American_Adam

American Adam Thoreau’s position on the West was a dichotomous one in comparison to Emerson’s. While he was in agreement with Emerson about the power and the pull of nature and the innate human need to be a part of it, he condemned the idea of conquering and taming the wilderness. In his most popular work, Walden, Thoreau was building upon the transcendentalist view that the mind is the true frontier. Starting in 1845, he moved onto Emerson’s land at Walden Pond and for “two years, two months, and two days” he lived a simple and self-sustained life (Woodlief) While there he kept detailed journals which were published as, Walden, in 1854. In Walden, he gives the reason for his stay in the woods, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (Thoreau 1692). walden, while, two, thoreau, simplicity, life, idea, woods, true, pond, nation, mind, lived, frontier, emerson’s, years, world, work, woodlief, wished, wilderness, west, way, view, valve, values, upon, unwieldy, tripped, traps, transcendentalist, transcendental, thoreau’s, teach, taming