The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail Transcendentalism

In Lawrence and Lee's play, "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail," Ralph Waldo Emerson's maxim of "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind," is evident within the text. The maxim itself means that we should place our own decisions above all else. From this meaning the theme of personal morality having importance in the individual can be applied to the maxim, and therefore the play's events. "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail," details Henry David Thoreau's experiences of following Emerson's Transcendentalist teachings through flashbacks to the past while in prison. The maxim can be clearly observed in the following scene. First, Emerson's maxim of nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind is established in the scene in the play where Henry chastises Ellen for taking notes …show more content…
This plainly reveals Emerson's maxim and it's meaning of individuality and self-intuition prominent in the core beliefs of Transcendentalism. Ellen, to Henry, needs to be a free and independent thinker who does not need the opinion of others. This parallels the work of Walt Whitman and his poem, "The Learn'd Astronomer." Whitman was another poet influence by Emerson's teaching and writes in the poem about a man who walks away from a lecture given to him by an astronomer. The man leaves the lecture room disgusted by what he is being told, instead searching for explanations outside in the night sky. Both works deals with the maxim and contain the universal truth of the individual and their decisions having greater value than anything else. In addition, the maxim can be viewed in great historical figures such as the founding fathers; men who literally built a nation based on individualism and ingenuity. In today's world this maxim is threatened by society which limits our decisions and attempts to make choices for