I would like to start out my blog by saying that I liked reading this story a lot. The reason behind me liking to read this story is that it gave us Henry David Thoreau's view on government. I would like to start out with the first sentence, "I heartily accept the motto, That government is best which governs least; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically" (Thoreau 1). This is explaining to the reader that he believes that we should not have a government. Now that does not mean he does not like government, it just means that he believes that we should not have one or we will eventually not need one to guide us. I find this interesting because what would the world be like with no government? I would find it to be kind of chaotic in my view. Anyway, here is another quote from the story, "But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, (4) I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it" (Thoreau 1). This is just another example from the story where he talks about how he thinks we should have a "better" government. This could mean a better organized government or anything around that. Here is another quote from the story, "...for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage" (Thoreau 1). Here is a quote where I found it interesting, I interpreted this quote as the government makes the laws, but in the final product, we the people are the ones who in fact make the decisions. It is sort of like how we make the decisions, I now realize why we wrote a journal over breaking the laws, it is because this story like I just said, says that the government makes the laws, but we are the ones who decide what to do.
I find that this story falls under the Transcendentalism period because a characteristic of this period is it is very political. And as you can probably tell, this story falls under that very nicely because of the fact that it is all about the government and politics. "The Transcendentalists drew upon romantic thought in the formulation of an organic aesthetic, the foundational Transcendentalist theory that language and art are expressions or translations of nature and that human and universal meaning is to be found in the forms of nature" (Wayne). This is a quote from the criticism that I found and Wayne talks about how Transcendentalism connects to nature in some way and that is a characteristic that is used in the story. "I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly propose to do right" (Thoreau 3). As you can see Thoreau used the season of summer and connected that to his friends and neighbors behaviors. He uses nature in some sort of way. Thoreau does a good job with introducing the Transcendentalism period to us.
Bibliography
Wayne, Tiffany K. "Romanticism and Transcendentalism." Encyclopedia of Transcendentalism. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.
Thoreau, Henry D. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - with Annotated Text." The Thoreau Reader. Richard Lenat, 2009. Web. 24 Jan. 2012.
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