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Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). A Short Biography. Of the men and women who made Concord the center of Transcendentalism, only Thoreau was born there. He attended Harvard He might have made a career as a school teacher, but he resigned rather than inflict corporal punishment.
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A Short Biography • Of the men and women who made Concord the center of Transcendentalism, only Thoreau was born there. • He attended Harvard • He might have made a career as a school teacher, but he resigned rather than inflict corporal punishment. • He was also a tutor, surveyor, and pencil manufacturer. • In 1842, he became a handyman at Ralph Waldo Emerson’s house.
Abolitionist • In the 1850’s, he became an outspoken abolitionist. • He was effective enough to be summoned to fill in for Frederick Douglas at a convention in Boston. • He was an active abolitionist, assisting in the movement of slaves toward freedom through the Underground Railroad.
Walden • On July 4, 1845, Thoreau moved into woods owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson to write A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. • Some have suggested that he was declaring his independence from society. • Thoreau maintains that the date was “by accident.”
Thoreau’s Journal • Thoreau kept a journal while he lived in the woods; this journal became the basis of Walden. • After two years, two months, and two days, Thoreau left the woods, returning to care for Emerson’s household. • He both went to and left Walden Pond for practical reasons.
Approaches to Walden • A book about nature--birds, plants, and animals • The book is about the life available to people living close to nature, living in harmony with nature • A satire on contemporary civilization • Thoreau laughs at what the common man takes seriously and vice-versa. • Thoreau’s life was an affront to his nonliterary neighbors who had to work and hadn’t had the privilege of going to Harvard. • He had a “habit of antagonism.”
3. An Aesthetic Object • The work is a carefully organized whole. • He often alternates themes in chapters. • solitude/visitors • spiritual/worldly • human/animal • Thoreau spent 26 months at Walden. The book takes only one year and includes incidents that didn’t even happen at Walden. • The persona he creates is pleasing, both arrogant and modest.
4. A Lifestyle Experiment • “What happens if one withdraws from routine to see what life is about?” • Habit<------------------------->Deliberation • Inauthentic<----------------------->Authentic • Death<----------------------------->Life • Shams<------------------------->Necessities • “Simplify, simplify, simplify!” • Thoreau’s purpose is ultimately philosophical or religious.
Limitations of Thoreau’s Approach • Thoreau was single. • Thoreau was a man. • Thoreau didn’t have dependent parents. • There was no IRS.
“Resistance to Civil Government” • On a trip into town to get a shoe fixed, Thoreau was asked to pay his poll-tax. • He refused, saying he did not wish to support a government waging war against Mexico or one that supported slavery. • He spent one night in jail. Someone, probably his mother, paid the poll tax for him.
Influence of “Civil Disobedience” • Thoreau’s writing about the incident has been of lasting social and political importance. • Many decades passed before anyone explicitly acted on the essay’s radical advice. • In 1906, Mahatma Gandhi, in his African exile, read it and made it a major document in his struggle for Indian independence. • In the United States, civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. tested his tactics of Civil Disobedience.
Literary Devices used by Thoreau • Vivid metaphors--making the words live • Word Play • From Chapter 1 of Walden: “I was determined to know beans.” • From Chapter 2: “Let us rise early and fast, or break fast . . . determined to make a day of it.” • Irreverent Humor
Emerson placed no value on the past. He wanted Americans to throw off tradition. Emerson recognized and dismissed evil. Career as a lecturer. Thoreau valued the past, especially books. He both quotes and values reading. Thoreau recognized evil and railed against it. No career; odd jobs. Emerson and Thoreau Both Thoreau and Emerson inveigh against business, especially the rising consumer society devoted to arousing “artificial wants.”
Thoreau’s Lasting Influence • Civil Disobedience--Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. • 1960’s and 1970’s countercultural concerns for experiments in living • The general American concern for ecological sanity (Don Henley is a disciple.) • A model for hands-on approaches to nature--He was well-known to important naturalists of his time.
