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Home , Henry David Thoreau

Big ldea I Optimism and

ach of us has ambitions and plans, hopes club. Among those who participated in the ta and dreams. Our beliefs affect how we the Tianscendental Club were , feel about what we can achieve as indi- Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Haw viduals and citizens. Optimists believe The essence of Tianscendentalism was the phi they can reach their goals in life. Ralph known as ldealisrn. For Idealists, such as the Valdo Emerson (see pages 178-1BB) rvas a lifelong , reality is not "our optimist. He also celebrated the , proclaim- rh in material objects but instead exists in our ideas ing that by being true to their innermost selves, peo- about those objects. The tanscendentalists ple could accomplish grear rhings. believ, that intuition is a more valuable guide than sensor experience in grasping what really is. As Rise of the Common People Emerson exulted in his "Nature," "l see the Beginning in the 1820s, the American belief in spectacle of morning from the hilltop over aga the power of the ordinary citizen had a huge impact house, from daybreak to sunrise, with emotions wh on both political and social life. Changes in voring an angel might share." laws expanded the electorate to include nearly all white males. In 1828, these voters elected frontiers- Emerson's Outlook rnan as president, marking the arrival of the common people in Arnerican . Emerson's optimism convinced him that the univer "Well, if Andrew Jackson can be president," observed existed for humanity's benefit. He rold people that one outraged North Carolina woman, "tl-ren anybody they simply needed to look within themselves to can!" Americans of this period also became involved awaken a sense of wonder and recover their oneness in a broad range of reform movements. These ordi- with the universe: "Every spirit builds itself a house, nary citizens formed associations, raised rnoney, wrote and beyond its house a world, and beyond its world pamphlets, held rallies, gave speeches, and worked to a heaven. Know then that the world exists for you." pass laws designed to improve American . He believed that ordinary human beings had limit- less potential. His avid reading of mystical Hindu influenced his conviction that humans are divine because they share in the Over-soul, " All tlwt Adam had, all that Caesar Emerson's name for the spirit that pervades the could", Jouhave and can do." universe. Ernerson summed up his ideas by saying that he had really taught only one thing, that every \Ualdo Emerson person -Ralph was infinite.

Emerson's Essays Emerson is best known for his essays, such as "Self- Emerson's belief in the value of the individual was Reliance." An essay is a short piece of nonfiction shaped by the era in which he lived. In the 1830s, writing on arry topic. Essays can range from serious, the influence of began to be felt in the formal analyses to light, personal reflections. . One result rvas tanscendentalisrn, a Although Emerson's essays are formal, they are not loosely organized movemenr that embodied the ideas tighrly unified around a single topic. Instead, he pre- of thinkers who were active in ir.r the sented his thoughts in a loosely organized series of 1830s and 1840s. Emerson was a leading figure in striking sentences. "The maker of a sentence,,, he rhis group, which began as an informal discussion observed, "launches out into the infinite.,, Big idea 2 Kinship with Nature

Thoreau and Nature 1諸lttlTWttz:::∬:l'∬ t盤1: ness.COnnicts between Another Nerv Englander, Ernerson's friencl mmercial interests arc widespread. also rejectecl a convenrional life. Like Ernerson, ,Pd C° , 1… HOW impOrtant is nature,and what can Thoreau championed American individualism-'He, spenr we learn frorn it? In the 1800s, Henry David Thoreau rwo years in a cabin he built at pondi (see near his home pages 202-217) revealed his thoughts about this of Concord, . Thoreau sharply quesrion in his journal. Thorear.r believed thar con- observed the natural surroundings there. many tact with wild nature refreshed the hurnan spirit. years," he wrote, "l was self-appoir.rted insl of snow Other writers have described the benefits ofnature,s storms and rain storms and-jid my dLrty fai fully." beaury and the feelings ofpeace that result from Thoreau was not fond of luxuries ancl nor afraid of being out-of.doors. Nature can also teach us respecr striking out on his orvn. for its destructive ways and remind us that, though we Emersont and Thoreau's concept of the natural try we can never wholly subdue its porverful forces. had much in common with the Narive American viewpoint. Both traditions found harmony ancl pur. pose in the unspoiled earth. At Walden, Thoreau communed with ,,you "I wouLd" rather sit on a pumpkin, and nature. He wrote, only need si still long enough in some atracrive spot in ih. ruood haue it all to myself than be , crowded on :hat all itS inhabitants inay exhibit tAemsehes tOl語 a c,)elvet cushion." by turns." Leslie Marmon Silko, a conremporary Native American author, expresses a simiiar view. David Thoreau She writes, "l never feel -Henry lonely when I rvalk alone in the hills: I am surrounded with living beings, with these sandstone ridges and lava rock hills fi U of lif..,

America-Garden or Wilderness? Thoreau and Politics The natural environment nf America has produced Thoreau's extreme individualism led hirn to take cer- very different responses in different people. Luther tain.radical folitical posirions. In rhe 1g40s, as the Standing Bear, a Teton Sioux, .rplri.,.d the Native southern states became more determined to protecr American view: "'!(/e did not think of the great open and extend slavery, he came to regard all govemrnent plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding ,wild.'Only srreams as a threar to . During the MexicaJmerican with tangled growth as to th" ,hite man (1846-1848), !7ar which many opponenrs of slavery was nature a'wildemess,,and only to him was the be-lieved was being fought to slavery in the land'infested' wirh,wild' animals ancl,savage, people. "rtnbirh,,Civil West, Thoreau wrore his essay Disobedience.,, To us it was tame." He argued that the individual is more The important thar-r ,,Law first European explorers and settlers vierved the law: never made men a and rr America whit rnore just; as both a paradise to be enjoyed and a wil- and by means of their respect for it, at fort demess even rhe to be tarned. Many Europ"o.,r'*.." amazed well-disposed are daily macle the agenrs Pages and delighted ar the number of injustice." of animals ancl plants Tllore that rvere unknown in Europe. But to o,h".r, such as Thoreau was even willing ro spend extra。 \Tilliam Bradford, a leader pilg.i,r, tirne in jail for of rh. *ho refirsing ro pay reached a rax rhar *oui.l l.rru" been ur.d to he obs New England in 1620, A*"i." was a place finance the war. He larer wrote that, WOuld to be feared: "Whar could they behind bars, he r"" lr, , n,a.ou, ura felt freer than his torvnspeople frOm d desolate wilderness, ,ho ,tood outside the full of *ild b.a.t, ,"J*,fa men?,, prison walls but lived in subjugation ro rhe liveぉ srare. 1 from The Journal by Henry David Thoreau

:卜 ■ =、 5. [185S] . . . We would fain know something more about these animals and |:榛 stones and trees around us. We are ready to skin the animals alive to come at them. Our sci- entific names contain a very partial information only. lt does not occur to me that there are other names for most of these objects, given by a people who stood between me and them, who had better senses than our race. . . . No science does more than arrange what knowl- edge we have of any class of objects. But, gen- erally speaking, how much more conversant was the lndian with any wild animal or plant than we are, and in his language is implied all that inti- macy, as much as ours is expressed in our lan- guage. How many words in his language about , or birch bark and the like! The lndian stood nearer to wild nature than we. The wildest and noblest quadrupeds, even the largest fresh- water fishes, some of the wildest and noblest birds and fairest flowers have actually receded as we advanced, and we have but the most distant knowledge of them. A rumor has come ForesL Albert Bierstadt. Private collection. down to us tlpt the skin of a lion was seen and his roar heard here by an early settler. But there was a race here that slept on his skin. lt was a reau's Journals new light when my guide gave me lndian names for things for which I had only scientific 11Y6fThorcaut wntings,including Walden,are ones before. ln proportion as I understood the 掛狩:縄 3挽譜棘菫fttL language, I saw them from a new point of view. d 罫尋主=電』^高悪士t遮 肥哺唐麓需 おurl鷹 ,Ity´ LiliI° t:ユ )bお玉:驚s:i恐 containing nearly two million words.

\ jor-rrnal provides insights into the I`蹴 叫 罫露蹴 掘:恩tl酔多蹴i謝 :需量 群螂∵熙甍齋 Reading Check lnterpreting How did Thoreau,s individualism affect his attitude toward nature and politics? Big ldea 5 The Power of Darkness

ur experience of life and the world has a Settings are clark and often conrain decayed d dark side. \ile fear the evils we know- with shadowy passageways, haunting sounds, a poverty, violence, disease, madness, damp rooms. death-and are troubled by nameless ter- rors that might lurk in the shadows beyond our knowledge. Not all the important American writ- Poe and the Terror of the Soul ers of Emerson's tirne shared his optimism. Nathaniel A European tradition of Cothic lirerature existed Hawthorne (see pages 765-778) admired Emerson long before (see pages 242-263), but thought him unrealistic. To he was the first American masrer of this type of h, (see pages }B0-Z9L), Emerson's optimism was "non- ror. In his poems and stories, Poe often bettered ei sense" that ignored the "disagreeable facts" of life. lier Gothic writers in achieving spine-tingling e Most of his stories and poerns deal with loss and row, ruin and revenge, disease and death. Poe's li Hawthorne and Melville ary works reflected his own troubles and fears, but Almost all of Hawthome's fiction is based on stories many readers responded favorably to his subject of the past, particularly the and legends of his ter and the mood of his rvorks, thus confronting th, Puritan ancestors in New England. Hawthorne was own fears. Emerson and the Tianscendentalists drawn to the Puritan past as Gothic writers were believed that humans are inherenrly good. By con- drawn to the Middle Ages. In Puritan New England, trast, Poe seems to have had an instinctive feel for he found a strange, stark world rhat provided a richly the dark impulses of human nature. Poe observed, textured background for the explorations of rhe "The terror of which I write is not of Gerrnany [the narure of good and evil in his fiction. Hawthome's setting of much Gothic fiction], but of the soul." friend Melville first gained a literary repurarion for He expressed this spiritual terror in haunting romantic tales of adventure in the South Seas. ln suc- literary works. ceeding books, he used his sea stories to explore the mystery of the evil that he saw in both human life Poe's Short Stories and the forces of nature. In Melville's masterpiece, 'fron Moby-Dick, Ahab, the crazed captain of a whaling Poe was a master of the brief fictional narrative ship, sees evil personified in a huge white whale. known as the short srory. In addition to writing man, Gothic tales Of terrO■ he invented a new type of Durin the Gothic Horror fiction, the detective story. His first detective srory, ar "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," combines Gothic sively The dark side of European Romanticism can be horror with solid reasoning by Poe! fictional detec- horse seen in the tradirion of Gothlc literarure. A classic tive, Dupin. and a example from ninereenth.century England is Mary drew Poe's stories illustrate his idea tl-iat any artistic com- Shelley's Frankenstein, a novel about a monsrer thar I knov position should have a single, unique effect. This destroys its creator. The American Romantics also buildl recognized effect is evident in the gloomy, ominous beginning of the power of darkness. Gothic horror relies spirit his short story "The Fall of the House of Usher," guar, chiefly on atmosphere, or mood, to achieve its effects. anteed to make the Writers create an atmosphere of horror through plot, reader long for sunshine or the comfort of his or her own xxrm. characters, ancl settings that most people find chill- ing. Plots c'rften focus on mysterious happenings, tragic events, and hideous outco[les. Characters are often mad, half-mad, or frightened to dearh. They rnay exhibit srrange behavior and physical trairs.