MarkTwain

Like most authors of his time, Mark Twain had certain things in common with the Transcendentalists that wrote in the Romanticism period of literature. He shared with the Transcendentalists a deep love for nature, and a great appreciation for the spiritual feelings nature can inspire. He also shared a certain disdain for science that countered a love of nature which was also found in some of Thoreau's writings.

In "Two Views of the River" Mark Twain writes about one twilight he particularly remembers that was viewed from a river boat. He writes about all of the luminescent colors that were reflected on the water, and also about the delicate little agitations on the river's surface. That particular sunset really inspired a great wonder of nature in him, so he always remembered it. The Transcendentalists also had an appreciation for nature, and saw it as a way to go beyond the scences to understand the world (Wayne). They were filled with awe and wonder at it, just as Twain was during the sunset on the river.

After doing his best to describe the memorable sunset and the feelings it inspired in him, Twain wrote about how his view of nature had changed since then. He no longer took notice of briliant colors that painted the surface, and only saw the underwater features of the river when he looked at the disturbances on its top. Learning about how the river workes ruined his wonder at its beauty, because once he knew why it was so, he did not have to wonder over it. At the end he seems to say that he would rather had kept his wonder than gained his knowledge. This is very similar to Transcendentalists, because they were seeking to gain knowledge about life through nature, not knowledge about nature itself. Once Thoreau looked too deeply into the scientific side of nature he had the exulted feeling that comes with a love of nature less and less (Harding).



Harding, Walter. A Thoreau Handbook by Walter Harding: pp. 131-173 (New York University Press, 1959). © 1959 by New York University Press. Quoted as "Thoreau's Ideas" in Harold Bloom, ed. Henry David Thoreau, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2003. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= BCHDT05&SingleRecord=True (accessed February 29, 2012).

Twain, Mark. "Two Views of the River." Web. 29 Feb. 2012. .

Wayne, Tiffany K. "Nature." Critical Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson:
ALiterary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2010. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.Web. 15 Feb. 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.aspItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin=CCRWE0289&SingleRecord=True.

Stephen Crane

Stephen Crane is one of the Realist writers that became popular after the Romanticism authors. The Realist authors did their best to portray everything they wrote about as completely honestly as possible. This was a big change from the Romanticism writers, who loved everything exotic and novel, and who tended to write very dramatically. Despite their differences, the Realist author Stephen Crane and the Trancendentalist authors Emerson and Thoreau had a decent amount of things in common with each other.

One of the most important thing between the two styles is the focus on honesty. The Realist authors wanted to express things as being exactly the way they were, without adding anything to over glorify. The Romanticism writers also had a strong focus on honesty in their writings, and wrote about the world and society exactly as they saw it. Crane does nothing to make the Civil War glorious in his novel The Red Badge of Courage, and in fact it must have taken an effort to write about such an average person as the protagonist of that book, who runs from the first battle he sees. Thoreau wrote in the essay Civil Disobedience about going to jail and how a person should not really need the government. These were very radical ideas, but because of his honesty he wrote about them anyway.

Another similarity between the Realist Stephen Crane and the Trancendentalist Emerson is that both had similar uses for nature in their writing. After the protagonist in The Red Badge of Courage runs from his first battle he goes to a forest, away from the society of other people to collect his thoughts (Crane). Emerson wrote about nature as the thing that keeps a person in touch with morality (Wayne). Both of these writers use nature as a place to go when serious thought and reflection.

Despite the really huge change between the Realist and Romanticism, the two styles really had a decent amount of things in common.




Crane, Stephen. "The Red Badge of Courage." By Stephen Crane. Search EText, Read Online, Study, Discuss. Web. 24 Feb. 2012. .

Thoreau, Henry. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - 1." The Thoreau Reader. Web.
25 Jan. 2012. http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil1.html.

Wayne, Tiffany K. "Nature." Critical Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson: A
Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Chelsea
House Publishing, 2010. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.
Web. 15 Feb. 2012.
http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin=
CCRWE0289&SingleRecord=True.

Kate Chopin

The writing of Kate Chopin is very similar to transcendental writings in a few good ways. Like Emerson and Thoreau, Chopin greatly valued freedom, and like those transcendentalism writers valued the freedom of the individual. Also similar to Emerson and Thoreau is the way she puts some focus of the focus in her writing on nature. It would be fairly safe to assume from these similarities that these two Transcendentalists had something of an influence on Chopin's writing.

"The Story of an Hour" is a very interesting short story about a woman who is told her husband is dead. After a short cry, she becomes very happy with the news because now she is entirely free to do what she wants. As she is returning from the room she entered to cry in, her husband walks in the door and she dies of a heart attack from the shock of it. She was really overjoyed to be free of her controlling husband, and was looking forward to all of the time she would be able to spend doing just what she wanted. Transcendentalists like Thoreau thought an individual's freedom was the most important thing for a person to have, and wrote all about it in his essay Civil Disobedience. The two are similar because both value the freedom of an individual.

Another similarity between the Transcendentalists and Kate Chopin is the way they write about nature. When the wife in "The Story of an Hour" is looking out her window at the sky and clouds, she tries not to think but through her focus on the natural world outside her window she comes to the realization that she is free. Emerson wrote in his essay Nature that nature is the way to get to a higher understanding of things, especially spiritual things (Wayne). These two authors are similar in their treatment of nature because both see it as a vessel to reach an understanding or realization.



Chopin, Kate. ""The Story of an Hour"" Virginia Commonwealth University. Web. 22 Feb. 2012.

Thoreau, Henry. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - 1." The Thoreau Reader. Web. 25
Jan. 2012. http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil1.html.

Wayne, Tiffany K. "Nature." Critical Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2010. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CCRWE0289&SingleRecord=True.

Willa Cather

In Willa Cather's writing the effect of Trancendentalism is terribly apparent. The way she writes about nature and how she treats right and wrong in her book O Pioneers! are extreemly similar to the Trancendentalist philosophies on those same issues. The writers of that time period, most specifically Emerson, must have been very influential to Cather.

The book O Pioneers! is about a family's attempts at happiness in the wild Nebraska frontier. Despite the incredible hardships she has to face, the main character, Alexandra, has a deep love for the wild prarie, and at the end of the book when she is worn out with life and feeling as though she will never be free again she returns to her home after a short visit to the city. She then says that she feels at peace with the world when she is in her open country (Cather). This is very similar to the Trancendentalist theory that nature is the place where a person can return to purity. Emerson wrote that nature is the model of morality and supported this theory with the fact that many stories illustrating good morals deal with nature (Wayne).

Another aspect of Cather's writing that is similar to Trancendentalis is her view of right and wrong. When Marie and Emil are killed together by Marie's husband for being lovers, she paints the most beautiful picture of a pair of deaths that anyone could imagine. Honestly, a person would be very hard pressed indeed to think of a better way to die. She does not write of their sin or lack of morality, but instead writes of their love for each other (Cather). The Trancendentalists did not put so much stress on the accepted right or wrong actions, but on what an individual thinks is right (Emerson). This is similar to Cather's treatment of ethics because althought what the two lovers did was wrong by conventional standards, she does not write of it as if it were so.



Cather, Willa. "O Pioneers!, by Willa Cather. Read It Now for Free! (Homepage)." Page By Page Books. Read Classic Books Online, Free. Web. 18 Feb. 2012. http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Willa_Cather/O_Pioneers/index.html.

Emerson, Ralph. "Self-Reliance." Ralph Waldo Emerson Texts. Web. 15 Feb. 2012.

Wayne, Tiffany K. "Nature." Critical Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson: A
Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Chelsea
House Publishing, 2010. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.
Web. 15 Feb. 2012.
http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin=
CCRWE0289&SingleRecord=True.

Ambrose Bierce

An Occurrence at Owl creek Bridge is a really interesting short story wirtten by Ambrose Bierce. There is a fair amount of Trancendentalist influence in it, especially the way the author describes nature and how the main character views right and wrong. Between the two of these, it is fair to say that the author was probably very influenced by writers like Emerson.

In An Occurrenece at Owl Creek, the thoughts that went through Peyton Farquhar's mind before he died often had a lot to do with nature. Before the sergeant steps aside to allow Farquhar to hang, Farquhar's thoughts are mostly centered on the nature around him, like the peice of driftwood below him. He even neglects to think about his family until the very last moment before he starts to fall (Bierce). In his flash forward, he spends a lot of time noticing and appreciating the nature around him. When he reaches the bank of the creek, he takes special attention to the sand, and compares it to precious gems (Bierce). This appreciation of nature is very similar to Trancendentalism because people like Emerson thought nature was the best means to spirituality (Wayne).

Another way Bierce's main character is similar tot he Trancendentalists is that his morals are not really so conventional. He believes it is right to do things that under normal circumstances would be wrong because he is doing them for his country (Bierce). In Emerson's Self Reliance, he writes about how a person should do what they think is right, even if another person might think it is wrong. The key similarity between the two is that they both allow for different moral standards in different circumstances.

The ending of An Occurance at Owl Creek is very strange, and deserves some mention. After reading the story of how Farquhad escapes the Union soldiers and returns home to his wife, the reader finds that the entire story was only a flash forward, and that Farquhad's neck breaks when he reaces the extent of the rope. This is a very creative, but also pretty sad way to end the story. Before he was hung, his thoughts were on the nature around him until they turned to his wife at the very end. While he was falling, his thoughts were on nature and the perils of his imaginary way home until the end, when they again turn to his wife.

Bierce, Ambrose. "Fiction: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." Fiction: Welcome to The EServer's Fiction Collection. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. http://fiction.eserver.org/short/occurrence_at_owl_creek.html.

Emerson, Ralph. "Self-Reliance." Ralph Waldo Emerson Texts. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. .

Wayne, Tiffany K. "Nature." Critical Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2010. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CCRWE0289&SingleRecord=True.

Robert E. Lee

Robert E. Lee wrote a lot of letters to his wife and son during the Civil War. He wrote one to his son that was short, but filled with good principles. Like the Trancendentalists, he had appreciation for freedom, but in a different way than writers like Thoreau.

Thoreau thought the individual's rights were more important than anything else in a government, and that on no account should they every be violated. Robert E. Lee thought that the rights of the states were the most important thing to consider. He wrote that he would defend the rights of any state that was treated unfairly. Unlike Thoreau who thought an individual should be able to step outside the government to protect their rights, Lee thought it would be the worst case scenario for some of the state to try secceding the Union. He respected the country as a whole, collective unit.

A similarity between Robert E. Lee and Emerson is that both valued honor in thier lives. Of course, both men had a different opinion on what constituted honor. Emerson thought it had much to do with holding one's own opinion, no matter what pressure was put on them to change their mind or do something they did not want to. Lee thought honor consisted of being honest and doing the right thing as it appears to the doer ("Robert"). In the latter part he is not very far from most Trancendentalists.

Another similarity between the Trancendentalists and Lee was that neither was at all fond of slavery. Lee said that he would have gone through the entire Civil War all over again just to have it ended ("Robert"). Emerson was a strong defender of John Brown after his raid on Harper's Ferry (Wayne). Yet again, there is a big difference between the two when a deeper look is taken. Emerson did not like slavery because it denied the slaves their freedom, where Lee was opposed to it because it kept the south in a relatively primitave economic state.


Emerson, Ralph. "Self-Reliance." Ralph Waldo Emerson Texts. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. .

Lee, Robert. "Lee's Letter to His Son." Web. 14 Feb. 2012. http://publicroad.wikispaces.com/Lee%27s+Letter+to+His+Son.

"Robert Edward Lee." Web. 14 Feb. 2012. .

Thoreau, Henry. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - 1." The Thoreau Reader. Web.

Wayne, Tiffany K., ed. "John Brown and Ralph Waldo Emerson." Critical Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2010. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 14 Feb. 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CCRWE0159&SingleRecord=True.

Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth's speech at the Women Right's Convention at Akron, Ohio remains one of the bes appeals for women's rights ever recorded. It ties the lack of freedom the slaves had with the lack of rights women have, and makes a very strong emotional effect because of it. It can also be related to Trancendentalism because of the way her speech is asking for more freedom and rights.

Trancendentalists like Thoreau wanted to be free of every association that he did not want to have, especially to the government its self. Sojourner Truth wanted to be associated with the United States government, and wanted to be properly treated by it. She wanted to be able to vote and participate in the government that represented her. This is somewhat similar to Trancendentalism because she wanted to be treated as everyone else's legitimate equal.

Thoreau wrote in his essay Civil Disobedience that slavery was a discredit to the integrity of the United States. Sojourner Truth was also clearly opposed to slavery. The unfair deprivation of freedom enraged both of the two people, which is one of the similarities between the two philosophies.

It is a little bit difficult to compare a philosophy with a speech because speeches tend to revolve entirely around one topic. That only leaves one topic to compare with an entire philosophy. Things can still be inferred from a speech though, like that Sojourner Truth was a very religious woman, considering that she was able to argue about theology with ministers of several different denominations (Truth). This is dissimilar with Trancendentalists because they were spiritual but not religious.

The difficulty with comparing Sojourner Truth to Trancendentalists like Thoreau is that Truth only has one five paragraph speech in which she lays out her thoughts, and it is impossible for a person to infer a great deal about her philosophy from those paragraphs (Snodgrass). The only obvious similarity between her and Thoreau is that they both though slavery was wrong.

Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. "'Ain't I a Woman?'." Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 13 Feb. 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= EFL009&SingleRecord=True.

Thoreau, Henry. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - 1." The Thoreau Reader. Web.
25Jan. 2012. http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil1.html.

Truth, Sojourner. "Ain't I A Woman." Sojourner Truth.org Home Page. Web. 13 Feb. 2012. .

African American Gospels

Three African American gospels that have a similar theme to each other are "Go Down Moses", "Keep Your Hands on the Plow", and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." They are all very spiritual and very religious, and quite honestly there is very, very little in them that has any relation to Trancendentalism at all.

Trancendentalists were spiritual in their own way, but they did not believe in God as the super human creator of all things. The African American gospels are based on the Bible, which portrays God as the amazing and all powerful being. "Go Down Moses" specifically tells the tale of Moses versus the Pharoh in the Egyptian desert, the message of which is at the end, being that even if not free in life, a person can be free in heaven (Huff). "Keep Your Hands on the Plow" tells a story of Paul and Silas being thrown in jail and the story of Jesus washing Peter's feet.

The theme in each of the gospels is that if a person just keeps going, keeps working, salvation will come. For the African American slaves who sang these hyms, they promise freedom from their bondage. In this sense of their meaning they are similar to Transcendentalism, because the highest goal of men like Thoreau was to be free of everyone, and to be ruled by no one other than himself. He prefered going to jail to aditting the United States of America had a legitimate right to control him. The slaves wanted freedom too, but insead of being free from a government, they wanted to at least start being free of the people that owned them.

The Trancendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau did have a tiny little bit in common with the slaves that sang these three gosples, but it really was nothing more than a love of freedom, which most people in the civilized world share. It is hard to compare really religious songs to really political essays because they tend to focus on very different themes, and almost always have a different point of view when they do happen to touch upon the same subject.

"Go Down Moses." Web. 11 Feb. 2012. http://zorak.monmouth.edu/~afam/go_down_moses.htm.

Huff, Randall. "'Go Down, Moses'." The Facts On File Companion to American Poetry, vol. 1. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 11 Feb. 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CPAP0149&SingleRecord=True.

"Keep Your Hands On The Plow." GospelSongLyrics.org - Lyrics and Music to All Your Favorite Gospel Songs. Web. 11 Feb. 2012. http://www.gospelsonglyrics.org/songs/keep_your_hands_on_the_plow.html.

"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, Lyrics." Scout Songs: Song Lyrics for Boy Scouts Songs, Girl Scouts Songs, and American Patriotic Songs. Web. 11 Feb. 2012. http://www.scoutsongs.com/lyrics/swinglow.html.

Thoreau, Henry. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - 1." The Thoreau Reader. Web. 25
Jan. 2012. http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil1.html.

Whitman

Is there really any poet quite as wonderful to read as Whitman? No matter how cynical a person is, the way Whitman writes about people makes them easy to love, and makes it easy to think well of them when they probably do not deserve it. In the time between reading the poetry and having someone dissapoint expectations the world seems like a really good place to be because of the way he writes.

Whitman is a little bit hard to compare to anyone else who has ever existed, but it is possible. Like the Trancendentalists, Whitman saw God differently than most people. The Trancendentalists believed in God as a spirit inside everyone instead of a supreme being. Whitman saw God as a supreme being, but he also saw everyone else as a supreme being equal with God. In one poem he writes "Have you thought there could be but a single Supreme?" (Whitman 12).

Whitman is a little bit strange on his ideas about individuals and collectives. The Trancendentalists were absolute lovers of individual freedom, and saw individuals as the basis of society. Whitman had a sincere love of individuals, but he also loved all individuals, which made it seem like he favored collectives. In the same poem as quoted above he writes "All is eligible to all, All is for individuals" (Whitman 14-15).

Unlike Emerson and Thoreau, Whitman loved all people, so he had no dislike of society. He appreciated the city as well as the country. It might have had something to do with Whitman's love of all people. The trancendentalists were picky about people, so they prefered to be alone instead of around everyone. Whitman loved everyone, so he wanted to be around everyone. He had a strange balance of thinking everyone was equal and that he, as a poet, was better than everyone else. These thoughts naturally conflict, but as Whitman wrote "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself."

Whitman loved nature as well as society, and wrote a good deal of poetry on the subject. Longabucco saw a parallel between the way a poet sees nature and the way a reader sees poets. The subject being considered is simple on the surface, but very deep and complicated underneath.

Longabucco, Matt. "'The Proof of a Poet'—Walt Whitman and His Critics." In Bloom, Harold, ed. Walt Whitman, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2002. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 10 Feb. 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= BCWWh03&SingleRecord=True.

Whitman, Walt. "1. (Leaves of Grass [1860])." The Walt Whitman Archive. Web. 11 Feb. 2012. .

Lincoln

When looking at the Gettysburg Address, it is a little bit daunting to have to compare it to Trancendentalism. To be quite honest, the real problem is that the two do not have very much in common. Considering everything, this could turn out to be a rather interesting analysis.

One of the few things Lincoln's beliefs had in common with Trancendentalism is that both had a great appreciation for freedom. The greatest goal of the Trancendentalist was to be free from the impressions of other people, and do only what an individual thinks is right, regardless of what is thought about them (Emerson). Lincoln's ideas about freedom did not really reach all of the way to the individual, but he had a strong belief in Democracy none the less. He chose not to compromise before the civil war because he thought it would betray the democratic principle he was elected by, and fights the war so that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people "shall not perish from the earth" (Lincoln 402). One could say that Lincolns ideas about freedom are more collective than the Trancendentalist's individual freedom.

Like Thoreau, Lincoln also found slavery to be a moral wrong, and wrote of a lynching of a mulatto as "most highly tragic of anything of its length that has ever been witnessed in real life" (Barzun). He wanted slavery to be ended, but true to his belief in a more collective freedom, he did nothing about it until it would be thought right by more people than would think it wrong (rule of the majority). Thoreau however, thought that this was precisly what was wrong with government (he preferred the rule of the individual), and this marks the splitting point between Thoreau and Lincoln.

Another big difference between Lincoln and the Trancendentalists is that Lincoln never had the distaste for society that Emmerson and Thoreau had, or if he did he never wrote about it. The Trancendentalists idolized nature, and from his writings, it would seem that Abraham Lincoln idolized God, considering he mentions Him in most of his famous speeches.



Barzun, Jacques. "Lincoln the Literary Genius." The Saturday Evening Post, Vol. 231, No. 33 (14 February 1959): 30, 62–4. In Bloom, Harold, ed. Enslavement and Emancipation, Bloom's Literary Themes. New York: Chelsea Publishing House, 2010. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 8 Feb. 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= BLTEAE011&SingleRecord=True.

Emerson, Ralph. "Self-Reliance." Ralph Waldo Emerson Texts. Web. 09 Feb. 2012. .

Lincoln, Abraham. "The Gettysburg Address." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 97-99. Print.

Thoreau, Henry. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - 1." The Thoreau Reader. Web. 25
Jan. 2012. http://thoreau.eserver.org/civil1.html.

Douglass

Douglass's wirtings were almost entirely about the abolitionist cause, and how wrong slavery was. Therefore, all we are able to see of his philosophy is his ideas about slavery, and any matter that can relate to it. Even with this restriction, it is possible to see similarities between Douglass's philosophy and Emmerson's and Thoreau's.

All three had the belief that men should be free at the core of their thoughts. Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau is all about how the individual should be free to govern themselves based on their own ideas of right and wrong, and not follow someone else's consience. Douglass is mainle concerned with securing more basic libertys for his people, the African American slaves. They have no right to vote or participate what so ever in the government that rules over them, not to mention that they are considered property instead of people.

Where Emmerson and Thoreau had no real interest in organized religion or any conventional ideas about God, Douglass accepted Christianity. However, he was not afraid to speak out against the church when he thought it was wrong, unlike Puritans and other such people with absolute faith that their church is infallible. He openly denounced Christians with proslavery opinions and beliefs as hypocrites, which was basically calling out every Christian in the South (bold strategy, my friend) (Trolard).

Another difference between Douglass and the Trancendentalists is the Douglass never gave much thought to nature, while the Trancendentialist were focused on nature as the way to fix the evils of society. Douglass prefered to work within society to fight for his cause, instead of seperating himself from people (which would have made no sense at all, because if you are wanting recognition from a government you really should not ignore that government). He wanted to change society so it would recognise his most basic rights, while the Trancendentalists wanted to change society so it would accept that they just wanted to be left alone.

Another difference is that the Trancendentalists had a certain naievity to them, which Douglass had no share of. Thoreau believed that if people were left to govern themselves, they would do a good and fair job of it. Douglass had seen what evils people were capable of first had in his time as a slave, and thought that government was necessary to control those evil impulses from being carried out. He still had his scruples about the government, calling our Independance Day "a sham" (Douglass 337), but he sees that it is the best means to his end.

Douglass, Frederick. "The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 97-99. Print.

Thoreau, Henry. "Thoreau's Civil Disobedience - 1." The Thoreau Reader. Web. 25
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Trolard, Perry. "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself." In Barney, Brett, and Lisa Paddock, eds. Encyclopedia of American Literature: The Age of Romanticism and Realism, 1816–1895, vol. 2, Revised Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2008. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 8 Feb. 2012. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= EAmL0671&SingleRecord=True.