Book of Concord

Life with More Meaning Give up conformity and the idea of life, everyone can live without it. Transcendentalism is just that. Transcendentalism is believing that God, ourselves, and the universe are in a relation with nature. Two authors that represent transcendentalism are Ralph Emerson and Henry Thoreau. Ralph Emerson is known as the father of transcendentalism, and is a graduate of Harvard. His first real work is the essay titled Nature. He became a teacher but was kicked out of the school…

The Guide: Ralph Waldo Emerson This hell was constructed based on the views of transcendentalism. Emerson was the most well known transcendentalist as well as an author and poet. Along with this, Emerson was a close friend of Thoreau and was one of his few human contacts during Thoreau’s time at Walden pond. If anyone was to understand the mind of Thoreau and his life in Walden, it would be Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1. Non-Christians Developing a connection between man, nature, and God is the…

The reading for this week comes from William Cronon’s book Uncommon Ground. Throughout the passage, Cronon argues that our modern view of wilderness is paradoxically flawed, but due to the historical effects of the sublime and the frontier that emerged at the end of the 19th century, the adoration of wilderness has become ingrained in our culture. These ideologies have imprinted man-made moral values and cultural symbols on wilderness. Cronon asserts that this romanticism of nature currently…

individuals, rather than living up to social expectations. He also emphasizes that it’s crucial to listen to your heart and one’s own voice. Emerson believes that individual experience has a greater impact on someone than the knowledge gained from books. “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string… Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike…

Living Without Superficial Needs and Fear Reading Where I Lived and What I Lived For, there are multiple noticeable themes throughout the story. The first theme found was, “to live deliberately, man must live without superficial needs.” (Thoreau 1) Another theme found in the story was, to live sturdily, man must take his time and think, to live without fear. This report will cover the changes throughout the story between the two themes. The first paragraph of Where I Lived and What I Lived For…

It is often difficult to contemplate what is truly essential in living a fulfilling life nowadays. With so many advertisements and new department stores out there, the true essence of life is terribly lost for many Americans. It 's lost in the materialism of modern life. Materialism is defined as a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values. This is the contrast to the 19th century philosophy named transcendentalism which emphasizes the…

During the 1840s, Henry David Thoreau set off into the woods to live alone for the purpose of finding himself. He was very concerned about growing old without experiencing everything he could. Thoreau famously puts “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” (271). He found himself displeased with the way he was living and…

The two authors I am comparing in this essay are Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. I will convey both the similarities and differences between the lifestyles of the two authors; Both Thoreau and Emerson are categorized as publishers from the transcendentalism era. Both authors had extraordinary passion for living a life of simplicity and harmony, but what did this really mean and how did they achieve this? Both Ralph and Henry were born in Massachusetts, Emerson in 1803 and Thoreau…

The increased sense of conflict between the people and the society in which they lived in was what marked the development into the 19th century. When a sense of community and togetherness is deteriorating, the affirmation of the people inclines and when people become expected to exist outside their positions in society, a conflict between the individual and society as a whole arises; a reason of this newfound concept of individuality. The idea of having a “pecking order” and definitive social…

Wilderness. What defines wilderness? Wilderness is described as an uninhabited or inhospitable region somewhere. Some would say that the closest thing you can get to wilderness is Wyoming. Most people would describe wilderness as a place they’ve never been before and is unchartered territory for them. For example, a farmer who has worked the land all his life and has only been in one small town might consider big cities like New York or Los Angeles a place of wilderness. That could go both then…