Poetic Existence

Henry D. Thoreau, American writer, thinker, naturalist, environmentalist and socialist in the 19^th century, has been classified by most critics as the saint of environmentalism for his profound concerns about nature. Some others deem him as a socialist advocating the freedom of slaves. Nowadays, he is more often called a poet-naturalist, philosopher-naturalist and even social critic-naturalist. He behaves casual, easeful, and outdoorsy on Walden Pond and then becomes someone disciplined, demanding, and radical when devoting the slavery fight. It seems hard to give him a definite description about seeming contradictions, because his concerns span so many fields as nature, humanity, and society.However, in my opinion, whether he retreats into Walden or throws himself into the breach to fight against slavery, there is a central concern in Thoreau's whole study, that is, to find a proper life style of human existence. The moment he finds there is chaos in people's spiritual lives, he retreats to the deep woods to explore the essence of life; while he realizes that the freedom of each individual is seriously threatened, he comes out baldly to the social arena fighting against slavery. He spends his whole-life pursuing how to lead a healthy and meaningful life with other human beings in the common world. Living at Walden Pond, standing up to his government, refusing to pay a poll tax to a government with which he views as corrupt -all are manifestations of his fierce individuality. Thoreau is a stellar example of how a meaningful life can produce. It is a worthy goal to make great effort to ponder and labor rather than becoming lost in the mainstream of life, to nurture one's own individuality in the natural world and to protect the freedom of the individual when it is threatened.My paper would mainly concentrate on Thoreau's quest for meaning in nature and society. Thoreau primarily is a naturalist The formation of Thoreau's natural view, however, is a fitful, irregular, experimental, although increasingly purposeful process of self-education. This purposeful self-education can be roughly divided into in three periods: 1. Exploring a transcendental end in the natural world. 2. Being engaged in...