Summary. Walden is an account of the two years during which Henry David Thoreau built his own cabin, raised his own food, and lived a life of simplicity in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau's idea was that one's true self could be lost amid the distractions of ordinary life. Thoreau's attitude toward reform involved his transcendental efforts to live a spiritually meaningful life in nature. As a transcendentalist, Thoreau believed that reality existed only in the spiritual world, and the solution to people's problems was the free development of emotions ("Transcendentalism").
A summary of Thoreau's Resistance to Civil Government.
Explanation:
Resistance to Civil Government on Resistance to Civil Disobedience was written in 1846 as a justification of Thoreau's denial to pay taxes. Thoreau's ideas try to explain that people should not follow human made laws, but they should follow their own beliefs about right and wrong. According to him, human law is unfair to most people and disguises terrible ideas such as the correctness of slavery and violent war.
Thoreau denied to pay taxes as a way to protest against and to hindrance the American social policies of slavery and the War against Mexico. He supported his ideas on the fact that the American declaration of Independence allows every individual to doubt and disrespect the law.
