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The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail Essay

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Ralph Waldo Emerson, a renowned transcendentalist, shared many universal truths during the period of Transcendentalism, which further advocated the ideals of the period. This maxim in particular expresses that your own identity and perspective of the world is what is most important in the end.
Emerson states that nothing is as important as you, regarding the path you choose and the ideals you create for yourself. In other words, Emerson encourages people to not succumb to society's expectations of who a person should be, but instead live a lifestyle you desire to live. This maxim particularly expresses the theme of individuality and enforces society to be their own. During
Emerson's lifetime, he had been a strong advocate of the abolitionist …show more content…

In the play, "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail," by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Henry
David Thoreau, the protagonist of the play, is shown to advocate self-awareness and making your own decisions based on your own beliefs. As expressed in the maxim, the ideals of transcendentalism and individuality, regardless of society's expectations, is evidently shown in the text.
In the play, Henry David Thoreau is thrown in jail for one night because he refuses to pay taxes that support the Mexican-American War. Although it was considered an American duty to pay taxes to support the country's decisions, Thoreau did not believe that the Mexican-American War was the right direction towards prosperity, so he risked the consequence of prison rather than succumb to the directions given to him which would falsify his own ideals. Emerson's maxim is shown in the plot of the play as a whole. Emerson's maxim expresses going against societal norms and going your own path, and Henry did exactly that when he refused to pay taxes unlike any other American citizen. Other

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Thoreau starts his essay by condemning his fellow countrymen’s actions, or rather, inaction. They and Thoreau share similar moral beliefs, but they refuse to take any action towards them. “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or

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Emerson also wrote about change. He believed that if one wanted to change they could, all they had to do was change their thoughts, attitude, and perspective. Emerson wrote, “If we live truly, we

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Anoosha Balebail The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail Essay Rewrite As Shakespeare had once said in the past, “To thine own self be true.” During the Transcendentalist era of American literature, many writers took on the liberal mindset of the time, and that was with no exception to Ralph Waldo Emerson. During his time, Emerson compiled a list of nine maxims, or universal truths/themes on life, and used these as an approach to life.

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When comparing Civil Disobedience and The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, it is clear that Thoreau’s ideas and thoughts were revolutionary at the time in which he lived. Both Civil Disobedience and The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail are clear compositions of his views, however, The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail more effectively connects people to his ideas. Both Civil Disobedience and The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail assert Thoreau’s views on the freeing aspects of jail as well as his thoughts on the rest of America. While in Civil Disobedience Thoreau discusses the “wall of stone between [him] and [his] townsmen” and the even “more difficult [wall the townsmen must] to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as [he] was”(Thoreau

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3rd Quote that supports the Topic Sentence: “The authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to- for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well- is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.” (13) EXPLANATION of 3rd Quote: Thoreau will listen to the government as long as it is just to everyone. It cannot have any right over his body and property, but what he surrenders to it. INTRO TO Research That Supports/Helps Explain

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Thoreau 's views on the government by comparing the government to a machine. He states, ”When the machine was producing injustice, it was the duty of conscientious citizens to be ‘a counter friction’ (i.e., a resistance) "to stop the machine.” The two major issues being debated in the United States during his life was slavery and the Mexican-American War in which were major reasons he wrote his essays. In the mid to late 1840’s slavery has been indoctrinated into American society in which caused rifts between Americans.

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As a grownup and an adult for that matter, one cannot be like others one has learned from. One should not make efforts to live like ones’ parents, teachers or elders in our society. One must strive to be one ’s own true self. Emerson is convincing that nonconformity is genius.

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One instance of Emerson’s parallelism is the first sentence of his second paragraph: “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till” (Emerson 2). The various clauses in the sentence have the same rhythm, thus creating parallelism. Using the parallelism to give his writing rhythm and flow, Emerson creates a scholarly, academic feel in this piece. Similarly, Emerson uses many compound and complex sentence structures throughout the piece, such as “Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact makes much impression on him, and another none” (Emerson 2). He uses this advanced syntax in order to give his sentences an air of sophistication, making him sound educated and intelligent.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were writers and transcendentalist principal figures. They believed people should focus on their individual judgment rather than social traditions. Emerson was a philosopher and he thought people should discover and believe on their own “definition of freedom” (Foner330). This was a process of one realizing their own definition of freedom and to incorporate it to their lives. Thoreau believed Americans were consuming their lives with building up wealth caused by the market revolution.

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Ralph Emerson’s theme is that when people take times to reflect on themselves, then they find out their purpose in life. In his short essay “Self-Reliance”, he voices his opinions on how individuals need to pursue their dreams even if it means breaking the law. Henry Thoreau’s theme is that when people stand for what they want peacefully, then forced reflection happens. In his short essay “Civil Disobedience”, he says that its is the right of the people not to support the government if they are not doing their job, which is to serve and protect the majority of

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The theme of the essay “Self Reliance” written by Emerson is for beings to not focus on those of others or subside his/her values to fit in with our society, for true geniuses comes from within and are made with their own heart and mind. His idea of self-reliance differs from that of the norm in that he doesn’t encourage those to mix into selfish ways but to be open and proud of their own individuality for that is the true key to life itself. Emerson’s idea is similar to the common use in that he encourages those to not depend on others to define his/her identity. 2. Emerson’s use of figurative language encourages his readers to view his ideas in a clearer and more emphasized perspective.

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In Emerson's views, people should “not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”(citation). Based on Emerson’s thoughts, people should not follow the crowd, but instead live their lives and leave their mark on the Earth. Emerson thoughts come from a philosophical movement of the nineteenth century called transcendentalism. Transcendentalism focuses on religious renewal, literary innovation, and social transformation (encyclopedia.com). Because of their belief that God exists in everyone and nature, and that knowledge comes from individual intuition, led to the highlight of individualism, self-reliance, and breaking free from traditions(citation).

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Thoreau explains that the state and societies prison “never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength” and furthermore that he “was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion” (1990). Therefore, Resistance to Civil Government is validating that prison is confinement and conformity, however, Thoreau will not be conforming to any such conformist state and neither should the reader. Thoreau finally reinforces that he is “not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society” and that “if a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so man” (1990), Thoreau is explicating that society needs to be responsible for its self and become self-reliant, just as an individual should be, because it is the nature of the world and society and if it cannot live as such then it will not continue

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Transcendentalist writers were focused on the belief of the divinity of the individual soul, the inner voice, (Crawford, Kern & Needleman, 1961) to overcome social stereotypes and to avoid conformity. It is highlighted the importance to return to nature to enhance the quality of humans beings by living simply since being apart of common social rules is the only way to be in communion with nature’s wisdom. Those transcendental characteristics could be seen in Emerson’s ¨self-reliance¨ or Thoreau’s ¨Walden ¨ bearing in mind that although, Emerson’s ¨Self-reliance¨ adheres more descriptive examples to illustrate metaphors and Thoreau’s ¨Where I lived and what I lived for¨ introduces metaphors creating much more imagery, both make a critique of the modern individual using

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Emerson emphasizes, “what I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think... It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion... but the great man is he who

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