Henry David Thoreau
Pre-reading
Henry David Thoreau (July 1817-May 1862) was an American thinker, essayist, and naturalist. Thoreau graduated from Harvard University and taught school for several years before leaving his job to become a poet of nature. Back in Concord, he came under the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson and began to publish pieces in the Transcendentalist magazine The Dial. Thoreau reflected on a night he spent in jail protesting the Mexican-American War in the essay Civil Disobedience (1849).
Although his actions attracted only local attention at the time, his essay achieved fame as the clear, well-reasoned justification of an honest citizen protesting an immoral policy of his government. As such, Civil Disobedience became an influential manifesto for subsequent antiwar protesters and freedom fighters such as Mohandas K. Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In later years his interest in Transcendentalism waned, and he became a dedicated abolitionist. His many nature writings and records of his wanderings in Canada, Maine, and Cape Cod display the mind of a keen naturalist. After his death his collected writings were published in 20 volumes, and further writings have continued to appear in print.
Walden (1854) is based on the two years (1845-1847) he spent living in a cabin beside Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts, and describes his simple way of life, along with meditations on nature and society. It has become a classic for environmentalists, nature mystics, and advocates of the simple life, while embodying one aspect of the transcendentalist creed.
In Solitude, Thoreau reflects on the feeling of solitude. He explains how loneliness can occur even amid companions if one’s heart is not open to them. Thoreau meditates on the pleasures of escaping society and the petty things that society entails (gossip, fights, etc.). He also reflects on his new companion, an old settler who arrives nearby and an old woman with great memory (“memory runs back farther than mythology”). Thoreau repeatedly reflects on the benefits of nature and of his deep communion with it and states that the only “medicine he needs is a draught of morning air”.