Differences In Where I Lived, And What I Lived For

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Recommended: Thoreau and Emerson on Nature

The short story texts, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For by Henry David Thoreau and From Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson, detail the unnecessary conveniences that only aim to clutter and create complications that should be avoided. Thoreau describes his goals of achieving a Spartan-like life of simplicity and resignation. He aimed to reduce life to the lowest possible level of complications and live with uninvolved with society. Emerson explains how the deep innate connection of humans to nature and the separateness from the material world are lost by adults. Nature should be a simplistic world that allows people to release from the daily grind of life and devolve to a lower state of mind. During a day-to-day basis, nature should lead people …show more content…

Thoreau is very clear in his plea for people to live day-to-day without being “thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rail” (280). Daily life can be a struggle for many people and by living a Spartan-like lifestyle, annoyances in life become unimportant. By reverting back to the lowest terms of life and only surviving off the essentials, little things in life do not distract or delay a person from reaching their main goal. In Thoreau’s writing, he even mentions going into solitude and living out in nature separated from society. He moved to live in a cabin for two years: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life” (277). Thoreau perceived society as non-essential and only brought conflict into peoples’ lives. He wanted to have conscious control over his life and make all of his actions intentional. By putting himself in an isolated cabin in the woods, Thoreau efficiently “sucked out all the marrow of life” (277) so that he could live sturdily. Nature became a very important aspect of life to Thoreau and led him to a simpler, more detached day-to-day

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