Thoreau´s View on Nature and Human Necessities Essay

Discuss what Thoreau considered to be important in life? Nature and the benefits of a simplified lifestyle were important to Thoreau. Thoreau makes the statement how â€Å"brute creation requires more than Food and Shelter. Even in a certain climate, Thoreau felt that a man’s necessities are Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel. He states how cats and dogs require the same second nature. Liebig says, â€Å" man’s body is a stove, and food is the fuel which keeps the internal combustion in the lungs. In cold weather we tend to eat more and in the summer, we eat less. The animal heat is a result of slow combustion, disease and death take place when this is too rapid from want of fuel.† Some may agree that in the winter we eat more and in the warm†¦show more content†¦He takes note how Nature creeps up to his windowsill. Thoreau says, â€Å"Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. The draught of the morning air was the only medicine he needed in life. He was in awe of the morning air, he felt that every man should have a dose, and it should be sold in the shops. Why did he choose to live in the woods? â€Å"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, when I came to die, and discover that I had not live.† Thoreau’s mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, inspired Thoreau to experiment living in the woods. He went to live in the woods temporarily at Walden Pond to meditate. He needed the opportunity to illustrate all the privileges of less complex living. He compares a farmer on the farm to a prisoner in chains. He calls it working harder than necessary for subsistence that shackles people. Thoreau believes in lessening one’s needs. Thoreau suggests that living in the woods is less work, and it is less expensive. Thoreau identifies this type of living as freedom and uncommitted. He felt so free that he decided not to pay his taxes and went to jail for a day. 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