5.6: American Nature as Challenge to American Progress
You have already been introduced to Thoreau as a writer. Read this short essay on get a better sense of him as an activist.
Read chapters 1–5 (Economy; Where I Lived, and What I Lived For; Reading; Sounds; Solitude), 11 (Higher Laws), and 17–18 (Spring; Conclusion) of Thoreau's masterpiece. Walden denies most genre categories including the novel, autobiography, and narrative; instead, the work roams freely from subject to subject, discussing the cycle of seasons, the experience of solitude, and local attractions, among other things.
In this influential political manifesto, also known as "Civil Disobedience", we find a passionate response to the US-Mexican War and the slavery controversy. With this work, Thoreau influenced such twentieth-century leaders as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.