Symbolism And Transcendentalism: Henry David Thoreau

1487 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: American Slavery, 1619–1877 Book reviews

Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau, an American born author and philosopher, was born in Concord, Massachusetts in the hot, bright summer of 1817. He survived from July 12, 1817 through May 6, 1862 and died in the late spring due to a severe case of tuberculosis that he battled since his college days at Harvard College. Thoreau had a very normal childhood, and it was not until his later years that he actually came to know his true self and how he wanted to live. He attended college at Harvard College. There, he studied many different languages. He was a very bright man and did not do what others would have expected a guy like him to do after college. Thoreau is considered one of the best authors in American literature and his works are …show more content…

Transcendentalism is a belief that would, in a way, consume Thoreau`s thoughts and it would be portrayed throughout his many works that he published and wrote. “Transcendentalism regarded nature, both as symbol and actuality” (http://www.notablebiographies.com). Thoreau wrote about being a transcendentalists in Walden; or, Life in the Woods. Another belief that he had was that he wanted an end to slavery. Thoreau was an active abolitionist until the end of his life. Thoreau wrote about being an abolitionist and how he felt on the topic of slavery. One of his works that focus on the abolition of slavery is Slavery in Massachusetts. In Slavery in Massachusetts, Thoreau wrote about taking a stand. He took a brave stand for Captain John Brown, an abolitionist. Thoreau wrote about taking a stand for him because Captain John Brown led an uprising against slavery and eventually got convicted of treason and died for this uprising against slavery. Thoreau really admired Captain John Brown for his bravery. His beliefs were portrayed throughout all of his works of literature. Thoreau was an outspoken man and defended his beliefs without a doubt. He was not ashamed to speak what he had on his mind and he did exactly

Show More
Related

  • Thoreau's Use Of Figurative Language

    208 Words  | 1 Pages

    Thoreau uses figurative language to show how people stress about many problems in their lives and that it makes their lives difficult. For example, he states “Let us spend one day as deliberately as nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails.” He compares nutshell and mosquito to irritating problems we have that we get thrown off by. He wants us to take all the junk that we don’t need out of us and focus more on living life without stress. In addition, he also mentions “In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for that a man has to live.” In this text, Thoreau uses a huge metaphor to explain

    Read More

  • Emerson And Transcendentalism Comparison

    650 Words  | 2 Pages

    Transcendentalists Thoreau and Emerson conveyed strong, specific viewpoints on the world through their writing. The transcendentalist ideals differ vastly with the lives lived by most of the modern world today. Firstly, the two differ on views of self-reliance. Secondly, they have different outlooks on the government and organized groups. Lastly, transcendentalist and modern American views vary by the way they view nature. These differences between transcendentalism and life today are essential in understanding life then, as well as life now.

    Read More

  • Transcendentalism: Nature's Role in Intellectual Health

    976 Words  | 2 Pages

    "How important is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomenon to the preservation of moral & intellectual health. The discipline of the schools or of business—can never impart such serenity to the mind. " ~ Henry David Thoreau, May, 1851

    Read More

  • Thoreau's Personification

    1025 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Transcendentalism

    1611 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...ed to an optimistic emphasis on individualism, self-reliance, and rejection of traditional authority” (American 1). The major players in the transcendentalist movement are Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. They shared ideas such as self-reliance, and ideas about how there is a divine being that controls every person. They influenced many other writers and they even had an effect on the American society, then and now. Transcendentalism was a philosophy and a way of life. It will continue to be this as long as we have access to the great minds of the transcendental movement.

    Read More

  • Thoreaus Elements of American Romanticism

    1272 Words  | 3 Pages

    Henry David Thoreau pens his book Walden during a revolutionary period of time known as American Romanticism. The literary movement of American Romanticism began roughly between the years of 1830 and 1860. It is believed to be a chapter of time in which those who had been dissatisfied by the Age of Reason were revolting through works of literature. All elements of Romanticism are in sharp, abrupt contrast to those types of ideas such as empirical observation and rationality. An online article describes American Romanticism in the following manner, “They celebrated imagination/intuition versus reason/calculation, spontaneity versus control, subjectivity and metaphysical musing versus objective fact, revolutionary energy versus tradition, individualism versus social conformity, democracy versus monarchy, and so on” (Strickland). In 1845 during that period of time, Thoreau decides to spend two years of his life in an experiment with Mother Nature in a cabin at Walden Pond. He tells exquisite tales of life in natural surroundings in his book, Walden, through a most primitive organic style. Walden is a key work of American Romanticism because of its embedded ideas of solitude, individualism, pantheism and intuition.

    Read More

  • Henry David Thoreau's Literary Experience

    1043 Words  | 3 Pages

    In “Civil Disobedience” Thoreau emphasizes the need for self-reliance (“Clendenning”). This statement is fitting because Thoreau was one of the most self-reliant men of his time period. He was an individual and enjoyed nature. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) is closely related to the Transcendentalism movement, which lasted a mere ten years in the 1830s and 1840s. Transcendentalism is the belief of self-reliance, individuality, social reform, and relying on reason. Henry David Thoreau’s love of nature, languages, and contemporary English, as well as the growth of Transcendentalism greatly influenced the life of this great American Author.

    Read More

  • Transcendental Movement: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau

    650 Words  | 2 Pages

    To trace the origin of the Transcendental movement one needs to go back to the city of Concord, Massachusetts. There during the early 19th century many well-known and world-renowned authors were following the practices of one man, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson, who was considered America's first philosopher, had earlier traveled to Europe and became fascinated by the concepts of one German philosopher known as Kant. According to Emerson's understanding of Kant, there were two pure objects in the world in which are the bases of everything, nature and soul. He took this philosophy and brought it back to America where it later, with the help of Henry David Thoreau, revolutionized American literature.

    Read More

  • Henry David Thoreau's Influences In The Antebellum Period

    989 Words  | 2 Pages

    Thoreau wrote, “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.” The words transformed people’s lives to think more of the why in life and live with a purpose not just do what they are told, which was a driving idea within the Transcendentalist movements. Transcendentalist were hard to define, but perhaps one of the fathers of transcendentalism Ralph Waldo Emerson defines it most gracefully in a speech he gave, “The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine, He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power: he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy”. As Emerson’s key student and self-proclaimed Transcendentalist Thoreau fulfilled these requirements to help further this movement of higher

    Read More

  • Pathos, Ethos, Logos: Thoreau’s Attempts at Persuasion to Action

    1244 Words  | 3 Pages

    Henry David Thoreau was a poet, social philosopher, and educator in the early to mid- 1800s (Hampton). He graduated from Harvard University in 1837 and, upon his return to his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, befriended Ralph Waldo Emerson, also a philosopher and poet (Hampton, “Ralph Waldo Emerson”). Emerson was also the leader of the Transcendentalist movement which was based on the idea that people should lead by example -- social reform begins with the individual, not the government -- and that the movement should be peaceful (Woodlief, Ruehl). Thoreau agreed with this approach until the United States invaded Mexico in May, 1846 (Brown, Witherell). Opposed to slavery, Thoreau saw the invasion of Mexico as an attempt by the government to extend slavery westward. In his essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” published in 1849 with the original title, “Resistance to Civil Government,” Thoreau protests against the government and states that is a man’s duty to rise up against the government when the government commits a wrong (Thoreau). In his writings, Thoreau uses the three rhetorical approaches of Pathos, Ethos, and Logos in his attempts to persuade his readers to his point of view (Heinrichs).

    Read More

  • Transcendentalism In Henry David Thoreau's 'Spring'

    830 Words  | 2 Pages

    Henry David Thoreau’s Walden encompasses a variety of themes and elements which cultivate an astounding work of American literature. “Spring” is focused on the changing of the season from winter to spring, and Thoreau’s analysis of Walden Pond and the area surrounding the pond. Thoreau looks at the pond from a spiritual aspect, describing the relationships between life and nature with an abysmal passion. Without Thoreau’s incorporation of precise literary elements, and integration of the themes of solitude, newness of life, and transcendentalism to clearly outline the spiritual revelations he obtained from his retirement at Walden Pond, the readers of his work would not be able to completely grasp the concepts Thoreau presents.

    Read More

  • Nathaniel Hawthorne: Transcendentalism In Emerson And Henry David Thoreau

    705 Words  | 2 Pages

    Nathaniel Hawthorne is a very well known American short story writer, and romantic novelist. Nathaniel was born on July 4th of 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. Shortly after being born Nathaniel’s father Nathaniel who was a seaman, passed away in 1808 due to yellow fever at sea. This caused Nathaniel's mother Elizabeth to take Hawthorne and his two sisters to live with her brothers. Most of his ancestors, and family consisted of businessmen, judges, and seamen. Nathaniel was born into a family of puritans, ones with a very strict religious background which affects hawthorns writing in the future. Nathaniel’s great great grandfather was a well-known and crucial judge that controlled what happened to the supposed witches in the Salem witch trials. This made the hawthorns believe that they had a

    Read More

  • Comparing the Lives of Thoreau and Hawthorne

    932 Words  | 2 Pages

    Henry David Thoreau's dominant trait was being a Transcendentalist. Transcendentalism is the belief asserting the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the experimental and scientific and is knowable through instinct.

    Read More

  • American Literature

    806 Words  | 2 Pages

    American literature during the first half of the nineteenth century took many forms and ideas that still effect our ever so changing society today. Henry David Thoreau was among the notable writers during this time, and his impact of American literature will not soon be forgotten. His perseverance, love for nature, and humanitarian beliefs helped to mold the ideas and values of early American history. He was born in Concord, Massachusetts on July 12 in 1817. His parents, both abolitionists of slavery, were John and Cynthia Thoreau. During his childhood years his parents, along with Henry’s older siblings John Jr. and Helen, often took the family on long walks though the valleys and hills of Concord. The seeds of Henry’s love for nature were planted during this time. As a young school boy, at the Concord public school and later at the Concord Academy, many of his peers sought after him as loner who took everything too serious. In 1833 Henry’s parents had saved enough money to send him off to college at Harvard University. Even though he barely passed the entrance exam, he would later become one of the top students in his graduating class. In 1836 financial and health problems forced Thoreau to postpone his studies at Harvard and seek a job. He taught school for a semester in Canton, Massachusetts and returned to Harvard in the Spring of 1837. He took a full load of classes that Spring and Summer semesters and graduated in August of 1837. After graduating Thoreau had no idea what he wanted to do with his education. After debating over many different careers he finally concluded that teaching would be his calling. He landed a position at Center School in 1837 in Concord, however he resigned two weeks later after many teachers and students complained of his teaching methods and strictness in the classroom. Over the next year he worked many small jobs around Concord, and also became friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson. The elder Emerson influenced Thoreau in his belief in Transcendentalism. “Thoreau was indelibly marked by his mentor’s philosophy” (Sanborn 122).

    Read More

  • Transcendentalism

    1378 Words  | 3 Pages

    Transcendentalism was an early philosophical, intellectual, and literary movement that thrived in New England in the nineteenth century. Transcendentalism was a collection of new ideas about literature, religion, and philosophy. It began as a squabble in the Unitarian church when intellectuals began questioning and reacting against many of the church’s orthodoxy ways regarding all of the aforementioned subjects: religion, culture, literature, social reform, and philosophy. They in turn developed their own faith focusing on the divinity of humanity and the innate world. Many of the Transcendentalists ideas were expressed heavily by Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essays such as “Nature”, “Self Reliance”, and also in his poems such as “The Rhodora.” Some may even go as far as to say that Emerson is the definite center of this movement. Emerson was not alone in his path of thought; other prominent authors such as Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller were dubbed as Transcendentalists. The Transcendental movement significantly shaped and changed the course of American literature; many writers were profoundly influenced by Emerson and Thoreau and in turn began using transcendental thought, whether in response to or by how they imitated transcendental ideas. The roots of Transcendentalism began to grow from Emerson’s Nature and Self-Reliance, as well as Thoreau’s Walden, which inspired many writers and intellectuals to take part in this optimistic belief that God is inherent in each and every individual, as well as in nature, and the highest source of knowledge can be achieved through individuality, self-reliance, and the rejection of traditional authority.

    Read More

More about Symbolism And Transcendentalism: Henry David Thoreau

Open Document