The transcendentalist movement was being formed by Emerson and people with similar interests in the 1830s, with the majority of ideas being presented at the Transcendental Club. It consisted of a hand-full of members that originally met to talk about their critiques on societal institutions, among many other things (American Transcendental web). Thoreau was born 14 years after Emerson, and was not part of pioneering transcendentalism in these formative meetings, but was greatly inspired by Emerson’s essay Nature as a youth. He went on to refine the movement with a different voice than Emerson, one that’s particularly engaging, at least to me. Thoreau, the contemporary, was less poetic than the master, Emerson, but only by default. Emerson was abstract to an extreme, in order to push the limits of the movement he was a part of… the transparent eye-ball passage speaks for itself. His language was highly stylized, using regular rhetorical statements, like when talking about stars, “Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are!” As well as backward-Yoda-speak, “But every night come out, these envoys of beauty…” Both examples of this stylized language are found within the first paragraph of the first chapter of Nature.

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When reading Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, I thought that it would be interesting to analyze and focus on the connection that links humans and the environment. There were many connections that played a part between the two topics, one in particular stuck out to me. I noticed that Mary Rowlandson used “leaving farther my own country, and traveling into a vast and howling wilderness” (318, Rowlandson) to describe the unknown territory that the Wampanoag people were taking her to. I found this interesting because it showed that Mary considered the wilderness and unknown to be a negative thing and that she was not willing to leave the comfort and familiarity of her old town, Lancaster. She wanted to return to her town even thought she knew that it was not the same place anymore and that she had no choice but to move on, she even relates this emotion to a biblical story, “…I understood something of Lot’s wife’s temptation, when she looked back” (318, Rowlandson). Like in the Lot’s wife, Rowlandson was leaving her familiar environment and going the new wilderness that she was not familiar with and to her this was a negative and dangerous thing. Rowlandson did not think of the new territory as a good and healthy environment but rather the wilderness as dangerous and scary, especially since she was being forced to go against her own will like Lot’s wife.

Another part in Rowlandson’s narrative where she talks about the wilderness and unknown environment in a negative way was during the second remove when they Indians moved them out again and she referred to the land as “the vast and desolate wilderness” (312, Rowlandson) again. During this particular part of her story she seemed to have given up for a moment when being taken from her familiar environment. There was a point where she quotes herself, “I shall die, I shall die” (312, Rowlandson). She clearly did not think that she was going to survive the new territory and that she was going to die like the rest of her family and town. These connections stand out to me because they display the clear sense of fear and negativity that the environment plays with Mary.

Henry David Thoreau, born July 12, 1817, is today considered to be a major influence in various domains in the United States. His works are widely spread, read and studied in a number of different contexts and he was a source of inspiration for a lot of people. He did multiple things in his lifetime, but he mostly dedicated his life to work. Looking to know more about his life brings a few things to my mind. I might be stating the obvious, but this is what strikes me when learning more about him.

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In Emerson’s Nature, the relationship between man and his environment is one of great importance.  Though written in a time before global warming and over-harvesting was a problem, Emerson writes very wise words that reflect the idea that man and nature depend on each other. First off, Emerson states that finding a certain peace with nature is essential to finding delight in the natural world. Man and nature need to find a harmony. This brings me back to the last post I wrote where I stated that the wilderness was a place where a person faces themselves and has to fight and be at peace; for when left to their own accord it is up to man to decided whether he be evil or not.

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