Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was a writer who lived in the middle of the nineteenth century. He was part of the Transcendentalist movement, which encouraged people to live by their intuition. In his time, Thoreau's work was overshadowed by the work of other transcendentalists, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882). In retrospect, Thoreau is regarded as one of the United States's best writers on nature and social reform.

Early life

Thoreau was born David Henry Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts , on July 12, 1817. He was the third of four children. His father, John, was a businessman who eventually found success making pencils. His mother, Cynthia, was an abolitionist (antislavery activist) who ran a boardinghouse to supplement the family's income

Thoreau was a quiet child who preferred walks in the woods to childhood games. As an adult he would recall visiting Concord's Walden Pond with his grandmother when he was very young. Thoreau and his older brother, John, were educated at Concord Academy, a private school for boys. Henry and John were close friends.

Thoreau's family could afford to send just one child to college. Because he was the better student, Henry got to attend Harvard College when he was sixteen years old, and he did well enough in his first year to earn a half-scholarship. Although he did not think too highly of his education, Thoreau learned to express himself in writing while at Harvard. After college he began keeping a journal of his thoughts and activities. By the time of his death, his journals amounted to fourteen printed volumes of writing. They are highly regarded by historians and literary scholars.

Finding work and love

After graduating from Harvard in 1837 Thoreau moved back to Concord. There he accepted a job teaching in a school where the administrators required him to discipline students using corporal punishment, or beatings. Thoreau announced that instead of beating children, he would talk morals as punishment. When the administrators insisted that Thoreau beat the students, he resigned after only two weeks.

While looking for a job, Thoreau worked with his father making pencils. It was around this time that he officially changed his name from David Henry to Henry David, apparently preferring the sound. Failing to find a job, Thoreau decided to open his own school with his brother, John, in 1838. They did well, supplementing regular studies with exploration outside.

In summer 1839 a woman named Ellen Sewall came to Concord to visit her aunt, who boarded with the Thoreau family. Henry and his brother John both fell in love with Ellen. John proposed marriage to Ellen in summer 1840, but she rejected him. Henry proposed that November, only to be rejected too. The rejection hurt Henry. He wrote in his journal, found in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, “I did not think so bright a day would issue in so dark a night.”

John died tragically in January 1842. He cut his finger while sharpening his razor, and the cut became infected, leading to lockjaw (tetanus) and then death. Henry mourned the loss of his close brother.

The Transcendentalists

Thoreau read an essay called “Nature” by Emerson in his last year in college. Emerson was a well-regarded writer and thinker with a group of friends that included the writers Margaret Fuller (1810–1850), Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864), and Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888). Together they were known as “Transcendentalists.” They promoted social reform, freedom of ideas, and a spiritual way of searching for truth that involved relying on intuition, or instinct, instead of religious teachings.

Thoreau met Emerson shortly after returning to Concord from Harvard, and they formed a friendship that lasted the remainder of Thoreau's life. Thoreau idolized Emerson, and Emerson nurtured Thoreau's thinking and writing. Beginning in 1841, Thoreau spent much time at Emerson's home, often taking care of the family while Emerson went on lecture tours. Emerson's long absences from his family became a source of tension between Emerson and Thoreau.

In 1843 Thoreau moved to New York to live with Emerson's brother, William, and tutor his son. Thoreau hoped to make connections in New York that would help him publish his writing. He learned that publishing is a difficult business in which to succeed, and he returned to Concord in 1844.

Walden Pond

In 1845 Thoreau was supporting himself by working as a surveyor, making pencils with his father, and doing odd jobs around town. A friend from New York, the poet Ellery Channing (1818–1901), suggested that Thoreau build a hut in the woods near Walden Pond, 1.5 miles from Concord. There Thoreau could live while writing a book about a river trip he had made with his brother John. Thoreau borrowed an axe, built the hut on land owned by Emerson, and moved in on July 4, 1845.

Thoreau spent two years living at Walden Pond. He was not a complete hermit: Friends visited often, he went to his family's home once a week for Sunday dinner, and he did odd jobs in Concord to earn some income. but otherwise, Thoreau spent the two years thinking deeply, growing crops, and writing books in the quiet of nature.

The books he wrote there, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack (1849) and Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854), are among his most famous. In Walden, or Life in the Woods, Thoreau recommended living a simple, self-sufficient life free of social and financial obligations. He encouraged people to counter the effects of industrialization by getting close to nature. Thoreau explained in Walden that he moved to Walden Pond “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.”

Civil disobedience

During his time at Walden Pond, Thoreau spent one night in jail, in summer 1846, for refusing to pay a poll tax, a voting tax levied on all men over twenty. Thoreau had refused to pay the tax for years in protest against slavery and, in 1846, against the Mexican-American War (1846–48). The experience of being imprisoned provided material for another of his famous writings, “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” (1849). In the essay, Thoreau wrote that people have a duty to obey their consciences when they disagree with what government wants them to do. The essay influenced future great thinkers, including Mohandas Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Thoreau left Walden Pond in 1847 and spent most of the rest of his life writing books, essays, and poems. After the abolitionist John Brown (1800–1859) staged a violent revolt against slavery in 1859, Thoreau wrote an essay called “The Last Days of John Brown” that explored the manner in which northern opinion about slavery changed after Brown's death. Thoreau was an abolitionist who may have worked on the underground railroad to help slaves escape to freedom.

In 1862 he contracted tuberculosis, and he died on May 6. Before his death, when an aunt asked if he had made his peace with God, Thoreau said, “I did not know we had quarreled.”