Walden: Representation Of A Harmonious Relationship Between Man And Nature

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) is the 19th century American Transcendentalist writer and preservation thinker, and his Walden, a record of two years and two months that he spent alone in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts, is viewed as one of the finest prose works in American literature. Part autobiography, part fiction and part social criticism, Walden is a highly individual work. In it, Thoreau advocates a simple, self-sufficient way of life. He also pleads for a more intimate relationship between human beings and nature as an antidote to the deadening influence of an increasingly industrialized society. Thoreau's ideas went beyond his age and were thus ignored by his contemporaries. But with the coming of the global environmental crisis and the upsurge of environmental protection, Thoreau has been rediscovered. Today sees wider recognition, more studies and deeper understanding of his book Walden. His views on a harmonious man-and-nature relationship have become an important source of ecoliterature. And more and more people have been influenced by his works, who, in turn, developed his ideas and fought for environmental protection.This thesis begins with one of the environmental problems, sandstorm, the occurrence of which is related to human activities and poses the question: what is the ideal man-and-nature relationship as reflected in Thoreau's Walden? This question is studied in depth in the thesis and answered in three parts.The first part mainly discusses the three sources for Thoreau's nature consciousness. They are Concord, New England Transcendentalism and Thoreau's sojourn at Walden Pond. Concord was Thoreau's birthplace and the area of land that enabled him to establish a close...