Thoreaus Biography What distinct character trait emerges from this mans life and writings essays

Thoreaus Biography What distinct character trait emerges from this man's life and writings essays Perhaps the most attractive aspect about the life of Henry David Thoreau to a modern reader is the fact that the man actually lived the type of life and philosophy that he preached. Thoreau disdained the industrialized, modern urban life of the modern intellectual. His entire life illustrates how he lived, not simply as a great thinker, but as one who embodied the living principles of the Transcendentalist movement. Thoreau did not simply tell others to live. Rather he sought to discover, and then to embody his own principles in the text of lived experience, as First of all, rather than attempting to secure a job as a minister or academic after graduating from college, Thoreau embarked upon a period of study in the real world, to determine what was the best path for himself. On this quest, he worked as, among many other menial' occupations and pursuits, as a handyman for the esteemed essayist and Unitarian minister, Ralph Waldo Emerson. By working with his hands, Thoreau was able to gain a better sense of the importance of lived experience, rather than living in books. However, the literary climate at this most famous Transcendentalist's house enabled the emerging writer in Thoreau to remain immersed in this movement's literary scene and its ideas. The importance of working with one's hands, as a path to true self- reliance, in Thoreau's philosophy was next put into practice in his most famous experiment, that of his time of living in the woods in Walden, Massachusetts. Thoreau recoded in his journals and in the book that bears the location's name, his practical daily difficulties of dealing with ordinary individuals in the community, as well as his many successes and failures in dealing with harsh environmental conditions. Unlike Emerson, Thoreau does not sentimentalize the natural world. Having come to grips with its harshness in a very real and vi ...