Henry David Thoreau
Why was Henry David Thoreau such a wonderful writer? He had many great qualities, but the most important were his devotion to nature and writing, his desire for independence, and his experiences he encountered throughout his life. Henry David Thoreau looked to nature as the basis of life and writing. He believed that nature is the reflection of inner spiritual reality. He spent his life in search of the essentials of reality and of experiences that would bring him close to these essentials. He lived in a hut for two years at Walden Pond to rid his body of inessential things. During Thoreau's stay, he completed his first book titled, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers(1849). Here, he also filled his journals with materials for his most famous piece, Walden. After he left the hut, and after college, he became a literary apprentice by writing essays and poems and by helping edit the transcendentalist journal, The Dial. When success did not come, Thoreau remained dedicated to his program of "education" through intimacy with nature, and also through writing that would express this experience. It was his life in nature that was his great theme. In order for Thoreau to write so much on nature he had to be fa
His major experience was living at Walden Pond for two years and learning about his own life and about the wonders of nature. Thoreau even stated himself, "I learned this, at least, from experience." Here, he was talking about how he got all the information for his book Walden totally from experiences. Although Walden was only moderately successful in Thoreau's lifetime, his experiment in the wilderness did spark interest in young people. The book inspired people to follow his example and go to a lonely spot and wonder the world and find their place in it. For many, Walden served as a touchstone. Thoreau said that he went to the pond to write a book in memory of his brother, John, who had died three years earlier. Thoreau also stated, "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 (Walden p. 90). At Walden Pond, Thoreau worked on A Week, but he also became attracted to the Walden Woods and began making observations in his journal of them. He also began collecting materials to write lectures. By the time he left Walden Pond, Thoreau had combined lectures and notes from his journal to compile into his first draft of his book A Week. A Week was not very well excepted by the public though. After the failure of A Week, publishers postponed the publication of Walden. Eventually, Walden was published and was moderately successful, and it did make Thoreau popular. Walden consisted of
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Approximate Word count = 1046
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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