Analysis of Thoreau's Writings
Analysis of Thoreau 's Writing 's
One of the best commentators on Thoreau today is Sullivan and according to him all the Walden years may be viewed almost as a stunt. These writings are No Impact Man, Julie and Julia, The Year of Living Biblically and Supersize Me. Probably these are the years in which Thoreau is trying to find a little more of himself. The peak of these writings is Civil Disobedience.
In Walden, Thoreau gave the total cost of his hut, item by item and since he used only second hand materials, the cost came to only $28.12 and a half cents. This was not viewed as realistic since all house-owners wanted to live in decorated homes, a situation that prevails even today. Yet readers liked him and his book was well read.
This provides a lesson for Greenpeace persons who want to change the world into a better place to live in. When you want to be a show off, there is always investment. David Rothschild built a boat made from plastic bottles to sail across the Pacific Ocean. For every message that you want to send out today, there are costs. He visualized a perfect government, free of harm, fault, and malfunction. Of course, this government he spoke of was purely off his needs, failing to review or analyze the desires of his fellow citizens.
The best part of Walden was a chapter on solitude and this is described in his returning to the pond after a late dinner with friends to paddle alone and fish. As he was only 17, this deliberate loneliness is like an appeal to lame old loneliness. He wanted to withdraw from a society that was “commonly too cheap”, and be more noble outside it.
He says clearly: “We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another.”
I feel that his greatest essay was Civil Disobedience. This is an explanation of his personal point of view - he went to jail instead of
One of the best commentators on Thoreau today is Sullivan and according to him all the Walden years may be viewed almost as a stunt. These writings are No Impact Man, Julie and Julia, The Year of Living Biblically and Supersize Me. Probably these are the years in which Thoreau is trying to find a little more of himself. The peak of these writings is Civil Disobedience.
In Walden, Thoreau gave the total cost of his hut, item by item and since he used only second hand materials, the cost came to only $28.12 and a half cents. This was not viewed as realistic since all house-owners wanted to live in decorated homes, a situation that prevails even today. Yet readers liked him and his book was well read.
This provides a lesson for Greenpeace persons who want to change the world into a better place to live in. When you want to be a show off, there is always investment. David Rothschild built a boat made from plastic bottles to sail across the Pacific Ocean. For every message that you want to send out today, there are costs. He visualized a perfect government, free of harm, fault, and malfunction. Of course, this government he spoke of was purely off his needs, failing to review or analyze the desires of his fellow citizens.
The best part of Walden was a chapter on solitude and this is described in his returning to the pond after a late dinner with friends to paddle alone and fish. As he was only 17, this deliberate loneliness is like an appeal to lame old loneliness. He wanted to withdraw from a society that was “commonly too cheap”, and be more noble outside it.
He says clearly: “We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another.”
I feel that his greatest essay was Civil Disobedience. This is an explanation of his personal point of view - he went to jail instead of
References: 1. How Environmentalist Author David de Rothschild Lives His Best ... http://www.oprah.com/world/How-Environmentalist-Author-David-de-Rothschild-Lives-His-Best- 2. Robert Sullivan, The Thoreau You Don 't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant, 2009-03-17, 368 pages 3. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi; Young India (March 23, 1931) 4. Raz, Joseph (1979), The Authority of Law: Essays on Law and Morality, Oxford: Clarendon Press.