Life is a complicated process that everybody has to experience. As human beings most people have to interact in society, but it is their decision if they want to live a public or private life. Most people live their own lives or experiences in private, while other people decide to be more open and have a public life. Having a public life might sound pleasurable or interesting, but sometimes it could turn into a nightmare or a problem. Being a public person can be convenient or beneficial but occasionally people have to pay an unexpected price for it. Some individuals keep private and public life separate and do not see a connection between them. For others, both kinds of life are related. Private and public life are connected, and not isolated as many people think.
After reading, “ Letter from Birmingham Jail,” by Martin Luther King, Jr., “On Morality”, by Joan Didion, and “Where I Lived, and What I l Lived For”, by Henry David Thoreau, readers can have a better perspective about the different kinds of life. Other books that will help to understand the main points in this essay will be “History will absolve me”, by Fidel Castro and “The little Prince” by Antoine de Saint Exupery. When readers analyze all the readings together and from the same viewpoint, can arrive at the conclusion that each of them adopts a different position, yet brings a common point that connects all of them: morality. Morality is, “A word that is distrust more everyday,” according to Didion. This expression about morality is what has made many people succeed or fail whose experiences are publicly lived. In this case, Dr. King decided to adopt a public life fighting for freedom and justice in America. On the other side, Thoreau decided to have his own priva...
... middle of paper ...
...for public use or personal satisfaction. Since public and private lives are related in many cases, it is possible that a personal experience crosses the borders into someone’s public life, or causes a private person to become a public person.
Works Cited
Castro, Fidel. “History will absolve me”. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press,
1984. Print.
Didion, Joan. “On Morality”. 50 essays. Ed. Samuel Cohen. 3rd ed. Boston:
Bedford, 2011. 203-220. Print.
King, Martin Luther Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. 50 essays. Ed.
Samuel Cohen. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford, 2011. 203-220. Print.
Saint-Exupéry, Antoine. “The Little Prince”. London: Collector's Library, 2010.
Print.
Thoreau, Henry David. “ Where I Lived, and What I l Lived For”. 50 essays.
Ed. Samuel Cohen. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford, 2011. 203-220. Print.
Thoreau, Henry David. "Walden." The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998. 2107-2141.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter Fourth Edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995. 788-829.
Henry David Thoreau was bon on July 12, 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts, on his grandmother’s farm. Thoreau was of French-Huguenot and Scottish-Quaker decent. Thoreau was interested in writing at an early age. At the age of ten he wrote his first essay “The seasons”. He attended Concord Academy until 1833 when he was accepted to Harvard University but with his pending financial situation he was forced to attend Cambridge in August of 1833. In September of 1833 with the help of his family he was able to attend Harvard University. He graduated college in August of 1837.
In Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” he cites conscience as a guide to obeying just laws and disobeying unjust laws. In the same way, Henry David Thoreau wrote in his famous essay, “Civil Disobedience,” that people should do what their conscience tells them and refuse to follow unjust laws. The positions of the two writers are very close; they both use a common theme of conscience, and they use a similar rhetorical appeal to ethos.
...he public is the dichotomy, which means that decisions are made without the political environment. As always, the disagreement for certain decisions made in the government will be present, but believe that the officials are working in a unison team to try to provide the best for all.
Thoreau, Henry David. Walden, or Life in the Woods. The Pennsylvania State University, 2006. PDF file.
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.
Walden; Or, Life In The Woods is a self-experiment that provides an ideal opportunity to evaluate the author’s philosophy. The book is an account of Henry David Thoreau’s journey of self-discovery as he attempts to live a life of simplicity and self-reliance in the woods of Massachusetts. His exploration of his two years and two months living in a cabin near Walden Pond is considered a seminal work of early American transcendentalism. Thoreau never explicitly reveals the spiritual truth at the end of his journey. Still, a discerning Christian reader can note the main transcendental themes and ideals that Thoreau demonstrates, separating that which should be applauded from that which should be rejected.
Although Thoreau and King both correspondingly address these topics of morality and justice throughout their essays, their essays are in no way similar in writing styles, tones, and/or goals. King speaks to his readers about the injustice that is being served to African Americans specifically. He uses an emotional appeal as he pleads his readers to take action to end segregation. This emotional appeal combined with his optimism for freedom sets him and his writing different from that of Thoreau’s. Thoreau’s essay on the other hand, is largely critical of the unfair American Government. Unlike King, Thoreau worriedly speaks to his readers in a distressed, aggravated tone as he reprimands them for following unjust laws. Thoreau’s essay is also different from King’s because he presents more than one goal. Not only does he describe the government’s unfair laws, but he also teaches his readers how and why to revolt, and tells them to bring an end to the ongoing M...
In his famous essay, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,’’ Martin Luther King, Jr. cites conscience as a guide to obeying just laws and defying unjust laws. In the same way, Henry David Thoreau wrote in his famous essay, “Civil Disobedience,” that people should do what their conscience tells them and not obey unjust laws. The positions of the two writers are very close; they use a common theme of conscience, and they use a similar rhetorical appeal of ethos.
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.
one's life. These attempts have been made to enlighten society about a taboo topic that is rapidly forcing itself into the lives of all.
“All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.”This quotation can have various interpretations. One main idea which Gabriel García Márquez is portraying in this quote is that privacy is vital for a person and gives the individual autonomy and individuality. Without privacy a person would not be able to live normally. However privacy can and is violated in various scenarios, for instance, in marriage.
Myerson, Joel. The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau. New York: Cambridge UP, 1995. Print.
‘Sociological Imagination' as explained by C. Wright Mills is an individual's ability to recognize the connection between the course of their own lives and the role that historical and societal changes play in the personal decisions they make (Mills, 1959). Unaware of the effect of this connection on the kind of people they are becoming, they are unable to solve personal troubles as they look for solutions within themselves as a biographical entity (Mills, 1959). They fail to identify the structural transformation that is responsible for their private troubles. Dilemmas that individuals face within themselves or amongst direct relations with others are known as personal troubles (Mills, 1959). In contrast, public issues, are troubles that