Comparing Washington Irving And Henry David Thoreau

Fundamentally are people essentially good, or not? This has been a question that has been repeatedly asked throughout humanity. For thousands of years, writers have been debating whether humans have a basically good nature that is corrupted by society, or a basically bad nature that is kept in check by society. This is because, as readers we admire people who are good, that aren’t powerful in the typical conventional way. Such as, greed, status, money, etc. but for the characteristics that as human beings we can connect to. Which is why, specially 1800 hundred authors, like Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau represented the individual people within their own stories as good. For instance, in Irving’s Rip Van Wrinkle, he presents this lazy, good-natured, middle aged man who wanders off from the demands of home and village to hunt in the Catskill Mountains. Having escaped to these fairy hills, he encounters the ghosts of Henrick (Henry) Hudson’s “half-moon” crew where he joins in them in their revealing to the point of falling

Since, truth be told, we know the people in our communities aren’t always as bad as they seem to be. This is because, Thoreau says in his Civil Disobedience, the government likes to manipulate us into what want they think we should belief (Thoreau p.966-967). When really it should teach people to stand their own ground, as well as, one’s own truth and rightness. Meaning, that these writers didn’t have to promote religious and moral teachings, like they used to, but they did have to find a common cultural ground. Which, is that people are essential good, and I agree we are. For, as humans of America, we are the most virtuous in the world and tend to demonstrate the values of Americans in a positive light. Just as, authors such as Washington Irving, Ralph Emerson and Henry Thoreau do in their stories, as well