Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau, a name heard endlessly by American Literature students, has contributed his outrageous views to society even after his death. Lectures and texts let his perceptions live on through teachers and professors that are all agreed on the significance of his writing to the transcendentalistic period. Definitely worth the merit he receives for his contributions, Henry Thoreau's views are nonconformist and thought provoking. "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" (Thoreau, 14). Thoreau himself marched to a different drummer, and it is this aspect of all great men that set them apart from the average. Socrates, Newton, and Kepler all men who found popular belief not to be the only belief, became great because of it. Although Thoreau's views are not recognized until later in life, they in fact were being sculpted during his earlier years, and his adulthood literary works were directly effected by his childhood. David Thoreau's childhood was an unsettled one set in the early 1800's. David Henry Thoreau being his birth name which he received on July 12, 1817 at his Grandmother Mi
nott's farm. Not until the age of twenty, when he was about to graduate Harvard, did he flip his first and middle name. Thoreau was born the youngest of three children; he had a much older sister Helen, an older brother John, and it wasn't until the birth of his little sister Sophia that he became a middle child. His family was very poor, and his father's various attempts at making a living left them much like nomads. It happened not to be until Henry was six that the family finally settled in Concord at the call of his father's successful pencil-making business. Henry Thoreau, with his mentality almost totally developed, meets the reinforcement needed to solidify his views. His journal happened to be no personal concern, and one day while his mother conversed with Lucy Jackson Brown it was brought to her attention, which then of course was forwarded to Emerson. On the grounds that Henry's views echoed Emerson's so greatly Emerson then devised they should meet, and soon after they became, " an important, if not always easy, friendship" (Derleth, 19). It was not long after their first meeting that Emerson was already writing of Thoreau in his journal, "I delight much in my young friend, who seems to have as free and erect a mind as any I have ever met...My good Henry Thoreau made this else solitary afternoon sunny with his simplicity and clear perception..." Emerson very much took a liking to Henry, whether it was a reflection in himself that Emerson saw, or a fertile ground for his ideas, it makes no difference. Emerson was just what Thoreau needed, not only someone to reinforce his thoughts and beliefs, but to become a companion. Now without any doubts to his way of thinking Henry Thoreau's mind was concrete in it's pursuits. The Thoreau family structure appears not to be so different from the normal of the time period. Derleth even describes the family as, "a closely-knit family of lifelong duration"(2). Henry's father was a grave, quiet man, yet not prepossessing like many men of the time period. He was likable, but his tendency toward deafness made it hard to communicate with him. Henry's mother was an opinionated, insightful woman, and her lively and bustling presence often brought these opinions to the surface. Derleth states, "Mrs. Thoreau... could sometimes make sharp observations about her fellow citizens, though she was not in any sense mean, and she was very much liked" (2). Mrs. Thoreau was clearly the dominant force in the household, and the house was regularly filled with women. Aunt Louis Dunbar, Henry's Grandmother Minott before she died, and none other than Lucy Jackson Brown the sister of Ralph Waldo Emerson's second wife, were all welcomed boarders at the Thoreau household. Henry's childhood was a time of learning and a time of development. It was a c
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Approximate Word count = 1900
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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