Concord, Massachusetts

Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books-John Lubbock. People in our society are always trying to get back to nature to escape their busy lives and clear their minds. Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” and Emerson’s “Nature” stress the fact that nature not only helps us as humans, but can hold the key to a lot of the questions we have. Firstly, both pieces of text discuss how…

In the essay “Walden”, David Henry Thoreau talks about his own experiences living on the shore of Walden Pond in Massachusetts for two years and two months alone. He describes the scenes that he saw in Walden and his feelings and reactions in details. One of the most important parts in Thoreau’s essays is that he uses “I” to write the essays. He also introduces his own philosophy away from the reality world and his thoughts about the nature and human at the beginning of the essay. He believes in…

Transcendentalism can be expressed in many different ways. The transcendentalist era was a movement of beliefs such as women's rights, self reliance and respecting nature, etc. For this one it will be self reliance. Self reliance made a start around 1841. The other believe will be respecting nature. The belief in respecting nature started around the mid 1830’s. Self reliance would include trusting yourself, and not letting others get to you, and depending on yourself. In the belief respecting…

Waldo Emerson is genuinely the focal point of the American transcendental movement, setting out a large portion of its thoughts and qualities in his essay,that spoke to the extreme study in theory, religion, and writing. Emerson is the scholarly father of American Transcendentalism. Despite the fact that numerous different scholars would contribute, it was Emerson's addresses and distributed papers that would offer structure to this occasionally indistinct scope of thoughts. Emerson was a…

Transcendentalism in the Modern World “Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow.” (Margaret Fuller) perfectly summarizes the general idea of Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism is a movement concentrating on the spiritual understanding of the world in order to further ourselves. It’s used in our world and influences us every day. Transcendentalism has three major points; nonconformity, self- reliance, and free thought, all which affect society. One major idea of…

“What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen” (Thoreau). Transcendentalism was a movement that took place in the 1820’s and 30’s, and believed in the importance of nature, self-reliance, confidence, nonconformity, and free thought, believing that man and nature are a joined entity, man is part of nature. Transcendentalism affects…

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an avid writer who had many topics to write about. In one of his most famous works, “Self Reliance”, he uses many different tactics to develop his writing to become effective. Ralph Waldo Emerson achieves getting his message through to the audience by using metaphors and pathos. In the stroy Emerson uses metaphors an abundance of times to compare things. Ralph uses metaphors such as, “The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular…

A student sits in an English classroom, listening to the teacher’s lecture about transcendentalism. The hands of the classroom clock seem to be barely moving. Despite the enthusiasm of the teacher and a few others, the student cannot relate to anything that is being taught. For example, after a class discussion of Emerson’s “Nature,” the student continues to feel apart from nature, finding it incompatible with a comfortable, modern lifestyle. Curious to understand how the presented ideas apply…

Thoreau’d, Less Taken Solitude and Modern Man’s Games After high school, I jumped off the conveyor belt— I didn’t go to college or the military upon graduating high school, as is custom for young people in my socioeconomic class. Instead, I elected to take a “gap” period, and in doing so, “dropped the ball.” That is, I stopped playing the games I was told to play. The capitalist game, the social pyramid climb. They tasted bitter to me. Acrid, all this energy invested in the future. Like…

Jon Krakauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Michael Donovan, and Henry David Thoreau are all great authors who are unique in their own special way, however, each of the authors write about one central idea that is portrayed in most of their work. Transcendentalism. Transcendental ideology is the belief that the things of the world such as the government and society itself have taken away the freedom of individuals, and have forced people to no longer live a “self-reliant” life. Krakauer, Emerson, Donovan…