Henry David Thoreau Research Paper

Friendship plays an important role in the life of each person. It is impossible to live and enjoy every day of your life without true friends. Not everyone is lucky to meet a good friend and trust him/her during the whole life. Henry Thoreau was a lucky person, as he had several really good friends that helped him make his life complete. Edward Hoar, Ralph Emerson, Ellery Channing, and Harrison Blake helped Thoreau with either his personal troubles or writing career.

The poet created a wonderful work, Friendship, where he perfectly described not only his attitude to friends and friendship in general, but also he made a wonderful attempt to analyze what made perfect friendship. “A man may love the truth and practise it / Beauty he may admire / And goodness not omit / As much as may befit / To reverence” (Thoreau ??) He underlines that friends make a considerably part of our lives, and people cannot but take really good friends for granted. It is impossible to predict whether your best friend may become your true love or not, however, you have such thoughts in your mind.

When is understandable that friendship becomes love? Is it, in fact, possible to understand? “I fain would ask my friend how it can be / But when the time arrives / Then Love is more lovely / Than anything to me / And so I’m dumb. (Thoreau ??) This poem tells about how deep friendship can be. A person without friends can be easily lost. Only friends may show the right way, give reliable pieces of advice, and help not to make a mistake. So, it is not odd if your friendship can become something more, love, for example, and people should not be afraid of such changes, just clear up what is happening and why, and what circumstances can be. This is what the writer tried to tell in this poem Friendship, and he did it great.

In general, the contribution to the literature made by Henry Thoreau plays a very important role. His rejection of living in society in order to understand the nature deeper is one of the unique approaches chosen by writers. He does not call upon to follow his example; however, he suggests using his experiments and analyzing the results. His works are wonderful and really interesting masterpieces about nature and its impact on humans. Not every person is able to understand the essence of nature, its uniqueness, and importance.

In his poems and essays, the reader can find lots of useful information and pieces of advice. The idea of relations between people is another issue discussed by the writer. To my mind, his close connection to nature and a kind of isolation from people helped him to understand deeper the true meaning of friendship, love, and devotion. However, it is necessary to admit that not all his works are dedicated to nature. Lots of his masterpieces have political or even philosophical nature. This is why his poems and essays are interesting to a wide range of people.

“To a considerable extent Thoreau needed to define himself in opposition to his audience – whether it was his actual audience or his rhetorically contrasted audience. Yet his ambitions – as a reformer, as a prophet of Transcendentalism, or as a professional writer – demanded that he never simply dismiss or ignore his audience.” (Myerson 89)

With the help of his friends, such as Emerson and Channing, the reader gets an opportunity to read and enjoy the works of this great writer nowadays.

Works Cited

Myerson, Joel. The Cambridge Companion to Henry David Thoreau. Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Smith, Bradford. Men of Peace. Lippincott, 1964

Thoreau, Henry, D., Paul S. Thoreau. A Collection of Critical Essays (Twenty Century Views). Prentice Hall Trade, 1962.