Unit+03+--+Reason+and+Revolution

Thesis: Spring is the time during which the old cycles and ways are broken and new creatures, emotions and ways are born. Thoreau makes a good aphorism in "The change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable criss which all things proclaim. Much of "Spring" is aphoristic because it is describing spring, an event common to nearly the entire human race and one experienced very similarly across the globe. He also makes use of Transcendentalist notions. Rebirth and the cyclical nature of life are apparent throughout the excerpt, as is the philosophy of pantheism. Further, "spring" becomes a metaphor for any new beginnings and is developed into a communal event that requires multiple party's efforts as shown by the lone bird trying to sing away winter or by the solitary goose left by the rest. Winter is not bad, but it is the mildly detrimental, primordial state that established things - be they living creatures or the ideas and institutions of yesteryear - return to after having run their course in the "summer." Spring is the world digging itself out of the ruts and smoothing them into new paths, only to create ruts by the same time next year. The seasons represent the turn over of life and human constructs with relation to their heyday and productive adolescence. The more comfortable seasons (spring and summer) represent the human creations as new, influential and groundbreaking and life as infantile and adolescent. Fall is the beginning of the decline of human creations and the middle age of life. Winter is the reversal of the once revolutionary human creation into the oppressive institution that restricts new creations as it once was and the end of life. Spring renews this cycle.
 * Spring** by Henry David Thoreau

__Thesis:__ "I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there." The thesis of the Conclusion is simply why he left the woods. Thoreau explains that he left the woods for the need to stay out of personal ruts, to be flexible by not letting your habits dictate you. Thoreau writes " What I had come here to find wan't here anymore..." This line suggests that he came for freedom but created a rut for himself which kept him from being an individual. Thoreau sees the path, and thinks of how habit confines humanity, reflects ideas of individualisand respect toward nature. __Memorable Images or Quotes (esp. aphorisms)__ __:__
 * Conclusion**
 * "Live towards dreams and unexpected success will come"
 * "Intuition will reveal truth"

Thesis (Period 7)
 * He left the woods to get rid of repetitiveness and the institution he created
 * Leave path
 * Left for the same reason he came
 * Saw himself conforming to a certain pattern à felt need to leave

Main Supporting/illustrating Evidence
 * Tries to escape institutions
 * Habits

Memorable images or quotes
 * Path
 * He created
 * Earth is impressible by men
 * “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer”
 * ‘The faultfinder will find faults even in paradise”
 * "“The life in us is like the water in the river”
 * Rise and fall

Notable rhetorical strategies
 * Symbolism
 * Bug and applewood tree
 * Bug has been inside applewood tree for 65 years à the tree was cut down, made into table à bug hatched an egg and moved on with his life
 * Even if we spend our life conforming to something, we can still move on and create a purpose to our life

Transcendentalist Ideals
 * Personal, spiritual experience
 * “How deep the ruts of tradition and conformity”
 * Likes to make new paths
 * Doesn’t walk along paths of others
 * Rebellion
 * "Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society.”
 * Leave path he conformed for himself

__Thesis__:" I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." His main thesis is simplicity, and he denounces the pattern by which humans intricately weave their lives around enterprises, affairs, public matters, etc. This uncovers the classic transcendental ideal of the emphasis on personal experience. The entire anecdote displays his pleasure that he lived in seclusion, for himself, for nature, and without the travails of everyday matters. __Memorable Images or Quotes (esp. aphorisms)__ :
 * Where I Lived, and What I Lived For** (Period 3)
 * "Our life is frittered away by detail."
 * Thoreau is trying to convey the message that humans are so preoccupied with labor and involvement in society that they forget to just enjoy the flow of life.
 * "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!"
 * he makes lots of allusions to Greek mythology, here are two important ones:
 * he puts the "Spartanlike" life on a pedestal. This is an ethical appeal to support his whole thesis in this anecdote. it is a reference to the deliberate simple lives of Spartans a society to whom lots of revere and respect is associated. By living a life of simple truth, he's implying, man could once again resemble this spartan like nature.
 * "Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere"
 * he wants people to realize that it is possible to be on earth and reach the ethereal status of Gods, through the abandonment of superfluity and incorporation of the universal spirit in a simple, truthful life connected with oneself and nature.
 * He denounces the hasty conclusion that life=glorifying God. he rebels against the institutions of religion. he wants people to internalize their time, not spend it worshiping a divine figure. their real worship should be in the form of appreciating the universal spirit that they are a part of.
 * Relationship w/ poetry in nature- some people are missing it because they're not living simple lives. few are the ears that can hear the poetry in simplicity.
 * denounces elevation of purpose in institutions (federal government, and the individual)
 * Emphasis on spiritiual experience: "...or if [life] were sublime, to know it by experience."
 * Emphasis on spiritiual experience: "...or if [life] were sublime, to know it by experience."