Post 3: Thoreau I

Thoreau was greatly influenced by Emerson and his work which led him to write many works, much like Emerson's. As they were much like Emerson's, Thoreau's writings displayed many of the common transcendentalist themes. Those themes are individualism, idealism, optimism and intuition.

Individualism: Thoreau is famous for the one year trip that he made into the woods and while he was there he wrote a text called Walden. In this piece of writing, he talks about being out all alone in the wilderness and how it freed his mind. He writes about seeing the world more clearly saying "... we live meanly...it is error upon error and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail"(Thoreau 204). This quote helps explain how pushing himself away form society has helped him see the wrongs with human life and hopefully try to fix them in his own life, maybe even the lives of others if possible.

Idealism: Thoreau also dives into the theme of idealism when he continues to describe how our lives are wasted away by the time we spend on details. He elaborates on this saying "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million..."(Thoreau 205). In this he is basically describing a perfect world where everyone no longer worries about the little things, but only the big things. One example of that might be to worry about your family and possibly your job, but not on the little things like a project at work. We should be focusing more on the big picture in life instead of seeing every little thing wrong with our lives and trying to fix it. 

Optimism: Within Civil Disobedience, he discusses many things that are wrong with the government of his time. Thoreau also brings in the theme of optimism when he tries to suggest solutions to these flaws he sees. One such solution would be when he questions "Con there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?"(Thoreau 213).

Within this quote he questions why the world can't be in such a way that we decide things by our consciences, not just majority. In this question he brings up optimism because I believe that within this question he is proposing a solution to the problem at hand, which ties into the theme of optimism.  

Intuition: At one point, Thoreau is in jail and he talks about why he is in there in the first place. He goes on to explain that the government doesn't use common sense to solve the problems they are facing. Before he is put in jail he talks about another time where he was almost put into jail. He goes on to say "I did not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster: for I was not the State's schoolmaster, but I supported myself by voluntary subscription"(Thoreau 213). This represents intuition because in his gut he knew, without a doubt, that he did nothing wrong and did not see the point to pay the tax. In this I think he didn't have any fear of going to jail because his intuition told him that he really did nothing wrong. In the end he got out of jail, probably just like he predicted, and like most intuition, he was right in assuming that.