1. Things to Remember about Thoreau

2. Relationship with Emerson  14 years younger than RWE  Friendship bloomed in late 1830s, after T graduation from Harvard  Throughout the 1840s, E encouraged T as a writer, particularly praising his poetry and getting him started on the great topic of nature  Shared political attitudes about slavery  Friendship cooled some in the 1850s, with T resenting E’s patronage & E critical of what he saw as T’s lack of ambition  RWE delivered the eulogy at T’s funeral: “No truer American existed than Thoreau.”

3. An age of social experimentation  Like the 1960s, the 1840s saw a number of experiments with communes. Hawthorne lived for a time at Brook Farm, the Alcotts at Fruitlands.  T’s stay at Walden Pond is a more solitary response to this same impulse towards social experimentation.

4. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life….”  Built a cabin on property owned by RWE and moved in on 4 July 1845  Lived economically and comfortably for two years and two months  Experiment in self reliance, but not a flight from society

5. “Simplify, simplify.”  Like RWE, HDT was profoundly skeptical of the division of labor.  The complexity and specialization of labor and commerce rob of us any command of our own lives.  “If some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune of being ridden upon.”

6. “By working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.”  Growing his own food and building his own shelter gave him freedom to work productively as a writer and thinker  Profound connection between self reliance, meaningful labor, and thought

7. “I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”  While living at Walden Pond, T was arrested and briefly jailed for not paying his poll tax.  His essay on the experience, “Civil Disobedience,” explores the question of what a person should do when he or she feels that his government is acting immorally.

8. Crosspollination  Like RWE, T avidly studied the Hindu scriptures of India.  Mahatma Gandhi studied T’s writings on civil disobedience as he led India’s struggle for independence.  MLK based many of his ideas on nonviolent action on the work of Gandhi.