Henry David Thoreau Observation

In my personal perspective, Henry Thoreau makes several valid points within his essay. The government gets its power from the people yet lately it goes above and beyond to control these same people. It invades our privacy, reading our emails and text messages, listening to our conversations, tracking our transactions, and placing cameras where they see fit. It taxes everything from their hard earned money to the property they own. It is even creating and manipulating laws solely for its own benefit.

In reading Henry David Thoreau, I was halted by the views he shared. Thoreau was a suspicious man that felt there is not a reason to be taxed if person did not agree with usage of funds or need government protection. Thoreau lived in the woods, mostly self sustainable. He came into town to have a shoe mended and found himself confronted by a city official to pay a poll tax. He refused and the sheriff put him in Jail.

In the real world today I feel like everybody is continuously moving and they rarely have time for themselves. People always seem to be on the move and seem to drive to fast because they have to get to where they need to go. In the book Clarisse stats that “I sometimes think drivers don't know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly.” Page (6) Today you never really see people stop and admire things they just keep moving.

When Henry David Thoreau says, “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” (para. 2), he’s saying that people should live as simply as they can. He believes people should live a life of freedom rather than a life or restrictions that are brought upon by structured city-life. With city-life, comes rigid, fast technology. He describes it as, “It lives too fast.

I have felt the sunrise. Rays of light refract through shadows of bare soldiers frozen mid battle. The murmurs of life silently pause to admire the sun's song. Nighttime slithers away, leaving the coldest moments of the day to juxtapose the warm hues dancing on the horizon. These actions begin each day, yet I cannot imagine another human ever feeling the light approach as I have.

Thoreau also writes about routine living and conformity in this quote, “The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!” (Walden) In this quote, readers can see that McCandless and Thoreau have very similar beliefs in regard to the idea of routine living and conformity. It is clear that both men believe that conformity and routine living are detrimental to the human

Henry David Thoreau was a philosopher, poet, and a very outspoken person about society. He discusses his opinions on how people should live in his essay “Where I Lived and What I Lived For.” Thoreau's philosophy of simplicity and individualism and self-sufficiency poses many dangers for communities as a whole. Although there are many setbacks, his philosophy is, however, still viable today. Thoreau strongly advocates self-sufficiency and individualism in this essay.

I agree with the basic philosophy of the Romantics and the Transcendentalists for the reason being, it is vital for an individual to discover their own righteous ethical principles and be ruled by them rather than invariably conform to contemporary standards, in order to deter tyrannical rule. As Ralph Waldo Emerson asserts in his essay Self-Reliance “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines ” (Source A), evident in the excerpt Emerson implies that “foolish” consistency deters positive progress, which is adored and beneficial predominantly by people in power, thus resulting in tyrannical rule. Hence, why I agree with the basic philosophy of the Romantics and transcendentalist, for the reason being it is vital for an individual to discover their own righteous

A few years ago, during a road trip with my family throughout the Northeast, we visited a place called Walden Pond. We hiked on a trail in the beautiful woods of Concord, Massachusetts. A large, brown sign marked the site of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin. It was inscribed with a line from the book Walden, which Thoreau wrote while living there: “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.” During a different road trip with my family, we stopped for a spontaneous hike in the woods.

Everyone knows obedience because we do obedience from young to old. But do you know what order we need to obey and what order we need to disobey? This is the most important problem because sometime we will make mistake because of disobedience and sometime we will get in to troubles as obedience. Even the younger and the elder are confused. This article will talk about the first person of disobedience and the humans’ base line of obedience.

Henry David Thoreau uses Metaphor to develop the theme. Thoreau states "... not to be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. " Therefore he says that because people tend to stop reaching for opportunities just for one simple mistake. Take that and help yourself be better for the next opportunity. It demonstrates that when you are living your life, there will be bumps.

What Thoreau means by the Civil Disobedience is that every person should be govern more by his own moral compass that gives him much clearer answer to his deeds, rather than some laws of a government. “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward.” (1)

Henry David Thoreau is one of the primary promoters of the transcendentalist movement and has been inspiring people to take on the transcendentalist lifestyle ever since the mid 1800’s. Mccandless was an admirer of Henry’s philosophy but he wasn’t as fully immersed in his work and ideals as Thoreau was to his own. His intentions were not as closely aligned to the movement as Thoreau’s and the difference between these icons are clearly visible. Self reliance is one of the most significant components of the transcendentalism movement that Henry David Thoreau contributed to in his literary career. “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.” - (taken from Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden”).

Individuals lay the foundation of America. The Founding Fathers of this unique nation broke their allegiance with Great Britain to create an improved governing body. They desired an individual-centered authority as opposed to Britain’s monarchy, which ruled with tyranny. These Founding Fathers experienced a neglectful democratic monarchy that cared little about the ethical treatment of its people. The domineering actions of Britain challenged these historic individuals to form a new cultural identity.

Thoreau emphasizes living simply by reducing the excess in our live to only the bare essentials, and relying on oneself to do so. Thoreau claims that the only way to