WALDEN BY HENRY DAVID THOREAU

HENRY DAVID THOREAU AND TRANSCENDENTALISM

• 1841: Thoreau moved into Ralph Waldo Emerson's home
• Thoreau picked up his transcendentalist ideas in Emerson's home
• Transcendentalists believed that one should be educated through understanding, debate, and thinking
• Nature was considered freeing and caring and a source of goodness
• Walden is now considered the supreme work of transcendentalist nature

BUILDING CONNECTIONS WITH THE AUDIENCE THROUGH PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

• "Love your life, as poor as it is." (p. 409)
• "As long as possible, live free and uncommitted." (p. 405)
• "I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this... [a] lapse of time can never make to dawn." (p. 411)

BUILDING CONNECTIONS WITH THE AUDIENCE THROUGH PERSPECTIVE

• "... its so called material improvements...are [merely] external and superficial..." (p. 407)
• "Things do not change, we change." (p. 409)

STRONG STATEMENTS AND LITERARY ALLUSIONS

• "There is more day to dawn. The sun is nothing but a morning star." (p. 411)
• "Time is but a river I go fishing in." (p. 407)
• "My head is my hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it." (p. 407)
• "The shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, 'and lo! creation widens to our view.'" (p. 409)
• Strong statements help the audience to remember what Thoreau wrote and to understand his writing

CHOSEN VOCABULARY: INDIVIDUALISM AND SIMPLICITY

• "If a man does not keep pace with his companions...let him step to the music he hears..." (p. 408)
• "I went to the woods to front only the essential facts of life." (p. 406)
• "Simplify, simplify, instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but only one..." (p. 406)
• "The faultfinder will find fault even in paradise." (p. 409)

CHOSEN VOCABULARY: INDIVIDUALISM AND SIMPLICITY

• "The town's poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any." (p. 409)
• "Superfluous money can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul." (p. 409)
• Thoreau uses repetition to emphasize the importance of simplicity and individualism

QUIZ

• What year did Henry David Thoreau move into Ralph Waldo Emerson's house?
• What did he learn there?
• How did transcendentalists believe that people should be educated?