Essay About David Thoreau And Ralph Waldo Emersons Sister

Thoreau
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henry david thoreau was a good man
Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts on July 12,
1817 (“Thoreau” 96), on his grandmothers farm. Thoreau, who was of
French-Huguenot and Scottish-Quaker ancestry, was baptized as David Henry
Thoreau, but at the age of twenty he legally changed his name to Henry
David. Thoreau was raised with his older sister Helen, older brother John,
and younger sister Sophia (Derleth 1) in genteel poverty (The 1995 Grolier
Multimedia Encyclopedia 1). It quickly became evident that Thoreau was
interested in literature and writing. At a young age he began to show
interest writing, and he wrote his first essay, “The Seasons,” at the
tender age of ten, while attending Concord Academy (Derleth 4).
In 1833, at the age of sixteen, Henry David was accepted to Harvard
University, but his parents could not afford the cost of tuition so his
sister, Helen, who had begun to teach, and his aunts offered to help. With
the assistance of his family and the beneficiary funds of Harvard he went
to Cambridge in August 1833 and entered Harvard on September first. “He
[Thoreau] stood close to the top of his class, but he went his own way too
much to reach the top” (5).
In December 1835, Thoreau decided to leave Harvard and attempt to
earn a living by teaching, but that only lasted about a month and a half
(8). He returned to college in the fall of 1836 and graduated on August 16,
1837 (12). Thoreaus years at Harvard University gave him one great gift,
an introduction to the world of books.
Upon his return from college, Thoreaus family found him to be less
likely to accept opinions as facts, more argumentative, and inordinately
prone to shock people with his own independent and unconventional opinions.
During this time he discovered his secret desire to be a poet (Derleth 14),
but most of all he wanted to live with freedom to think and act as he
wished.
Immediately after graduation from Harvard, Henry David applied for
a teaching position at the public school in Concord and was accepted.
However, he refused to flog children as punishment. He opted instead to
deliver moral lectures. This was looked down upon by the community, and a
committee was asked to review the situation. They decided that the
lectures were not ample punishment, so they ordered Thoreau to flog
recalcitrant students. With utter contempt he lined up six children after
school that day, flogged them, and handed in his resignation, because he
felt that physical punishment should have no part in education (Derleth 15).
In 1837 Henry David began to write his Journal (16). It started
out as a literary notebook, but later developed into a work of art. In it
Thoreau record his thoughts and discoveries about nature (The 1995 Grolier
Multimedia Encyclopedia 1).
Later that same year, his sister, Helen, introduced him to Lucy
Jackson Brown, who just happened to be Ralph Waldo Emersons sister-in-law.
She read his Journal, and seeing many of the same thoughts as Emerson
himself had expressed, she told Emerson of Thoreau. Emerson asked that
Thoreau be brought to his home for a meeting, and they quickly became
friends (Derleth 18). On April 11, 1838, not long after their first meeting
Thoreau, with Emersons help, delivered his first lecture, “Society” (21).
Ralph Waldo Emerson was probably the single most portentous person
in Henry David Thoreaus life. From 1841 to 1843 and again between 1847
and 1848 Thoreau lived as a member of Emersons household, and during this
time he came to know Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and many other
members of the “Transcendental Club” (“Thoreau” 696).
On August 31, 1839 Henry David and his elder brother, John, left
Concord on a boat trip down the Concord River, onto the Middlesex Canal,
into the Merrimack River and into the state of New Hampshire. Out of this