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Ken Kealey 11/10/2002 Adv. Writing Being Henry Thoreau Mankind has long struggled to find it's identity. As the world evolved, society began to place their identity in objects, appearance, or status. Such idolatrous ways disgusted a man by the name of Henry David Thoreau. In his book Walden, Thoreau packs up ship for two years and heads out to live a life of experiment and solitude. The ultimate purpose of his book was to make people aware of the lives they have submitted themselves to, and likewise re-evaluate what they place more value in; themselves or their possessions. The question Thoreau asks the reader is whether they control their possesions or do there possessions control them? Reading this book can be mentally stressing. For some, Thoreau is a genius with revolutionary ideas and philosophy. For others, he is just a hermit and social reject who was angry at the world and wanted his voice heard. After reading the book, I believe that Thoreau makes a good point in many cases and presents ideas that are worth attention. Determining the effectiveness of the argument, however, is left to the individual. In order to write an effective argument, you must convince people to see your way. Where Thoreau falls short is that he fails to set up credability for himself. Who is he? What did he give up? What position in society did he have? He never gave his readers a background to where he came from. Thoreau was the son of a successful pencil maker, graduated from Harvard in 1837 with respectable study in the classics, and six languages, and later founded his own school. In the 1920's Thoreau invented a machine that ground the plumbago for the leads in the pencils into a very fine powder and developed a combination of the finely ground plumbago and clay that resulted in a pencil that produced a smooth, regular line. This invention was so successful that Thoreau pencils and leads were the direct American competition to the big German pencil manufacturer, Faber. Despite the popularity of his accomplishments, being a middle class pencil maker iin those days was nothing extraordinary. He had no mansions. He had no trust fund. As a career writer, he had no money of his own to live off of, so he lived with his mentor and famed writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Oddly enough, Walden pond and the woods that inspired Thoreau's writings, were owned by Emerson. Ironic how Thoreau preached individuality, but he couldn't even leave his backyard. Many critics believe that Thoreau was a man driven by jealousy and confused with reality.
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