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What I Lived For By Henry David Thoreau

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What I Lived For Life; this one very word has many different meanings to different people based on their experiences in life. To a historian, life is a story that one must write for themselves, however a biologist will view life as the combined work and systemic organization of many biotic and abiotic factors within an ecosystem. Furthermore, a philosopher views life as the ultimate puzzle, desperate to put the pieces together, yet hesitant to begin in fear of connecting the wrong pieces. Throughout all of this, the question remains: What is life? Outside of the academic circle of complex definitions, life can be defined as what we do and how we behave on a day-to-day basis. Or is it? This complexity that increases the more one attempts to unravel it, is where Henry David Thoreau, a 19th century philosopher, comes in to “save the day” as it were. …show more content…

Thoreau saw the complexities of life all around and realized that Life itself was not complicated, rather it was mankind’s ever changing “civilization” that had made life so “complex.” As a result, he noticed that to realize what Life really is, he must go out into the real world and experience it himself. This is a feat not possible within regular human society; therefore, Thoreau did the only thing that he believed would truly bring him one with nature, he left human civilization to be in the center of life itself. He moved into the woods so that he may finally define what is life, by experiencing it in all of its raw

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During the Transcendentalist movement, Henry David Thoreau was a leading transcendentalist whose work focused mainly on nature and adventure. Walden, or Life in the Woods is an exceptional example of a story based on adventure. In Thoreau’s account of his life at Walden pond, he first states, “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.” Through this quote Thoreau explains that he was tired of the complexity of normal life and desired to go on an adventure to live simply. Additionally, Thoreau states, “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…,” which again reveals his motivation for new life by adventure and simplicity.

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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

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Humans need nature to survive, and they need to stop messing around with nature. Humans have destroyed the world and nature with pollution of all kinds, literally and figuratively. Thoreau wants people to get back to their roots, and to stop fighting over stupid things and just become authentic again and realize how important nature actually is to

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Thoreau was a prominent and influential transcendentalist which meant that he believed modern society’s institutions, organizations, religions, and politics are all corrupt. He believes that people should go back to their roots in nature and be more simple-minded like our ancient ancestors who lived in nature. To think about it in more modern terms, he was practically a minimalist who believed people should only live with things essential for life, basic life necessities like food, water, and shelter. He quotes, “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” (Thoreau 66). From the quote, we can tell that he believes that a life without living with nature and essentials only is a life wasted.

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He states that society forces people to live a hurried life full of waste, and this quality of life is the sole reason humans have yet to evolve. In his mind, society has created a race of materialistic individuals, and the more materialistic and complicated their lives become, the more delusional and naive these individuals are of reality. Thoreau, instead, seeks simplicity and solitude and leaves for Walden Pond in the woods to discover what nature has to teach him. He wants to experience the essential facts of life, and learn from it so that he cannot, at the end of his life, say that he hadn’t truly lived.

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Thoreau continues, “I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports” (Thoreau). Everyone must be themself. Individuality is important to Thoreau in allowing people to truly connect around them and to connect to what is important to them, what is meant for them. Everything happens for a reason. Using the comparison of cultivating every acre of the earth gives a picture of overpreparing and ruining the

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Individuals form the cornerstone of American identity by investing themselves to improve their country. Individuals act as the red blood cells to American, providing life-giving oxygen to the body. Like blood, the prosperity of the United States rests in the hands of the people. Henry David Thoreau discusses the importance of the individual in his essay “Civil Disobedience.”

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“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see” (“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”). Thoreau lived his whole life trying to figure out what really matters to humanity. His personality was quite different than others. He was into individualism and he separated himself from society to live on his own and focus on becoming self-reliant. Thoreau’s seperation from society resulted in him being seperated from society and not needing anyone's help.

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The purpose of Where I Lived, and What I Lived for, by Henry David Thoreau is to express that life should be lived with simplicity and with purpose. His advanced syntax and high vocabulary makes this passage difficult to read, while giving the reader a challenge. His use of rhetorical devices throughout the passage also helps convey his message about the purpose of life. In the first set of paragraphs, he introduces that he moved into the woods, so he could enjoy the many things nature has to offer deliberately. He compares humans to ants when he says that “we live meanly, like ants.”

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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

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The novel Hiroshima by John Hersey demonstrates how we can learn from our past to grow our communities in the spirit of a hopeful future by coming together as one. Together people are a lot stronger. In the book Hiroshima, after the bomb hit, ten thousand victims of the bombing invaded the Red Cross Hospital where Dr. Sasaki worked. Although there was not enough equipment nor people help with all the victims, Dr. Sasaki and the other doctors were trying their best to attend and treat every wounded person.

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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.

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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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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.

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In Henry David Thoreau’s essay, “Walking”, he exemplifies a walk in the woods. Thoreau describes his feelings and the surroundings when he walks. He walks further and further into different landscapes. Thoreau argues in his essay that the things that humans have created in this world are all minimal and irrelevant to the world and nature itself. Thoreau argues that all these things that occupy our lives are minimalistic in the eyes of nature.

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