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Henry David Thoreau Research Paper

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A few years ago, during a road trip with my family throughout the Northeast, we visited a place called Walden Pond. We hiked on a trail in the beautiful woods of Concord, Massachusetts. A large, brown sign marked the site of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin. It was inscribed with a line from the book Walden, which Thoreau wrote while living there: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” During a different road trip with my family, we stopped for a spontaneous hike in the woods. This time, we walked the Appalachian Trail. The trail extends from Georgia to Maine. This is the …show more content…

To find a life of simplicity, Thoreau went to live in a small, secluded cabin in the woods. “Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.” he wrote. To articulate his point of choosing functional clothing and avoiding absurd, fleeting fashion styles, Thoreau used imagery, “The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveler’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.” While living alone in the woods, Thoreau sought wisdom by reading philosophical books, poetry, and other great literature. He wished every man would be like a philosopher and use his life, not for trivial work, but to seek understanding and intelligence. Thoreau employs the use of epistrophe to make his argument, “While England endeavors to cure potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally.” I agree with Thoreau that it is good to avoid over-consumption of material things and to seek to learn and grow your mind because material things do not last and wisdom is valuable; however, Thoreau seems to take it to an extreme that is not necessary. For example, he refuses to buy yeast for his bread because he finds it “not to be an essential ingredient.” Thoreau explored life in the woods; more than one hundred fifty years later, Bryson went on a hike in the

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Because of this his life and journey was not only something to criticize but something to both admire and celebrate. While others who came before him, like author Henry David Thoreau sought to live similar lifestyles, none truly took advantage of their life the way he was able to. As a young boy he idolized men like Thoreau and of Mccandless’s greatest successes was having not only lived up to these men, but in fact surpassed them in their journeys and experiences. Unlike Thoreau, Mccandless devoted the entirety of his life to both helping those in need and living what he believed to be life to the fullest for the ENTIRETY of it. Thoreau spent a short limited time in a cabin that was less than 2 miles outside of the nearest town, his charitable contributions are nothing noteworthy, and he is never recorded as benefiting the lives of nearly anyone close to him.

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Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain” (para. 2). Thoreau believes that simplicity is better than inventions like the railroad that makes humans lazy. Considering Thoreau’s negative

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Furthermore, his use of tone to exemplify his argument is also effective as he condemns people for living rushed, unfulfilled lives for the sake of prosperity and materialistic possessions. When Thoreau says that ”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 shadow of the reality,”(279) he employs a critical tone by stating that people are blinded by these petty things that misconstrue

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Perhaps the purpose of Thoreau’s excerpt is to prevent us from overlooking the possibility of living a simple lifestyle without extra accommodations. Most of the things people pay for are more or less likely to not be necessarily needed, and it's highly probable that people end up miserable as they are left to pay off their education’s expenses, which could be the reason why McCandless felt influenced to abandon his privileged lifestyle. Although McCandless had the wealth to cover these costs, it wasn’t enough to make him feel as if he was actually living a meaningful life, let alone a simple one. In addition, the author Jon Krakauer of the book ‘Into The Wild’ states how McCandless had previously spent four years preparing to leave behind "the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence" (Ch. 3). Krakauer describes the surroundings of McCandless’ life as something asphyxiating with very little value, and it happened to be overwhelmingly bothersome to him.

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For two years, he lives in the woods of Walden Pond, experiencing what life is beyond society. He believes that society is controlled and unfulfilling, as it sucks away a person’s potential to live his or her own life. In order to attain a better life, people work tirelessly for a dream so far out of reach, which defines conformity. Thoreau does not follow such a distasteful lifestyle, which proves his dissatisfaction for society and his will to resist the routine lifestyle. Instead, he is devoted to his own morals and is not easily persuaded by society’s temptations, such as the luxurious items advertised in poster boards during his visit to town.

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At the end of Walden, Thoreau writes “I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves”. In recording this belief, people can infer that Thoreau would be distressed with the systematic lives of people today. The repetition of the same activities day after day without adventure would bestow sorrow in his

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Henry David Thoreau was a philosopher, poet, and a very outspoken person about society. He discusses his opinions on how people should live in his essay “Where I Lived and What I Lived For.” Thoreau's philosophy of simplicity and individualism and self-sufficiency poses many dangers for communities as a whole. Although there are many setbacks, his philosophy is, however, still viable today. Thoreau strongly advocates self-sufficiency and individualism in this essay.

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Consequently, what Thoreau proposed was simplicity rejecting modern civilization to return to nature and let the individual to develop his/her highest possibilities. Thoreau not only made a critique of the modern society as Emerson did, but also he practiced his ideology: he experienced that life is better without crowd, luxuries and complexity. The transcendentalist poet spent two year close to nature. He lived at Walden Pond where he wrote entire journals recounting his experience. Thoreau is well known for his book “Walden” (1854).

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As evident by this quotation by Thoreau, his motives purely consist of living in the idealistic states of nature rather than that of “civilization”. Thoreau also stated, “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life…”- (taken from Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden”). Thoreau, in this statement shows that he is completely self reliant in the sense that he alone went out to nature to reap what he could and survive by his merits alone, sustaining himself only on what nature had to offer. While conversely McCandless could only survive with a

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Henry David Thoreau is a man who fought against the grain of time. His philosophy is practical, poetic, personal and now universal. A Thoreauvian lifestyle is the exact opposite of the “consumer treadmill” that most of society finds itself running today; it is rich in time, opportunity, and large quantities of invisible wealth which can not bought, sold, or broken. To effectively roll with Thoreau’s way of living in the 21st century, one must have their own brain. In other words, rather than being a follower of the herd, you need to strive to be the person who breaks out from the rest of the crowd and seeks new territory.

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One of Henry Thoreau’s great quotes is,“Our life is frittered away by details,” meaning that we spend most of our life focusing on small, inadequate details and forget to focus on the bigger picture. We forget to focus on the meaning of life and what it truly means to be alive. Emerson believes that the only way to figure this out is through nature. Thoreau spent a full year out of civilization to live a more simple life and to stop worrying about the little things. During my life I hope to find out what it truly means to be alive and what it takes to be one with nature.

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In Walden, written by Henry David Thoreau, the author expresses the immense longing that we, as human beings, need to give up our connection to our ever-growing materialism in order to revert back to self-sufficient happiness. In Walden, the reader is able to infer that Thoreau feels as if we are becoming enslaved by our material possessions, as well as believes that the study of nature should replace and oppose our enslavement, and that we are to “open new channels of thought” by turning our eyes inward and studying ourselves. Thoreau feels that we are becoming enslaved by our material possessions. As stated in the chapter “In the Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”, Thoreau states that “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” (972).

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He also boasts of his ability to lead a simple life and get rid of sophistication, which he considers his greatest skill “My greatest skill in life has been to want but little” (89). This boastfulness is apparently only half-hearted given his style which brims with sophistication in its wealth of figurative language, allusion and double-entendre. His style is as sophisticated as the 19th Century America of his time. Walden’s text embraces all that its own author preaches against: complexity, luxury, fashion and sophistication. Exactly like his fellow townsmen, Thoreau’s work departs of his way of life, challenges him, and rebels against him if only to show that, like clothes and houses, “Walden” itself is bound to be a product of fashion that should follow the fashion of its time.

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While reading the book Walden by Henry Thoreau we found out that he decides to live in the woods. “When first I took up my abode in the woods…” (Thoreau, 207). He moved to the woods to get away from society and to protest. We should all learn by not caring on what others think.

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Thoreau emphasizes living simply by reducing the excess in our live to only the bare essentials, and relying on oneself to do so. Thoreau claims that the only way to

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