“Finding Value in Thoreau”

by Kahlil Salome

Imagine a piece of text, a piece of data, so dangerous that simply reading it could alter the course of your life. This mystical power is what seems to be ascribed to the writings of Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was a well known Transcendentalist. Staunchly an abolitionist, anti government, anti anarchy, and most of all anti tyranny. The question of if Thoreau should be read in schools has been rearing its ugly head in recent years. I am of the belief that one can find value in nearly any piece of literature. One can learn from the greatest writers of our time, but also can learn from the mistakes of those less skilled. This point of view fundamentally, yet perhaps inconsequentially, changes the core argument of this essay. That is, if everything has value, then does Thoreau have enough value to be worth teaching. To this point, I support Thoreau in saying that he does have enough value to be worth teaching.

As an addendum to the previous paragraph, I would be remiss to not mention the concept of an informational hazard. An informational hazard is a piece of information that could be dangerous if disseminated to other people. I believe that nearly all pieces of writing have value, but this value has an additional information hazard attached to it. This means to decide a piece of writing’s true value, you have to take in possible dangers to its reader. I have been talking of “dangers” in a rather esoteric light so I will expand them into the concrete. The largest danger with any piece of particularly philosophical or political writing is an interpretation (correct or otherwise) as the piece being a call to violence that should be acted upon. Throughout this essay I will be weighing what we can learn from Thoreau and if it is worth the possible violence caused by his wiring. 

Civil Disobedience is an essay that seems to be becoming more and more important in our modern day. At its core, the essay is about the overreach of government. Legislation such as the Patriot act of 2001 and the PRISM program have stripped Americans of previously guaranteed privacy in the name of national safety (United States Congress) . Thoreau would have been appalled by this. A sticking point for Thoreau in Civil Disobedience is that of taxation to a government he doesn't want to support. “If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood” (Thoreau 397). Massively impactful legislation being passed in a reckless manner due to a tragedy is perhaps the antithesis of Thoreau’s school of thought.

Throughout her essay “The Moral Judgments of Henry David Thoreau”, Kathryn Schulz levies a litany of scathing criticisms against Thoreau. Take for instance when she describes Thoreau as “... suspicious of government, fanatical about individualism, egotistical, elitist, convinced that other people lead pathetic lives yet categorically opposed to helping them” (Schulz). She takes aim at both his ideology and character. The main point of the paper is that she believes that Thoreau is a hypocrite, and this makes much of his writing unintelligible. She is not wrong, Thoreau was a massively hypocritical man. He often preached words of solidarity yet this solidarity was not fully practiced by Thoreau. Sometimes he would rail against something such as a railroad in one sentence, then later in that same writing he would praise it. Thoreau’s odd contradictions simply add to his depth. Thoreau is a mysterious and peculiar man, and that is exactly what makes him interesting. The rest of Schulz’s paper is largely an attack on Thoreau’s character that doesn’t present convincing enough points often enough to sway my mind on the reading of Thoreau in schools. Despite all this, where Schulz really fails Thoreau is her inability to reconcile his possible neurodivergence with her opinion of him. 

The true value of Thoreau, what makes him worth reading, is the point of view he provides us. As insinuated by Steve Edwards, “... he appears to share many traits associated with people with autism” (Edwards, Misunderstanding Thoreau). Thoreau was known to exhibit many traits of people on the autism spectrum, and these neurodivergent tendencies is exactly why his view point. It is likely that he thought in a fundamentally different way from most of the people reading his writing, and what is the point of reading if not to take in information from different viewpoints. Jedediah Britton-Purdy describes Thoreau's relationship with society with the phrase “... some barrier sat between Thoreau and nearly everyone else” ( Jedediah Britton-Purdy). Thoreau was pardoned from greater society and thus his writings were how he communicated with us. To not read his writings would be a disservice to both you and Thoreau.

Civil Disobedience is an essay that encourages revolt against a perceived unjust system. This is most well seen on lines like “Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them” (Thoreau,394).  This passage could easily be interpreted as a justification for the attacks on the United States Capitol that happened on January 6th, 2021. The January 6th attack could easily be seen as a reason to not teach Thoreau and specifically Civil Disobedience, but I think that this is flawed logic. The main reason for this is that the banning of literature in the internet age is all but impossible, this means that people will read Civil Disobedience whether you like it or not. So if people are reading a possibly inflammatory text, I think it is drastically safer to learn about this text in a classroom setting rather than alone with your thoughts.

Through the length of this essay, I have driven home my standpoint of almost all writing having value, but I feel that I would be doing a disservice to not mention the elevated value of Thoreau. He had his many contradictions but he is also the most interesting writer that I have read this year. His thoughts and opinions are frankly incendiary and it is that intensity that has kept me interested and excited to learn more. This brings me to the main motivation for this essay. My opinion on Thoreau has switched twice throughout our exploration of Civil Disobedience and if future students are able to take that journey and head Thoreau's beseechment to think for oneself, we will all be better for it.


Bibliography:

Cohen, Samuel S. 50 Essays a Portable Anthology. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2020. 

Schulz, Kathryn. “Why Do We Love Henry David Thoreau?” The New Yorker, 12 Oct. 2015, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum. 

Britton-Purdy, Jedediah. “In Defense of Thoreau.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 13 Dec. 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/in-defense-of-thoreau/411457/. 

Edwards, Steve. “Misunderstanding Thoreau: Reading Neurodiversity in Literature and in Life.” Literary Hub, 22 Dec. 2021, https://lithub.com/misunderstanding-thoreau-reading-neurodiversity-in-literature-and-in-life/. 

United States, Congress. Public Law 107-56, Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001. congress.gov, 2001. https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ56/PLAW-107publ56.pdf