A Letter to His Family

When I first started to read this story I noticed that it was a letter saying that he wished for the best. Here is a quote from the story, "I will not, however, permit myself to believe, until all ground of hope is gone, that the fruit of his noble deeds will be destroyed, and that his precious advice and virtuous example will so soon be forgotten by his countrymen" (Lee 385). This quote really started to get me thinking about this story. It got me thinking because Lee is saying he will not give up on his country. Even though Unions have left and more are about to, he will not give up until the battle is over (Lee 385). This quote I also found inspirational to me because it takes a lot of courage to stand up to what you believe and to stand up against your country like that is great. "Then, if the border states are brought into the gulf of revolution, one half of the country will be arrayed against the other" (Lee 385). This quote I also found inspirational because he is talking about how things will be bad if the Unions will not go his way. As you can see I really did enjoy reading this story. One last thing to mention about this story is that Lee talks about the government and how he wants to make it better which totally goes against Thoreau's beliefs.

Thoreau's beliefs were that he wanted know part of any government. Which is a difference in between the two stories. Lee wants to better the government and Thoreau does not want anything to do with the government (Thoreau). Here is a quote from a criticism I found on Thoreau, "Thoreau's principal achievement was not the creation of a system but the creation of himself, and his principal literary work was, therefore, the presentation of that self in the form of a self-portrait" (Harding). Here the quote is stating that Thoreau believed in the form of a self-portrait (Harding), so people shape themselves. Overall, I really enjoyed reading this story "A Letter to His Family."

Bibliography

Harding, Walter. A Thoreau Handbook by Walter Harding: pp. 131-173 (New York University Press, 1959). © 1959 by New York University Press. Quoted as "Thoreau's Ideas" in Harold Bloom, ed. Henry David Thoreau, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2003. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. 13 Feb. 2012.

Lee, Robert E. “Letter to His Son.” Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 385. Print.

Thoreau, Henry David. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - with Annotated Text." The Thoreau Reader. Web. 25 Jan. 2012.