David Henry Hwang

Many teenagers today have lost their intimacy and connection with nature and many skills. The internet is a very helpful and resourceful tool but also a hindrance to some of the simplicities and lessons the real world has to offer. Walden by Henry David Thoreau was written by a principle bound man with a transcendentalistic outlook on his own life and his quest to discover his true self. During his time in the quiet and secluded sanctuary that his cabin provided him he learned many lessons and…

How Nature Shapes Us Being a transcendentalist would make life so much more enjoyable and easier. Well then why doesn’t everyone do it? Henry Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that people should not stray to conformity that people should go out and enjoy nature and it’s beauty. Transcendentalism is the belief that one could understand with god, the universe, the self and everything else that exists in nature. In Emerson’s piece’s Imagination and Nature it shows the importance of nature.…

An quaint view on history, George Orwell’s Animal Farm was a book made to influence. Under the guise of a novella, this book’s main purpose is to bring to light a viewpoint that is a bit darker than common themes of a “happy ending” founded on the the grounds of teamwork and friendship. Rather, Orwell presents his book simply. The concept is simple enough to grasp: animals on a farm. The tyranny is easy to see: Mr. Jones and later the pigs brutally governing the masses. And the challenges are…

I want to present two people, Henry David Thoreau and a vegan. Thoreau was an American Romantic who decided to go to the woods to live off the land, so he spent a year at Walden Pond hoeing beans and watching the water to show that anyone can sustain themselves on a small budget and nature while a vegan abstains from consuming any animal products. What do they have in common? Stereotypically, vegans are outspoken and obnoxious, and for some, Thoreau is annoying and irrelevant. Yet they share a…

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a 19th century poet, shook the country with his eye-catching lectures and philosophical beliefs. In his essay, “Self-Reliance,” he uses sundry figures of speech to impart his beliefs to his readers. To come to the point, Emerson assertsthat you can choose your path in life and make the best out of it. To begin with, Emerson’s ways of using figures of speech is complicated but expressive. Some of the figures of speech I detected were metaphors and personifications.…

Unlimited Freedom In All Its Forms In 1846 Thoreau was considered the father of civil disobedience and creator of a way of fighting known as peaceable revolution. While in Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” he presented the idea that liberty for man was independence from government and every sort of authority, in his essay “Walking” he explored a more spiritual view on human freedom. Three fundamental aspects of Thoreau’s ideology are: peaceable civil disobedience is a strong social weapon in which…

Benjamin Franklin and Ralph Waldo Emerson shared very similar ideas in regard to human behavior, yet these two men believed in opposing outcomes that derived from following these relatively similar life styles. Emerson and Franklin both believed that by controlling one's desire and impulsive nature, one could vastly improve themselves as well as their own purpose in society. That discipline and thoughtfulness were cornerstones to a productive life. Their results, however, at times contrast…

Throughout history there have been many great citizens, from Jesus to Martin Luther King, who have been willing to risk their own lives in the pursuit of liberty for all. These are the people who do not ignorantly submit to an unjust rule and instead follow their own conscience. Giles Corey in The Crucible observed the corruption in Salem society and would play no part in it, which resulted in his death at the hands of the oppressors. When people resist unjust rules, it brings others to the same…

"We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course". Emerson graduated from Harvard and was the father of Transcendentalism. He believed that relationships with people interfered with nature. He thought humans could never truly understand nature and the grandness of it. Emerson is explaining through this quote that we might not end life how we thought, but if we stay true to ourselves, our life will stay true and have meaning. Emerson's main…

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a pivotal literary figure in a crucial time for the formation of the uniquely American genre of literature. Coming off of the American Revolution and newfound independence from England, the nation was navigating its way through creating its own literature apart from England as well. Emerson, particularly in his essay “Self-Reliance”, was highly influential to this new style. Emerson, the main spokesperson of transcendentalism in this time period, includes many of his…