Henry David Thoreau - Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown

CITIZEN THOREAU

CITIZEN THOREAU

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

WALDEN
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS
A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN

Foreword By

RICHARD FRANCIS FLECK

Foreword 2014 Richard Francis Fleck
Front cover photo, top: iStock.com/zrfphoto; front cover photo, bottom: iStock.com/Pingwin

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862.
[Essays. Selections]
Citizen Thoreau : Walden, Civil disobedience, Life without principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A plea for Captain John Brown / Henry David Thoreau ; foreword by Richard Francis Fleck.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-941821-20-6 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-1-941821-39-8 (hardbound)

ISBN 978-1-941821-37-4 (e-book)

I. Title.

PS3042.C58 2014

814'.3dc23

2014024761

Published by WestWinds Press
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Portland, Oregon 97238-6118
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To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but to so love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

Henry David Thoreau, Economy, Walden

H ENRY DAVID THOREAU (181762) is a complete writer who focuses on human nature, human society, the natural world, both tamed near Concord, Massachusetts, and wild in the Maine woods, and on the individuals relationship to himself and the world around him. Walden, or a Life in the Woods (1854) addresses questions from his townspeople on whether or not he was an idler doing nothing productive and whether or not he was lonely living by himself only a few miles from the village center of Concord. Some modern day critics believe that his answers, especially in the opening chapter of Economy, are self-absorbed with an underdeveloped social sense.

But these critics tend to ignore certain pertinent facts. His critique of his townsmens provincial behavior is followed with forceful and constructive solutions in the closing chapter Conclusion, as we shall see. His life as writer cannot be considered self-absorbed. Clearly his sense of social responsibility is evidenced by his call to civil resistance against government laws that enslave both free man and slave. He cannot be self-absorbed if his two years, two months, and two days (184547) at Walden Pond were not spent idling but writing more than many a professor on sabbatical leave: Thoreau wrote at least one volume of his Journal; a book dedicated to the memory of his deceased brother, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; an early draft of Walden; and Volume I of his Indian Notebooks for an intended long essay on the values of tribal culture in North America. Is it possible to be self-absorbed and have an intense interest in Native Americans?

Economy in part answers questions from his townspeople as to why on earth he would choose to live alone and not contribute toward the welfare of poor children. The subject of this youthful experiment was Thoreau himself. If he were to write about the agonizing complexities of mid-nineteenth century American society, it was absolutely essential to understand his own self first. As the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne wrote if one is to analyze human culture, first il faut se savoir.

Certainly one piece of advice to Concord townsmen is to get a grip on life and to begin to comprehend who they are. Nothing can be worse than being slave drivers of their own selves by digging their own graves as soon as they are born. It is truly ironic that the local businessman should become his own slave-driver for forty years or so in order to be able to do what he really wants to do in retirement for his few remaining years.

Thoreau, like Edward Abbey of Desert Solitaire fame, asks what are the basic necessities of life? They are not making a bundle of money to buy your spouse socially impressive jewels but rather they are Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel. Simplifying ones life can, indeed, simplify the seeming complexities of the universe. If we simplify our needs, we can simplify our wants. Thoreau writes, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain ones self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime if we will live simply and wisely. In the chapter Where I lived and What I lived for, he writes with forceful irony that a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. Such is his advice to the Irish immigrant John Fields in Baker Farm. He does not need to work so hard at bogging if he did not consume such luxuries as tea, coffee, butter, milk, and beef. But it is difficult for Thoreau to convince an Irishman to do without the very provisions he lacked back in famine-stricken Ireland.

In Higher Laws the writer Thoreau deftly analyzes his own instincts toward a higher life by recognizing his equally strong propensities toward a primitive, rank, and savage one and reverencing them both. While he had desires at times to devour a woodchuck raw, he knew innately that we are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers.

Though Thoreau may seem self-absorbed and humorless to some, Walden is laced with humor. A few examples can be seen in Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors, where he writes, The last inhabitant of these woods before me was an Irishman, Hugh Quoil (if I have spelt his name with coil enough). In Brute Neighbors, after watching a battle between red and black ants in the woods, he observes, I was myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think of it, the less the difference. In the closing chapter Conclusion, he writes, If you are chosen town-clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer; but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless.

As earlier mentioned, the Conclusion offers positive suggestions to those bogged down in pursuing a career with many material benefits. He is reminiscent of Walt Whitmans intense optimism in Song of Myself. Thoreau suggests, Be the Frobisher of your own streams and oceans, and again, However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. Do not go and hang yourself because you are a mere pygmy, but rather be the biggest pygmy that you can. Thoreau reflects that we should realize that money is not required to buy one necessary [thing] of the soul.

Thoreaus shorter essays included in this volume are truly concerned with the betterment of humanity during the dark times of the Mexican Wars (1846-48), the Fugitive Slave Law, and Slavery itself. One critic has stated that Thoreaus essay Civil Disobedience is essentially anarchistic in advocating the rebellion against government based on individual and subjective moral values. This critic declares that Civil Disobedience is lacking in objective correlatives. There are quite a few references to scripture and sacred texts in this essay that tend to contradict the above assertion. Thoreau writes with the following objective correlative that refutes William Paley, an eighteenth-century English utilitarian philosopher: If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself. This according to Paley would be inconvenient. But he that would save his life, in such a case, shall lose it.