterpart to the nature of our environment. While both of these poets had their opinions on the landscape around us, they were quite similar in their beliefs about mankind’s existence and skirted the line between both schools of thought.

The summer of 1845 found Henry David Thoreau living in a rude shack on the banks of Walden Pond. The actual property was owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American philosopher. Emerson had earlier published the treatise entitled "Nature," and the young Thoreau was profoundly affected by its call for individuality and self-reliance. Thoreau planted a small garden, took pen and paper, and began to record the of life at Walden.