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Things to Remember about Thoreau

Things to Remember about Thoreau. English 215 Spring 2003. 14 years younger than RWE Friendship bloomed in late 1830s, after T’s graduation from Harvard Throughout the 1840s, E encouraged T as a writer, particularly praising his poetry and getting him started on the great topic of nature.

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Things to Remember about Thoreau

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  1. Things to Remember about Thoreau English 215 Spring 2003

  2. 14 years younger than RWE Friendship bloomed in late 1830s, after T’s graduation from Harvard Throughout the 1840s, E encouraged T as a writer, particularly praising his poetry and getting him started on the great topic of nature Shared political attitudes about slavery Friendship cooled some in the 1850s, with T resenting E’s patronage & E critical of what he saw as T’s lack of ambition RWE delivered the eulogy at T’s funeral: “No truer American existed than Thoreau.” Relationship with Emerson

  3. An age of social experimentation • Like the 1960s, the 1840s saw a number of experiments with communes. Hawthorne lived for a time at Brook Farm, the Alcotts at Fruitlands. • T’s stay at Walden Pond is a more solitary response to this same impulse towards social experimentation.

  4. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life….” • Built a cabin on property owned by RWE and moved in on 4 July 1845 • Lived economically and comfortably for two years and two months • Experiment in self reliance, but not a flight from society

  5. “Simplify, simplify.” • Like RWE, HDT was profoundly skeptical of the division of labor. • The complexity and specialization of labor and commerce rob of us any command of our own lives. • “if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune of being ridden upon.”

  6. “By working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.” • Growing his own food and building his own shelter gave him freedom to work productively as a writer and thinker • Profound connection between self reliance, meaningful labor, and thought

  7. “I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.” • While living at Walden Pond, T was arrested and briefly jailed for not paying his poll tax. • His essay on the experience, “Civil Disobedience,” explores the question of what a person should do when he or she feels that his government is acting immorally.

  8. Crosspollination • Like RWE, T avidly studied the Hindu scriptures of India. • Mahatma Gandhi studied T’s writings on civil disobedience as he led India’s struggle for independence. • MLK based many of his ideas on nonviolent action on the work of Gandhi.

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