Analysis of “The Nightmare” in The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, by Robert Edwin Lee and Jerome Lawrence, is a play that speaks about Henry David Thoreau and a few events in his life that lead up to his arrest. The play speaks of David Thoreau’s very ideals and beliefs. His transcendentalist way of life, simplistic and explorative, and how these very same ideas came together sending him to spend a night in jail. The play begins with the present, Thoreau already in jail. As the play continues there are flashbacks and past events that are told to us. One event, in particular, that was “The Nightmare” scene, where Thoreau had a nightmare filled with the very things he hated and found to be horrible. Including war and violence. In Thoreau’s nightmare, we witness one of his greatest horrors, war. Along with war, we see those who are divided in it. The powerful and the weak. How it is played out in Thoreau’s nightmare is that those in no power were Emerson’s son, Edward, and Bailey. The two were forced into the war but in two different ways. Bailey was made to participate against his will, he was handed a weapon to use while fighting. Edward was killed from the war with a bullet. This to Thoreau represents unnecessary and preventable deaths. That once again …show more content…
Those in powerful positions include Ralph Waldo Emerson and Deacon Ball. Emerson is the President during this war. While Ball is general in command of the army in the war. Emerson is portrayed as an indecisive, somewhat weak leader. He cannot make a proper decision, instead, he appoints a committee to appoint another to make the decision for him. Deacon Ball is shown as a strict, tough, mean leader. He chooses and forces people into the war, to fight for him, while he waits in the sideline free from the harm and horrors in the war. These two characters representing power show they are also weak and caused harm to the
As Henry is working for Waldo, he will take care of Edward who’s his son. After doing so one day, Henry is placed a very uncomfortable situation where Edward asks his mother Lydian if Henry could be his new father. Lydian then starts to want Henry gone but wants to do so by finding him a nice woman to settle down with. She tells him that and he says “you want to be a matchmaker, Lydian? Find me something innocent and uncomplicated. A shrub-oak. A cloud. A leaf lost in the snow” (Lawrence and Lee 78). By saying this Henry’s showing how he favors nature and its beauty. Adding to that, the teachings that Henrys share with others show the importance of nature. This is seen when Henry is trying to get Emily to see the fact that there’s more to Transcendentalism than being a tree-hugger and to look at nature to see its beauty. He explains this to her by telling her “what is a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on? Did you know that trees cry out in pain when they’re cut? I’ve heard them” (Lawrence and Lee 34). With this being said, Henrys explaining that in order to have a nice place to live, nature has to be taken care of. Overall, The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail focuses on the importance of
Thoreau talks about the politics, power and civil disobedience in his works. He believed that when many thought alike, the power was stronger within that minority. I think that Thoreau's intention was to point out that those people who dare to go against what seems to be unjust and go against the majority, and stand erect, are the people who transform society as a whole.
Comparing Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience and Martin Luther King's Letter From a Birmingham Jail. The two essays, "Civil Disobedience," by Henry David Thoreau, and "Letter From a Birmingham Jail," by Martin Luther King, Jr., effectively illustrate the authors' opinions of justice. Each author has his main point; Thoreau, in dealing with justice as it relates to government, asks for "not at once no government, but at once a better government. King contends that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
In conclusion, the play The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail focuses on the character and historic transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. During Act I, Henry and Ellen Sewell share multiple interactions in which each character has their own intentions. Henry desires to teach Ellen how to be an individual and also to make Ellen genuinely happy. Ellen, on the other hand, desires to learn from Henry’s lifestyle and beliefs to become a better educated woman but does not intend more than that. Therefore, Ellen and Henry do not share mutual intentions which leads to the failure of their
We often focus on the unimportant and minor details of life. Rather than just going on about life peacefully, we tend to complicate things for ourselves by never being satisfied. Throughout the story, Thoreau uses rhetorical questions as a literary device. He questions the actions of those who surround him by asking, “Why should we knock under and go with the stream?” This is similar to asking, “Why make things harder for yourself when you can just go with the flow?” He asks, “Why should we live with such a hurry and waste of life?” This question is straightforward, simply meaning; we often tend to rush life without completely living it. Instead, we should rather pace ourselves and enjoy every present moment before it’s gone.
Emerson created maxims, which are short statements expressing a general truth, to express his way of Transcendental conduct and what he believed applied to mankind. His Transcendental way of thought consisted of showing conviction of individual thinking and looking towards nature for organic feeling. These maxims appear throughout the play, "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail", as the story unfolds around the life of main character Henry and his ordeals that arise resulting from following his own path. Emerson's maxim "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind" speaks the importance of acting out as one deems fit instead of doing what others want. This comes from Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance” in which he retells a story from
How people see one another vary in numerous ways, whether it be from actions or what is gathered through spoken conversations. When an intellectual meets someone for the first time, they tend to judge by appearance before they judge by how the person express their thoughts or ideas. In Thoreau’s excerpt, he emphasizes the importance of his philosophy, especially by making sure the reader is aware of his own feelings about it. He puts literary devices such as metaphors, personification, and imagery to construct his explanation for his philosophy as well as provide several attitudes to let the reader identify how he feels towards people and the value of their ideas.
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau was very close author who wrote towards same points by criticizing the corrupted government because people were treated very badly and they were not given individual rights. They were good author who brought people together and made them understand about the system of the Transcendentalist movement in America. The governor and government itself was very poor to control the people and society due to corrupted leaders and government. Due to economic progress and poor system of government Emerson started criticizing government indirectly and wrote the poem about nature and society because maximum people could not enjoy the same facilities and freedom. But his intension was very clear and he wants to make people aware of what is happening around them. He also wants people to appreciate everything nature provides and not take it for granted. He was very disheartened by the anti-businessman for growth of economic progress and trading activities which has spoiled huge area of nature in the society. He explained that “most adults have lost the ability to see the world in this way. In order to experience awe in the presence of nature, we need to approach it with a balance between our inner and our outer senses. Nature so approached is a part of man, and even when bleak and stormy is capable of elevating his mood. All aspects of nature correspond to some state of mind”. That means he indirectly exclaimed that most of the leaders of society were included in the practices of such activities. On the other hand, Henry David Thoreau is another writer aiming to another target writing against the system of government. “Emerson wants his readers to know that tradition is not everything and society only h...
The purpose of this short story was to inform uneducated citizens of his opinion on the state and give a bit of reason behind it, its also meant to criticize the government and social policies like slavery. Thoreau induces emotion among readers and forces them to think logically about his way of life and what he’s suggesting. Overall Thoreau wrote the paper to justify his stand and explain his way of thinking.
Throughout the passage many devices appear so the reader can have a deeper understanding of Thoreau’s attitude towards life. “Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation;
In Henry Thoreau’s essay, Resistance to Civil Government, the harmless actions he takes to rebel against the government are considered acts of civil disobedience. He talks about how the government acts wrongful such as, slavery and the Mexican-American war. This writing persuades Nathaniel Heatwole, a twenty-year-old college student studying at Guildford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, to take matters into his own hands, by smuggling illegal items on multiple Southwest airplanes. The reason in that being, is to show the people that our nation is unsafe and dangerous. In doing this, he takes his rebellion one step too far, by not only jeopardizing his life, but as well as many other innocent lives.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was a philosopher and writer who is well known for his criticism of the American government during the time. During Thoreau’s life, there were two major issues being debated in the United States: slavery and the Mexican-American War. Both issues greatly influenced his essay, as he actually practiced civil disobedience in his own life by refusing to pay taxes in protest of the Mexican War. He states that the government should be based on conscience and that citizens should refuse to follow the law and has the duty not to participate and stay as a member of an unjust institution like the government. I argue that the notion of individualism and skepticism toward government is essential in the basis of many important reform movements in the modern society.
The opening paragraph is an incredibly vivid account of nights spent by “the stony shore” of Walden Pond. His description of the animals around the pond, the cool temperature, and the gentle sounds of lapping waves and rustling leaves all serve to remove the idea that nature is a wild and unkempt world of its own, and instead makes it seem much more serene and graceful. Any who thought of Thoreau as an insane outdoorsmen may have even found themselves repulsed by the monotony and constant bustle of city life and longing for the serenity felt by Thoreau. This
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.
You can see just how important non-conformity is in Thoreau’s life because he is willing to be thrown in jail for it. In act one whilst Thoreau and Bailey are discussing why they are in jail Thoreau says this, “But we’ve got a President who went out and boomed up a war all by himself – with no help from Congress and less help from me.” (pg. 11) What Henry is referring to here is the fact that he did not pay his taxes to help support a war he does not support himself. Everyone else in society is paying their taxes, but Henry will not conform to that. Thoreau is not refusing to pay taxes