In a like manner, Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau presents a similar theme of self-sufficiency in his novel, Walden. Like Emerson, Thoreau lived two years in solitude in a cabin near Walden Pond. ... In Walden, Thoreau says, "Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we live like baboons or like men is a little uncertain" (Thoreau). ... Both transcendentalists, Emerson and Thoreau, presented this theme in their works Self Reliance...

• Word Count: 789
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

As a self-reliant individual in 1845, Thoreau decided to conduct an experiment on Emerson's land at Walden Pond by building himself a cabin and living in simplicity and seclusion for two years (Baym 963). Shortly upon arriving at Walden Pond, Thoreau began to draft Walden, which documents "his two-year adventure on the pond's shore," which he viewed "as a westward quest for the Emersonian self" (Ruland 125). Thoreau's main purpose in writing Walden was to encourage people to simplify their lives and connect with nature. ... In the conclusion of Walden, Thorea...

• Word Count: 1963
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

His early journal "Walden" is based on the author's 2-year stay in a cabin he build himself on the shore of apond (called Walden), on Emerson's property.This work deals, among others, with the separation of morality from Christianity. ... "Walden" is also Thoreau's description how he learned to "live deliberately" and an expression of his own awereness of the importance of the present moment. ...

• Word Count: 1093
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Consider the way Worster's version of Thoreau's empirically rooted difference from Emerson's figuratively deracinated use of nature has extended into recent criticism that gives greater attention to Thoreau's unpublished work after Walden (1854). ... In its thoroughgoing and often messy empiricism, in contrast to the polish of Walden or the lyricism of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), Thoreauvian ecocritics read this later work no longer as aesthetically deficient in Emersonian metaphor or the transcendental poetics of correspondence, but rather as environ...

• Word Count: 9971
• Approx Pages: 40
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In an excerpt from his novel "Walden," "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," the narrator reiterates the indication of him being free unrestrained by answering a few intimate questions. ... In "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," the narrator recalls thoughts of places he stayed at before selecting Walden Pond and while he ventures into the woods to relieve himself and finds the meaning of life. ...

• Word Count: 935
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

American Renaissance Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter," belongs to the period known as American romanticism, the period called, by F.O. Matthiessen, the American Renaissance. The American Renaissance took place roughly from 1840-1865, though the most significant work of this period was prod...

• Word Count: 917
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

American culture after the Revolutionary War was one of change. After securing freedom from King George III, the former colonists began to develop their own sense of national identity. With this recent individuality came new innovations such as the cotton gin, which cemented slavery as the cornersto...

• Word Count: 1786
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate