It was a beautiful summer day when it happened. I was enjoying the fresh air and the amazing view of Walden Pond. The sun was shining and a slight breeze blew across my face. I love standing still and listening to the swishing of the leaves and the soft feet of animals running through the grounds. On this day in particular it was quiet. It was a holiday so no one was around. As I needed to get away from the stress and the difficulty of everyday. Life now is so complex now a days. There are so many layers of everything and the constant ticking of time is just not enough. It’s exhausting going through the motions. I closed my eyes as I was looking about to the pond. I wanted to remember this image so I could think back when …show more content…
It was eerie quiet not just the usual flowing silence. The worn path was no longer in front of me and the signs littering the trees were all missing. I reach down for my phone out of instinct when I’m nervous so I can call for hell but all that’s there is a small rock. WHAT! What’s going on! I thought I continued along I saw Henry David Thoreau’s cabin in the distance. As I grew closer the uneasiness in my stomach grew stronger. I continued forward and brought my hand up and shakily knocked. As I waited, my mind circled with what I was doing knocking on a door I knew was empty. But the door did open and standing in front of me was no scrawny actor but the real Henry David Thoreau in the flesh. “Excuse me miss, can I help you?” Thoreau said while I was looking at him bug eyed “I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to disturb… I’m just a little lost” I stood still for a moment. I didn’t know what to say or do. I had studied some of the passages in his book Walden before Thoreau and his life. There was not a doubt in my mind that this was the real man standing in front of me. “So, would you like to come in,” Thoreau said welcoming with a knowing smile on his face. “I’m confused, what’s going,” I exclaimed. “I’m just as confused as you are, but would you like to come in you look a little
In this passage from the famous text Walden, the author Henry David Thoreau, a naturalist and transcendentalist, gives an account of his experience while living in isolation at Walden pond for two years of his life. While in isolation, he sought to enjoy life away from the hustle and bustle of society and live more simplistically without concern of the small things in life.
Thoreau, Henry David. "Walden." The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998. 2107-2141.
Written in 1970, The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail focuses on a man named Henry David Thoreau. Henry is a very well educated Harvard man that lives his life according to Transcendentalism “the belief that man can go beyond his senses”. He refuses to give into society’s terms and as a result is thrown in jail. Henry befriends a man named Bailey who shares the cell with him. In Lawrence and Lee’s The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail, is the belief transcendentalism of which plays an active role in the play. Seen throughout the play are aspects of self-reliance, free thought, and the importance of nature which form the main ideals of transcendentalism.
Thoreau found himself at Walden - and lost himself on Ktaadn. Walden, a mile from town, was a benign experience in which he learned what he could do without, what was essential for life. Ktaadn, high and remote, taught him what he could not do without, what was essential life.
[Thoreau] stood close to the top of his class, but he went his own way too
Harton, Ron. "Henry Thoreau as a Model for Nature Writing." 9 August 2009. The Thoreau Reader. Online Document. 17 March 2014. .
He pulled his dripping trunks from the line where they had hung all through the shower, and wrung them out. Languidly, and with no thought of going in, I watched him, his hard little body, skinny and bare, saw him wince slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the small, soggy, icy garment. As he buckled the swollen belt suddenly my groin felt the chill of death.” White is finally beginning to see it is no longer himself in his son but his son is growing up and White is only getting older. On the other hand, Thoreau is giving the visual of the pond itself over time and as the seasons change the details and perspectives of the pond are all becoming something else. As the seasons pass the way the pond changes and the view and elements around it
How people see one another vary in numerous ways, whether it be from actions or what is gathered through spoken conversations. When an intellectual meets someone for the first time, they tend to judge by appearance before they judge by how the person express their thoughts or ideas. In Thoreau’s excerpt, he emphasizes the importance of his philosophy, especially by making sure the reader is aware of his own feelings about it. He puts literary devices such as metaphors, personification, and imagery to construct his explanation for his philosophy as well as provide several attitudes to let the reader identify how he feels towards people and the value of their ideas.
Thoreau adopts an “I” in Walden as a persona, as a way to question different ways of living, and propose different concepts to his readers. His “I” is akin to a Dickinson poem, becoming the voice that guides the readers, but might not necessarily have been shared by the author himself. Schulz attempts to defame Thoreau literary persona by criticizing the fictional aspects of the story. “Read charitably, it is a kind of semi-fictional extended meditation featuring a character named Henry David Thoreau” (Pond Scum). Schulz fails to make the distinction between Thoreau the man and Thoreau the literary character. The “I” in the story is another side of Thoreau that he used to explore different aspects of the world. Thoreau was a vegetarian that ate meat, and a pacifist that endorsed violence. He questioned the concepts that have become associated with his name. Donovan Hahn of the New Republic says that Thoreau thought of Walden “as a poem...not nonfiction,” which is a genre and label that did not yet exist. Due to not being able to realize the split between Thoreau the man and his persona, Schulz misinterprets Thoreau’s investigation of life as that of a
Henry David Thoreau was bon on July 12, 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, on his grandmother’s farm. Thoreau was of French-Huguenot and Scottish-Quaker decent. Thoreau was interested in writing at an early age. At the age of ten he wrote his first essay “The seasons”. He attended Concord Academy until 1833 when he was accepted to Harvard University but with his pending financial situation he was forced to attend Cambridge in August of 1833. In September of 1833 with the help of his family he was able to attend Harvard University. He graduated college in August of 1837.
The opening paragraph is an incredibly vivid account of nights spent by “the stony shore” of Walden Pond. His description of the animals around the pond, the cool temperature, and the gentle sounds of lapping waves and rustling leaves all serve to remove the idea that nature is a wild and unkempt world of its own, and instead makes it seem much more serene and graceful. Any who thought of Thoreau as an insane outdoorsmen may have even found themselves repulsed by the monotony and constant bustle of city life and longing for the serenity felt by Thoreau. This
To conclude, Thoreau believed that people should be ruled by conscience and that people should fight against injustice through non-violence according to “Civil Disobedience.” Besides, he believed that we should simplify our lives and take some time to learn our essence in the nature. Moreover, he deemed that tradition and money were unimportant as he demonstrated in his book, Walden. I suggested that people should learn from Thoreau to live deliberately and spend more time to go to the nature instead of watching television, playing computer games, and among other things, such that we could discover who we were and be endeavored to build foundations on our dreams.
“I love to be alone.” It is one of the shortest sentences in the entire chapter, and yet it has so much to say. However, its simplicity is what makes it so complex. It is so short, that the reader cannot fully understand what Henry David Thoreau means by that. There are two basic things it could mean. More specifically, the usage of the word “alone” could mean two things. One meaning is that Thoreau loves to be alone from society, meaning people. The other is that Thoreau loves to be completely alone, away from both humans/society as well as nature. However, that meaning of the sentence makes Thoreau seem quite paradoxal.
When thinking about the transcendental period and/or about individuals reaching out and submerging themselves in nature, Henry David Thoreau and his book, Walden, are the first things that come to mind. Unknown to many, there are plenty of people who have braved the environment and called it their home during the past twenty years, for example: Chris McCandless and Richard Proenneke. Before diving into who the “modern Thoreaus” are, one must venture back and explore the footprint created by Henry Thoreau.
Myerson, Joel. The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau. New York: Cambridge UP, 1995. Print.