Transcendentalim and Walden - Essay Example

int hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer’s requiem; itself and Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. The morning which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour.

Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor…” (Thoreau 140). According to Walden, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden is a manuscript of self-reliance, a social experiment that reflects upon simple living in natural surroundings. The book employs elements of transcendentalism, an idealistic philosophical movement developed by Immanuel Kant that is based on the idea that to understand life, one must enter an intuitive process of personal introspection.

This paper employs close reading techniques to show how elements of transcendentalism are exemplified in the excerpt. The paper also discusses figures of speech, diction, tone, and the general use of words in Thoreau’s Walden, to explain their effectiveness in relaying Thoreau’s message of simple living. Spiritual awakening, simplicity, individualism, and being one with nature are some of the elements of transcendentalism that unshackle human beings from the traditional ideologies of conformity and materialism.

Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that champions for self-independence and self-reliance of the individual in society. It was developed by transcendentalists in the early 1820s and 1830s. Transcendentalism is exemplified by various