Thoreau Rhetorical Analysis

Henry David Thoreau uses metaphors and personal anecdotes to underscore his message that nature is good and humans should preserve it in its pristine state. Thoreau uses metaphors to portray his message of keeping nature in its pristine state. Throughout all of Thoreau's writing he expresses his idea of transcendentalism, encouraging profound engagement with the natural world and keeping it in its purest form. In Thoreau's essay "Walking”, he uses a metaphor to help readers understand his message of preserving nature in its pristine state; "A single farm-house which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the dominions of the King of Dahomey” (Thoreau 30). Through Thoreau walking and discovering a farm house, he compares it to the King

Thoreau also uses another metaphor to express his message that nature is good, “In one half-hour I can walk off to some portion of the Earth's surface where a man does not stand from one year's end to another, and there,. politics are not, for they are but as the cigar smoke of a man” (Thoreau 75). By comparing politics to the cigar smoke of a man he is saying that politics are not good for humans and how they will eventually disappear and disappear but nature will always be here. By doing this, he is showing how important nature is compared to politics, because it will always be here, and why we need to keep it in its pristine state. Thoreau also uses personal anecdotes to emphasize his message of keeping nature in its pristine state. Thoreau explains how his walks in nature benefited him by saying, “In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society” (Thoreau 10). Just by walking outside, Thoreau explains that he would forget everything else he has going on, including his