ipl-logo

Henry David Thoreau's Life

535 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Argumenative essay on henry thoreau

Henry David Thoreau provides a detailed interrogation about life from the perspective of choice regarding one’s residence. While the work highlights essential aspects of physical residence, including Thoreau’s appreciation for the countryside and isolated villages where the neighbors are far apart, the subject of the discussion points to the need for interrogating life experiences and approaches to issues. Notably, the ideal life as projected using his imaginations contains no boundaries and limitations as he moves from one farm to the next making his choices and purchases without the restrictions that exist in reality (Thoreau 62). The resounding theme extrapolated from the content of the work concerns the mixture of opportunities that exist in life with some being lost while others are gained. For example, when Thoreau was about to complete the acquisition of his first home, the Hollowell Place, the owner’s wife had a change of mind before Thoreau could secure the deed (Thoreau 62). Thoreau highlights the simplicity of life as exemplified by his deliberate move to live in the woods underlining the required resilience when confronted with challenges in the environment where one can identify positive elements. …show more content…

Coincidentally, Thoreau acquired a home on Independence Day that connected him with nature. The symbolism of the Independence Day cannot be understated as it signaled a new journey for Thoreau and was equated to the unrestricted nature of village life where neighbors included environmental features such as ponds, trees, and rivers among others. Therefore, the historical context reflects the uninhibited nature of Americans to develop beyond their limitations and explore the opportunities that could be associated with

Show More
Related
541 Words | 3 Pages

Both Thoreau and Mccandless took steps to live apart from others to simply free themselves from the limitations of society. As a matter of fact, the most notable similarity these two men shared was their strong disagreement with the attitude of the governments they lived with. Currency and government rule was nothing but an obstacle in their pursuit for more independent lives. Unlike Thoreau, “Mccandless went into the wilderness not primarily to ponder nature…but, rather, to explore the inner country of his own soul”(Krakauer 183). He did not know what Thoreau already knew, as a result, Mccandless learned later that “an extended stay in the wilderness inevitably directs one’s attention outward as much as inward, and it is impossible to live off the land without developing both a subtle understanding of, and a strong emotional bond with, that land and all it holds”(Krakauer 183).

Read More
519 Words | 3 Pages

Chris McCandless looked up to Henry David Thoreau’s ideas in his Walden excerpt. John Krakauer went on to make McCandless’ journey a novel of its own. However, Chris McCandless and Henry David Thoreau’s ideas on how one should live their life didn’t always compare as much as contrast. Thoreau does not like the outdoors as much as Chris does, “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” (Walden).

Read More
441 Words | 2 Pages

In the chapter titled Where I Lived, and What I Lived For from Henry David Thoreau’s novel Walden, the author utilizes rhetorical strategies such as imagery and tone to convey how the distractions that accompany a progressing civilization corrupts society. Since he is a transcendentalist, his argument encapsulates the same principles of becoming free from the binds of society and seeking harmony with nature. He emphasizes those ideals when he states that “[he] went to the woods because he wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if [he] could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when [he] came to die, discover that [he] had not lived”(276). In other words, he wanted to escape from society and live

Read More
1458 Words | 6 Pages

“While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. ”He compares Mother Nature with humans throughout the chapter, saying that mother nature provides thousand wonderful, beautiful, and interesting things, and fellow human beings seem to be interested in only what they can get out of you and who offer little in exchange. Thoreau feels that, rather than being near the greatest number of people, people must live and work in the place most important to their various

Read More
1473 Words | 6 Pages

Being re-exposed to this modern way of living made Chris yearn even more for the Alaskan wilderness, a place that didn’t have its natural beauty corrupted by humans. Just like Henry David Thoreau, Chris wanted to live a life on simplicity. While in Alaska, Chris spent his days hunting for food and reading, a lifestyle much more simplistic than his previous lifestyle. In Thoreau’s essay describing his venture into the woods, he wrote, “Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest.”

Read More
567 Words | 3 Pages

Kaitlyn Rodriguez Mr. Cedeño U.S. History F Block 12/7/14 Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau was an america author and naturalist and is considered to be one of the most influential figures in American history and literature.

Read More
465 Words | 2 Pages

Henry David Thoreau, one of America's most famous transcendentalist writers, undertook a journey in 1845 that his fellow Americans and other people around the world can only dream of: he escaped the eternal "rat race" of daily life. Thoreau abandoned his traditional lifestyle to pursue a living experiment in which he isolated himself in the woods for two years, two months, and two days. He built a small cabin a mile away from civilization, lived off of the land, and for the most part, relied solely on himself for survival. This was not done out of hatred towards society, but rather a personal desire to seek greater self-reliance and freedom by living a deliberate life. Thoreau sought 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."

Read More
1139 Words | 5 Pages

This highlights how unrealistic it is to live the successful self-reliant life that Thoreau was trying to encourage. In addition, despite how romantic Thoreau’s “solitude” sounds, in reality, living life isolated from society is incredibly lonely. When Christopher McCandless tried to incorporate the value of self-reliance into his life by taking an adventure to Alaska alone, he was left feeling incredibly lonely. At the end of his journey, he realized the flaws of this lifestyle. McCandless writes, “happiness only real when shared” (Penn).

Read More
578 Words | 3 Pages

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.

Read More
1171 Words | 5 Pages

Thoreau learned to love nature and realized how good it was to love it. While in the woods he became to love nature and his bean rows, they attached Thoreau closer to earth. He says “I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth and so I got strength like Antaeus” (Thoreau 238). The dedication he had to have for those beans had to be a lot.

Read More
923 Words | 4 Pages

He wrote about how technology and new lifestyles were continuously replacing what nature had established. He pointed out how nature was the window for people to find their own identity, which was fogged by the changes in society the industrial revolution had caused. Then, he continued to elaborate on how pure nature truly was by stating that all living things survive and live because of nature. Thoreau believes that society had lost itself in the tangles of its discoveries, and points to the solution of going back to

Read More
470 Words | 2 Pages

Henry David Thoreau especially supported the interaction between man and nature. With his experiment at Walden, he addresses a modern concept known as minimalism, focusing on the way one must supply for himself with his basic necessities. His intentions were not to isolate himself, but moreso to separate himself from a life dependent upon others. Through his actions, he is able to criticise society and many of their needs.

Read More
1159 Words | 5 Pages

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).

Read More
575 Words | 3 Pages

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).

Read More
1285 Words | 6 Pages

Why I Went to the Woods by Henry David Thoreau is a piece of literature taken from the book Walden that discusses Thoreau’s desire to experience life and it's meaning by living by the most simple terms possible. Thoreau lived off the land, built his own home, hunted and fished his own food. Through these things, Thoreau experienced how life is lived without luxury and only with the raw basics. Although his passion for the natural world shows through his writing his goal is not to persuade others to follow in his footsteps by going out and living in nature. Thoreau wanted others to follow him by living their best life which would be achieved by following their passions and the things they enjoy.

Read More

More about Henry David Thoreau's Life

Related Topics

Open Document