Henry David Thoreau: Complex Simplicity
Thesis Statement: Henry David Thoreau, an American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher, was a transcendentalist in all aspects of his life and writings. His transcendentalist doctrines led him to develop some of the most basic societal and most radical political ideas the United States has ever encountered.
Henry David Thoreau, an American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher, was a transcendentalist in all aspects of his life and writings. His transcendentalist doctrines led him to develop some of the most basic societal and most radical political ideas the United States has ever encountered. Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts. He was the third son of a young, irresponsible business man named John Thoreau and a bustling, talkative wife named Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau. His family moved away from Concord in 1818, but returned again in 1823, never to leave again. That same year the Thoreaus returned to Concord, John Thoreau began a successful pencil-making business, where Henry later worked during the summers (Reuben, p. 9).
In 1828, Henry’s parents sent him to Concord Academy, where his peers called him "the Judge" because he was so hard-nosed and standoffish (Goertz, p. 725). While he was there, though, he impressed his teachers and was allowed to prepare to enter college. When he graduated from Concord Academy, his favorite subjects were the Greek and Roman classics, natural history, and mathematics. These subjects stayed his favorite throughout the rest of his life. He applied and was accepted to Harvard, and with the financial support of many relatives, Henry enrolled. At Harvard, he made good grades but not exceptional ones. Henry was not exactly the kind of person everyone was lining up to socialize with, but he made some new friends, joined a couple of extra-curricular clubs, and even joined in on a few rowdy demonstrations. "Looking back later, he remarked dryly that he got little benefit from the faculty or his fellow students, but the library meant a good deal to him (Harding, p. 4)." To help ease the financial strain on his family, Henry spoke and lectured at different events. In most of his lectures, he approached the topic of the "Commercial Spirit." The title was misleading, though, because in it, he advocated "the order of things should be somewhat reversed; the seventh should be the man’s day of twill, wherein to earn his living by the sweat of his brow; and the other six his Sabbath of the affections and the soul, in which to range this widespread garden, and drink in the soft influences and sublime revelations of nature (Reuben, p. 9)." Henry then went on to graduate from Harvard in 1837.
After graduating, Thoreau looked for a teaching job and secured one in Concord at an old grammar school. He was definitely not a disciplinarian, and lasted only "two shaky weeks" before he was fired for refusing to use corporal punishment on the children (Goertz, p. 725). He applied other places even as far away as Virginia and upstate New York but was not offered a job anywhere. While looking for a job, he worked for his father in the pencil-making business. In 1838, Henry’s brother John helped him start a small school. It had promise but lasted only three years until John became ill. Just before that, in 1837, Thoreau became friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson introduced him to the transcendentalists, a group that stressed the spiritual and intellectual, rather than the material and sensual (Corrente, p. 5).
During the summer of 1839, Henry took a canoe trip with his brother John on the Concord and Merrimack rivers. He enjoyed the trip very much and thought it was extremely beautiful and inspiring. The rapture from natural beauty he experienced there convinced him that he didn’t need to be a schoolmaster or a pencil-maker but a poet and writer of nature. He knew this meant living in nature as well as writing about it and also living a life of integrity (Goertz, p. 725). He could not tell others of the beauty and purity of nature if he himself was living in it but not upholding its beauty by living a virtuous life. As the 1840’s opened, he took up the profession of a poet. He struggled to stay with it and succeed throughout the decade, only to falter in the 1850’s.
In 1845, Thoreau made a drastic change in his life. He decided to move to Walden Pond, property owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson. He moved to Walden because he wanted to get away from busy city life. He didn’t like being around so many superficial people that worry about so many things that he considered to be insignificant and trivial. This need to get away spawned from his being around Emerson and other transcendentalists who influenced him to join their movement. Transcendentalism is a form of idealism where the transcendentalist "transcends" or rises above the lower, animalistic impulses of life (animal drives) and moves from the rational to a spiritual plane (Reuben, p. 4). That is exactly what Thoreau was trying to do. He was trying to get back to nature and get away from "the lives of quiet desperation" that most men led (Corrente, p. 3). While at Walden, Thoreau kept a journal of his thoughts and happenings about which he later wrote a novel entitled Walden. In Walden, Thoreau’s transcendentalist doctrines of simplicity come out. He tried to become spiritually rich by making his wants few. He criticized common men for only wanting money in life and not focusing on anything that truly matters. They did not worry about being spiritually in touch with themselves, nor did they contemplate the fact that they followed the same routine every day, never questioning where it was leading them. Thoreau said to be truly happy, one has to get rid of as many material items as possible so as not to distract from keeping the soul and mind pure. Someone living in society could not gain this pureness because his numerous activities divided his life so many times that he could never get a clear mind. Only living close to nature could this pureness ever be attained. Also, living in society, one was bound to desire money. Thoreau despised wealth and the search for it. As people become more prosperous, they "inevitably acquire a more expensive habit of living, and even the very same comforts and necessaries cost you more than they once did (Reinfold, p. 122)."
In Walden, there are three main themes. The first is economy. To Thoreau, the cost of something is not measured in dollars and cents but in the amount of life that must be exchanged for it. He said a man is "rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone (Corrente, p. 5)." Because of this, he said the simpler one gets, the richer one is. The second main theme discussed in Walden is slavery. Thoreau was emphatically opposed to the enslavement of blacks. Even more prevalent of the time, though, is everyone’s enslavement to material things. He found freedom at Walden because he lived with so very little. The third main theme of Walden is individuality. Thoreau said that each man must search for his own path, and the search must take place within himself. Thoreau did not believe that anyone should do something just because those before him did it. He once said, "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away (Corrente, p. 5)."
In Walden, Thoreau displays the fact that, as much as he would like to be, he is not perfect. "[Walden] contains many acute observations on the follies of mankind, but enough of such follies to show that its author has his full share of the infirmities of human nature (Rossi, p. 312)." Thoreau admits, though not always outright, in Walden that he, too, makes many of the same mistakes that everyone else does. He doesn’t like all of these things that he sees in society, yet he does fall victim. The difference, he says, is the fact that he can criticize himself and know that what he does is wrong, while others still profess that what they do is perfectly fine. Thoreau says that the first step to self-purity and spirituality is self-criticism.
While Thoreau was at Walden, he felt as though he were not only living in nature but as an actual part of it. He never talks about himself apart from nature but only as a division of it. He felt as in place as any rock, duck, or pond would feel in nature (Reuben, p. 10).
Thoreau talks about himself, but never about himself alone, always in relation to nature; and he hardly ever wrote a page in which some aspect of it was not recorded as if seen for the first time. He had trained himself to be observant, but his method was not to stare nature in the face but to view it sidelong – receptively…The natural world was for him a life to itself, a constant unfolding in whose meaning man himself could share for the sake of fulfillment (Ruland, p. 12).
In Walden, Thoreau promoted living the simple life to such a degree that he only had three basic philosophies: "Simplify, simplify, simplify." He would be the first to admit that the perfect life that he spoke of was unattainable, but he knew what direction in which to aim to get as close as he could to reaching it. He thought no one should let other people or material items instruct him or decide for him how to live his life. He thought nature should be the divine instructor (Harding, p. 123). Thoreau said one will not find health in society, but one will in nature. In Walden, he supported the expansion of the mind and spirit. He said that if people put as much effort into expanding their minds and spirits as they did their bodies and pocketbooks, everyone would be on a spiritual plain virtually unattainable in their present lives. Thoreau also promoted intensity of an individual’s life. He said things such as reading and thinking were necessities to purifying and expanding the spirit, but there was no substitute for first hand experiences. Thoreau believed that "We want no completeness but intensity of life (Reinfold, p. 121)."
While at Walden, Thoreau wrote, "My profession is to be always on alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas, in nature (Harding, pp. 124-125)." Many people unrightfully believe that Thoreau was not a spiritual man because he had a casual disregard for organized religion. He thought the Bible was a good book but no more important than many others. "Thoreau’s awareness of man’s ultimate spirituality and his search for a communion with the divine transcend my formalized religion (Ruland, p. 85)." He has a pure religious impulse, an essential and profoundly moving force that has universal significance. He did not believe organized religion was the was to get in touch with the divine, but this does not suggest, by any means, that he was not a spiritual man. On his deathbed, Thoreau was asked if he had "made his peace" with God. God and he – the answer came – had never quarreled (Corrente, p. 3).
The name of Henry David Thoreau conjures up in the imagination a keen observer of nature, a lover of solitude and the outdoors, an exponent of the simple life, a poet and mystic, a master of English prose style. Much less frequently is Thoreau remembered as the author of some of the most extreme radical manifestoes in American history, a spokesman, as described by one of his biographers, for "the most outspoken doctrines of resistance ever penned on this continent." Going far beyond Thomas Jefferson’s "That government is best which governs least," Thoreau concluded that "That government is best which governs not at all (Downs, p. 255)."
These words introduce Thoreau’s celebrated essay "Civil Disobedience," which first appeared in an obscure, short-lived periodical – Elizabeth Peabody’s Aesthetic Papers – in May 1849. In "Civil Disobedience," there are two different centers of interest. One derives from the political ideas about which Thoreau wrote. The other focuses on the story of the night Thoreau spent in jail. The civil disobedience that the title of the essay refers to is essentially nonviolent protest to an unfair law or rule. Thoreau believes that if one disagrees with a law, he should do something about it and protest. He does not think one should cause an raucous about it but should do it in a way that does not bring attention to oneself. The bases of "Civil Disobedience" are Thoreau’s description of the basic problems of American political life and his setting of a course for their solution. As Thoreau describes it, American life is full of contradictions, and American policy is inconsistent with its stated values. He does not believe that there is any political solution that can eliminate all these problems (Rossi, p. 424). Thoreau placed most emphasis on individual reform rather than collective or social reform. He says that only when everyone reforms themselves individually can they join and enjoy their success together. He believed reform had to come from within and could not be imposed by any outside force (Harding, p. 133). Thoreau supported anyone who fought back against the government for being unjust, but he was not, as sometimes has been claimed, an anarchist who rejected all forms of government. His concern was primarily with the necessity of improving the government rather than abolishing it. He felt the government was granted authority by the people for the purpose of promoting individual freedom (Rossi, p. 424). Thoreau did not feel people were getting that freedom.
In essence, Thoreau’s basic contention in "Civil Disobedience" was that the state exists for individuals, not individuals for the state. A minority should refuse to yield to a majority if moral principles must be compromised in order to do so. Further, the state has no right to offend moral liberty by forcing someone to support injustices. Man’s conscience should always be his supreme guiding light (Downs, p. 262).
This leads to the second center of interest in "Civil Disobedience," which is Thoreau’s strong dislike of slavery and the support thereof. Thoreau hated slavery. In fact, he thought it to be the worst thing the government was doing. He said he could not support a government that was also selling slaves. He did not feel he would be properly "cultivating the divinity" within himself if he ignored the issue (Harding, p. 134). Because of his feelings, he refused to pay his poll tax to a country which supported slavery and was put in jail. His family was embarrassed by this, so his aunt made sure the tax was paid. He was let out the next morning. In "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau describes his night in jail and what he thought about while he was incarcerated. He says although the walls and door were thick, he did not feel trapped or enclosed at all because his spirit was free.
When first published, "Civil Disobedience" attracted slight attention and only a few readers. During the next hundred years, however, it was read by thousands and affected the lives of millions (Downs, p. 255). The peaceful resistance to civil government became a blueprint for Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. in their struggle for civil rights (Reuben, p. 10). In 1907, a copy of "Civil Disobedience" fell into the hands of a Hindu lawyer, Mahatma Gandhi. He was already meditating upon the merits of passive resistance as a defense for his people. Gandhi had been dissatisfied with the term "passive resistance" but had found no suitable substitute. As soon as he heard it, he adopted "civil disobedience" to describe his movement. Thoreau’s fight against slavery in the United States "imbued Gandhi with the faith that it is not the number of the resisters that counts in a [nonviolent protest] but the purity of the sacrificial suffering (Downs, p. 263)." Gandhi used Thoreau’s techniques and ideas to fight for Indian rights in India, which was under British rule. Eventually, the British gave India freedom. If Gandhi had never read "Civil Disobedience," he might not have been able to come up with exactly the right way to protest. He might have even gotten so angry because nothing worked that he turned and wanted to fight back physically. If that had happened, Indians might still be trying to gain rights from the British. Someone else who Thoreau’s work influence strongly is Martin Luther King, Jr. When King was a junior in college in 1947, he read "Civil Disobedience." It helped him make up his mind about what he wanted to do in life. He eventually decided to try and help the Negroes gain equality. King read and reread the essay. He began to see that civil disobedience could be used to help the Negroes gain rights. He thought they should just refuse to obey laws that upheld "abuse and mistreatment of Negroes (Clayton, pp. 41-42)." King eventually decided on the method to use to deal with unjust laws that kept Negroes only half-free. He decided the best method would be to combine the teachings of Jesus Christ, Thoreau, and Gandhi. Thoreau and Gandhi rebelled against unjust laws, and King would also. Two-thirds of the teaching methods King planned to use were Thoreau’s ideas. If Thoreau had not written "Civil Disobedience," Gandhi might not have gotten some of his ideas, and in short King would have most likely lost about two-thirds of his methods. He might not have developed any passive resistance ideas on his own, and he might not have even decided to fight for the Negroes’ civil rights. One can only imagine what this country would be like if slaves were still bought and sold like groceries at a supermarket.
Walden and "Civil Disobedience" are very similar and can be compared in a few ways. First, Thoreau’s transcendentalist doctrines carry over into all of his writings. If one looks at Walden and "Civil Disobedience," he will find that there is one underlying, common theme that is threaded throughout every sentence and every word Thoreau writes: simplicity. In Walden, he advocates simpleness of mind and spirit. He thinks one should live with very little in order to reach a spiritual high. In "Civil Disobedience," he advocates simpleness of government and politics. He thinks the government should be totally run by society, and he thinks society should be much simpler and less complex than it is.
Henry David Thoreau has kept alive transcendental idealism despite its retreat in his own days. He has appealed to many readers for various reasons and has been the rallying point on a number of political and environmental movements…To grasp his writings, one would need to understand Henry’s humor and his transcendental philosophy. Once understood…one sees that Thoreau strives to bring out the good in man, the good that is reflected in the simplicity of nature, not the complexity of society (Reuben, p. 11).
Also, in Walden, Thoreau lived the ideas that he talked about in "Civil Disobedience" that pertained to society and the individual. "His own transcendental principles demanded that he put his trust in self-reforms, since only individuals, not society, were capable of genuine reform (Harding, p. 133)." In "Civil Disobedience," he described how he thought that if someone wanted to live away from society, not causing any trouble, just not participating, they should be allowed to do so. In Walden, he lived this idea.
There is also an ecstasy of freedom for Thoreau in both Walden and "Civil Disobedience." In Walden, he finds his ecstasy in the escape from society. He is getting away from the city and everything he feels is bad, and is escaping to nature and everything he thinks is good. In "Civil Disobedience," he finds his ecstasy the night he was thrown in jail (Rossi, p. 398). He feels an ecstasy of freedom because even though his body is confined, he knows there are no limits on his soul. Walden and "Civil Disobedience" can also be compared by the fact that they both contain a search for truth, though in each essay a completely different truth is being searched for. Thoreau was searching for inner truth in Walden. He wanted to know what was really inside him. He wanted to know why he thought the way he did (Corrente, p. 6). He wanted to experience truth the way nature told it, straightforward and at point-blank range. Nature can not lie. In "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau was searching for truth in a more physical and political way. He wanted truth and justice from the government. He wanted political leaders to tell the people the truth and stop lying to them to get their support.
Through the years, Thoreau has had many critics, positive and negative. There is one thing that most critics agree on, however: Thoreau was an individualist. Lewis Mumford said,
Those who really faced the wilderness, and sought to make something out of it, remained in the East; in their reflection, one sees the reality that might have been. Henry David Thoreau was perhaps the only man who paused to give a report of the full experience. In a period when men were on the move, he remained still; when men were on the make, he remained poor; when civil disobedience broke out in the lawlessness of the cattle thief and the mining town rowdy, by sheer neglect, Thoreau practiced civil disobedience as a principle, in protest against the Mexican War, the Fugitive Slave Law, and slavery itself. Thoreau in his life and letters shows what the pioneer movement might have come to if this great migration had sought culture rather than material conquest, and an intensity of life, rather than mere extension over the continent (XIII, p. 427).
One thing that many critics disagree on is whether or not Thoreau was different from other writers of the time. Alfred Kazin says that "What makes Thoreau so different from the great modern symbolist novelists is that he really had no subject but himself, and so had to strain for an ‘objectivity’ that he could only simulate not feel (XIII, pp. 433-434)." Others say that Thoreau was just a complete copy of Emerson and that all he aspired to do was write like Emerson. Louisa M. Alcott, one of Thoreau’s good friends, wrote a poem about him entitled "Thoreau’s Flute."
To him no vain regrets belong,
Whose soul, that finer instrument,
Gave to the world no poor lament,
But wood-notes ever sweet and strong.
O lonely friend! he still will be
A potent presence, though unseen, –
Steadfast, sagacious, and serene.
Seek not for him, – he is with thee (XIV, p. 351).
Others, though, do not hold Thoreau in such high regards. Some say that Thoreau’s practice of living alone in the woods is not for everyone. If everyone tried to do it, the nation would not stay civilized for very long. With everyone living that way, at the end of eight months, Thoreau would still be the same, but he would have no one left that was civilized for him to write books for (Rossi, p. 313). Quentin Anderson, a Prof. in the Humanities at Columbia University, advises people not to read Emerson, Thoreau, or any other writers who have similar beliefs. He has such a problem with them because they get so focused on themselves that everything else becomes ancillary. This is proven in one of Emerson’s essays about the death of his son, whom he thought was such a deep, special part of his life, when he says he thought it would literally almost rip him apart if it ever happened, but after it did happen, it "falls off from me and leaves no scar (Anderson, p. 85)." Anderson says that people who read these works sometimes pick up these same ideas, and it can totally destroy any personal relationships that one has. Others compliment his writing and criticize him saying that "It is the style of a great writer but of a defective man (XIII, pp. 432-433)."
Henry David Thoreau, an American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher, shows plainly his transcendentalist doctrines whether it be in his basic societal ideas or his radical political writings. According to Thoreau, the power to be anything one chooses is right inside one’s soul. All one have to do is reach in and pull it out. This is not always a simple task, though. First an individual must know himself to the fullest – mentally, psychologically, and spiritually. One step that must be taken before someone can ever even think about reaching this goal is to do something that algebra teachers have been stressing for many, many years: SIMPLIFY (McDonald, p. 44)!