Comparing Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer and Thoreau's Various Essays
St. Jean De Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer and Henry David Thoreau's various essays and journal entries present opposing views of what it means to be an American. To somewhat simplify, both writers agree that there are two kinds of Americans: those who are farmers and those who are not. Crèvecoeur views farmers as the true Americans, and those who are not farmers, such as frontier men, as lawless, idle, inebriated wretches (266). Sixty years later, Thoreau believes the opposite: farmers are doomed and bound to their land, and free men who own nothing posses the only true liberty (9). Both Crèvecoeur and Thoreau judge men and their professions on industry, use of nature, freedom, and lawfulness.
As America grew during these six decades, industrialization and higher education created more compact communities unable to economically provide the land needs of farmers. In Crèvecoeur's America, "some few towns excepted, we are all tillers of the earth"(263). In 1850, Thoreau's Concord was among the many towns allowing people to leave their farms for a more urban setting to house their law practices, shoe stores, or surveying businesses. The separation of farmers from the rest of society leads to intellectualizations of the profession by thinkers like Thoreau. Removed from the simple, hard labor of farming, it is easy for urbanized society to forget the farmer's purpose and importance in Western civilization.
Crèvecoeur states that "industry, which to me who am but a farmer, is the criterion of everything"(264). Indeed, a lack of industry in any vocation eventually leads to failure. Thoreau, however, sees little value in indu...
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...d as Thoreau was from self-supporting agriculture, modern America is light years away. Thoreau's ideal lifestyle is now an impossibility. Many Americans would settle for an unadorned life on a small farm, and a clean, dry home.
Possibly the day will come when [the land] will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only-when fences shall be multiplied, and man-traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the surface of God's earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman's grounds. ... Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come. (Thoreau 667)
Works Cited:
Crèvecoeur, J. Hector St. John de. Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America. Ed. Albert E. Stone. New York: Penguin, 1981.
What really happened over the summer in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico? People have debated this topic countless times. Despite all of the deviations of what happened, there is a general timeline. Sometime during the months of June and July 1947, an aircraft landed in Mac Brazel’s ranch; Brazel proceeded to tell Sheriff George Wilcox. He sent a member of the Roswell Army Air Field base to look at the wreckage on Brazel’s ranch. This person took some of the debris back to the base for further inspection. On July 8, 1947, the newspapers published stories about how someone found a flying saucer in New Mexico. However, the government told the newspapers to report that it was merely a weather balloon that had crashed. After that, everybody simply accepted the story and dropped the topic. Throughout that story, many pieces of evidence went untold to the media. There were numerous pictures that went unreleased. Many affidavits went unnoticed and nobody paid attention to inconsistencies in the government’s justifications. Because of explicative photographs, several eyewitness accounts, and contradictory government explanations, there is extensive proof that the government concealed an alien landing in Roswell, New Mexico.
"There is a higher law than civil law- the law of conscience- and that when these laws are in conflict, it is a citizen's duty to obey the voice of God within rather than that of the civil authority without," (Harding 207). As Harding described in his brief explanation of Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, there are some instances in which it is necessary to disobey a social law. Martin Luther King, Jr., in addition to Thoreau, reasoned that should a civil law be judged unjust, one had a moral obligation not only to himself but also to those around him to disregard that particular law in exchange for a higher one voiced by God.
Wendell Berry writes in his book, “What are people for?” a thesis that modern culture is destroying the agricultural culture. He feels that technology is seen and used as the easy way to produce food faster and more efficiently. With this modern way of farming comes the idea that we need to work smarter not harder which is not always true. The goal is comfort and leisure and Berry feels that this is the reason for the down fall of the agricultural culture. He believes that hard work and pride in workmanship is more important than material goods and money. This was by no means a perfect society. The people had often been violent wand wasteful in the use of land of each other. Its present ills have already taken root in it. Even with these faults, this society appreciated the hard work of farming compared to the easy way of living today.
John Dickinson, from Letters from a farmer in Pennsylvania (1768) from Voices of America Past & Present pgs. 66-67
Thoreau believed that labor was not only the activity that could bring material profits, but also a play which made man complete and developed simultaneously” (Ma 384). Thoreau's work was experiencing nature and living transcendentally in order to share the quality of life that nature provides. We see Thoreau in many aspects of today’s society, whether it’s Lisa from The Simpsons, a means of transportation, or political protests, they all follow a Thoreauvian idea of looking at the bigger picture and seeing what really matters. This way of thinking was created because one man decided that society was too mainstream and he moved off to the edge of town and reflected; people these days that do that are referred to as “hipsters” but the influence had to come from somewhere, and that was Henry David Thoreau.
know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my
Have you ever woke up in the morning and asked yourself, “Why am I living this life?” Throughout the book of Walden, Henry David Thoreau questions the lifestyles that people choose; he makes his readers wonder if they have chosen the kind of lifestyle that give them the greatest amount of happiness. Thoreau stated, “Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them().” This quote is important because most of society these days are so caught up in work and trying to make ends meet that they lose the values in life. Thoreau was forced to change his life when he found himself unhappy after a purchase for a farm fell through. On Thoreau’s journey he moves to Walden and builds a house and life from nothing but hard work, symbolizes many different objects.
Around June 25th, 1947 a pilot, Ken Arnold had reported strange objects in the sky while flying near Mt. Rainer, Washington. He stated that they flew like "saucers being skipped over water." This was where the term "Flying Saucers" derived from. The Roswell UFO Incident all started on the evening of July 3, 1947, Dan Wilmot and his wife were sitting on their front porch when they saw the distinct shape of a saucer flying through the sky. A few days prior to this sighting, military radar in the area was tracking an Unidentified Flying Object for four days. On Independence Day the radar indicated that the object had gone down about 30-40 miles Northwest of Roswell. A few days after the actual sighting from the Wilmot's, W.W. Brazel, the Foreman of the J.B. Foster Ranch went to check on his sheep after some intense thunderstorms the night prior. He happened to discover a very large amount of debris of an unknown metallic substance scattered throughout the field. It was also stated that he stumbled across a shallow trench in the ground that stretched hundreds of feet. Brazel would gather some of this debris to show family and friends. A few days after he would contact sheriff Wilcox of Chaves County. Once Wilcox had the information he needed, he contacted the Roswell Army Air Force Base, where Major Jessie Marcel was briefed to look int...
The Orcs of Middle Earth trampled through the forest leaving a visible path of broken branches. In another part of Middle Earth, Ents spent their time slowly and thoughtfully making decisions. The land culture of the Ents in The Lord of the Rings differs greatly from the Orcs, thus, providing readers a view of Tolkien’s perspectives of agrarianism and current culture. An Orc’s nature is just to follow the orders of their leader and that is all. It is not as much that Orcs don’t like the nature, but that they are unaware of it and it’s importance. Ent’s are known to do everything slowly, from decision making, to talking. These relationships to land correlate to modern views of the land. Wendell Berry is a writer and farmer, who is a leader
Through the years, people age and become less productive. For these reasons, they have to prepare some plans that help them secure their own future. But, there are instances that lead an individual to an early retirement. Some lack motivation and enthusiasm in their work. Others are not capable of working anymore as well because of the health issues that they are facing. Regardless of the reason, it is important that one has to work so that by the time they retire, they will not end up broke. Having this in mind, many people are already investing in a simple IRA.
. At the town of Roswell an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) crash landed in the quiet little town. Many Roswell residents testified that they saw a burning object plummet toward the ground before exploding upon impact. The Air Force's initial reaction to the incident was to tell the world that they did not know what it was. This shows me evidence that they had no “protocol” for this kind of occurrence, thus the Military leader stepped in and covered everything up. This incident caught the attention of citizens of the United States, local officials, and the media. It has especially gained interest in a variety of Special interest groups/ groups that specialize in researching and investigating events that involve UFO’s.
To conclude, Thoreau believed that people should be ruled by conscience and that people should fight against injustice through non-violence according to “Civil Disobedience.” Besides, he believed that we should simplify our lives and take some time to learn our essence in the nature. Moreover, he deemed that tradition and money were unimportant as he demonstrated in his book, Walden. I suggested that people should learn from Thoreau to live deliberately and spend more time to go to the nature instead of watching television, playing computer games, and among other things, such that we could discover who we were and be endeavored to build foundations on our dreams.
as having said, “something unusual had occurred” (Dudley 31). The debris was soon removed from Brazel’s ranch and a land and air search was conducted by the military.
...y, considering citizenship and working for the benefit of society, while Henry Thoreau emphasizes the illusory nature and imperfection of the state and sees individual freedom in unity with nature and rejection of pseudo-needs enslaving people.
Henry David Thoreau was a renowned American essayist, poet, and philosopher. He was a simple man who built his life around basic truths (Manzari 1). Ralph Waldo Emerson deeply impacted Thoreau’s viewpoints and philosophies, specifically by introducing him to the Transcendentalists movement. There seems to be no single ideology or set of ideas that entirely characterized Thoreau’s thoughts, but principles encompassing Transcendentalism come closest (Harding and Meyer 122). Spending time in nature and in solitude gave Thoreau an entirely new perspective on life. In fact, his doctrines regarding nature and the impact of the individual on society have transformed realms of political, social and literary history. Politically and socially, Thoreau’s