Write a developed response that answers the following question:
What is one similarity between the philosophies of Emerson and Thoreau?
Make sure to cite textual evidence from both essays to support your claim.
Sentence Starter: Both Emerson and Thoreau believe….
One similarity between Emerson and Thoreau is that they both believed Nature is a key component to simplicity and living your life. Thoreau believed that Nature can bring us back to our natural selves, away from all the unimportant details of everyday life. "Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails." (Where I lived and What i lived for)
ReplyDeleteEmerson believes that nature brings us back to our childhood, as innocent and simple as we should be our whole lives. "In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth." (Nature) Both Emerson and Thoreau trust in Nature to be a sort of starting point that you could always go back to in order to find your way.
Darian Leonard
ReplyDeleteBoth Emerson and Thoraeu believe that you can live your fullest life the closer to nature you are. "In the woods we return to reason and faith." Says Emerson. Thoreau says "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately." They believe that nature and people are the same and that they must stay connected.
Both Emerson and Thoreau believe that people should be in touch with nature and that nature is perfect and beautiful.. For example, in Emerson's Nature,"I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature." Here, Emerson finds immeasurable beauty in Nature, and that nature cleanses the soul and makes us into the best we can be.
ReplyDeleteThoreau says,"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not my mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn." in "Where I Lived and What I Lived For." Here, he says that we shouldn't rely on tools to survive or be comfortable, and rely on our instincts, return to nature to become good.
Both Emerson and Thoreau believe in the importance of not conforming to a certain routine or mind set (or in doubt, don't conform to anything). This importance is seen in Thoreau's "Walden" by how he implies that falling into a routine is as falling into a dull and dreary life, as mentioned in this quote: "It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make track for ourselves." (Thoreau, solitude)
ReplyDeleteEmerson similarly expresses in his essay of Self-Reliance that a person must only conform to his/her own original thoughts and beliefs as punctuated by this quote: "'They do not seem to me to be such: but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." (Emerson, Self-Reliance) This quote basically states that even if the choice is morally wrong, the person is still entitled to make the decision of following their beliefs on their own. And that is one similarity between the beliefs of Emerson and Thoreau.
They both show that you can only find yourself through nature and are both hardcore transcendentalists. Emerson's 'Nature' is just about that.They are both very passionate and you can here it in their speeches and are both writers, clearly. They both use the same context for how they talk because they are trying to convy poeple and educate them.
ReplyDeleteBoth Emerson and Thoreau believe that humans and nature have a deep connection. As Emerson says, "The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable"(Nature, line 20). Emerson thinks that the most important thing we have is our relation with nature, primarily plants, and Thoreau even asks "Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?"(Walden, from "Solitude"). The difference of their points of view are that Emerson thinks that everything is God, that everyone is a "part or particle of God"(Nature, line 14), while Thoreau really sees that relation as a mutual organic core, the woods are more like a healing shelter than like a divine equal for him.
ReplyDeletePablo Guerrero
Both Emerson and Thoreau believe that individuality is key; that one must take what they get and make the best of it. This is one of Emerson's beginning points in his lecture Self Reliance, "No kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till..." This explains how true knowledge or learning can not come from anyone else but you. This also details how you must deal with what you're given, your "plot," like how Thoreau describes this in his book Walden, "However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names." This is detailing how even though your life may seem bad, you have to just "go with it," and keep going, because as Thoreau says, "You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse."
ReplyDeleteHailey Powers
ReplyDeleteBoth Emerson and Thoreau believe that nature has therapeutic properties. "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." (where i lived..) He is saying that you havent lived to the fullest if you surround yourself with the modern day technology and society. " The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches." (nature) emerson is talking about how the suns rays can make you drift from "things" and towards yourself as a person.
Both Emerson and Thoreau believe that nature is a safe haven where people can go to heal and reconnect with the world "we must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake..." (where i lived and what i lived for, line 7, pg 1) and in Emerson "Nature" "I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear." they both enjoy being in solitude in the woods
ReplyDeleteGiorgia Sasso Both of the writer, Emerson and Thoreau, claim that a man to be happy has to break free from the society and start doing what he want without caring about other people's opinion.
ReplyDeleteIn his essay "Conclusion" he claimed:" Turn to the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. [..]. God will see that you do not want the society.", this quote is tightly bounded to Emerson claim in the Essay "Self-Reliance":"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what other people think." considering this side of the affair.
Emerson and Thoreau have many similar views in their writings, but the one major one i have noticed is their belief that the forest is a place where people can be themselves. Emerson states this in the line "in the woods too, a man casts off his years, as a snake his slough." this line comes from Emerson's Nature, it is basically saying that in the woods a man is himself
ReplyDeleteBoth Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were leaders and writers of the Transcendentalist era. They both believed that one had to get away from society to truly live. However, they believed this for different reasons. Emerson believed that "non-conformity" and independent thinking were extremely important, while Thoreau believed that solitude was important.
ReplyDeleteFrom Thoreau's Solitude: "The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature-of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter-such health, such cheer, they afford forever!"
Thoreau is talking about the beauty of nature, and the benefits of it.
From Emerson's Self-Reliance: "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil;s child, I will live then from the Devil."
Emerson is talking about not conforming to society's formalities. If he was born the child of the Devil, then he will live as such and not conform to what others tell him.
Both Emerson and Thoreau believed that nature was essential to self-discovery. Emerson states that "In the woods we return to reason and faith," meaning we return to our purest form of self when we are surrounded by nature. We are able to think rationally and believe in ourselves and in nature. Thoreau asks, "Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?" He is saying that we all came from nature and therefore are made partly of nature. When we return to nature, we return to what everyone once was and we can see that we haven't lost it.
ReplyDeleteGwen Vaudin
ReplyDeleteEmerson and Thoreau both think that we are connected with the nature, that people can think and be themselves in the woods.
From Emerson's "Nature" :"In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough" ; "In the woods we return to reason and faith."
From Thoreau's "Solitude" : "Shall I not have intelligence with the earth ? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself."
Both Emerson and Thoreau believe in the importance of nature saying its how you become pure and closer to god. Thoreau states,"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not my mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn." in "Where I Lived and What I Lived For." And Emerson says, "in the woods too, a man casts off his years, as a snake his slough." Both these make connections with nature and how pure it is.
ReplyDeleteBoth Emerson and Thoreau believe that a person must abandon the futile aspects of life and juxtapose the true power of life with it's own raw simplicity. Self-Reliance, Non-Conformity, Confidence, Free Thought and an Emphasis on Nature comprise their belief system of transcendentalism.
ReplyDeleteIn his essay "where I lived and what I lived for" Thoreau states that he "wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life." This conforms to he transcendentalist ideals very accurately. Similarly, Emerson says "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.".
These philosophies are similar because they display similar ideals of individualism and transcendentalism.
Both Emerson and Thoreau believe that nature is a divinely inspired with knowledge of the world. They believe that there is a need to intuitively grasp the lessons of nature through dynamic passivity. This is talked about in Emerson’s Nature: “In the woods, we return to reason and faith…” and that “in the wilderness, I find something more and dear and connate than in streets or villages.” Thoreau states in Where I Lived and What I Lived For, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I would not learn what it had to teach…” By removing himself from his normal life, Thoreau focuses to contemplate the transcendent meaning of human life.
ReplyDeleteBoth Emerson and Thoreau believe that nature purifies. Emerson thinks that "In the woods there is perennial youth" and that "in the woods we return to to reason and faith". He talks about how the Nature makes us "younger" which means that it makes us just like kids, it frees us from the concerns that adults have. Emerson and Thoreau think that individuals need to learn how to live and then when we know how live is, we need to make our decisions without anybody's influence. We need to know ourselves and if we have a problem, we need to learn how to solve it with our own devices and be self-sufficient.
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