This essay should focus on your interpretation of a theme or motif that runs through a few different scenes in the three or four passages in Thoreaus Walden or Civil Disobedience. Avoid writing a plot summary. Include some close reading of specific, relevant passages or scenes from the text(s), parts of which you may want to quote. Avoid writing a paper that works only with topics and scenes from in-class group work. This assignment is not a research paper, so you should not use ideas from secondary sources, including but not limited to Sparknotes, Gradesaver, Shmoop, E-notes or other study guides. Here is some chapter and topics that might be helpful. in the chapter, Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors. we know that Thoreau protested slavery from Civil Disobedience. we also know that he participated in the Underground Railroad. Nonetheless, did Thoreau shows any of the racial prejudices of his time, as he discusses or imagines former inhabitants who had been slaves. What do you think it means that Thoreau groups himself with people who often were outcasts (both black and white) and certainly unfortunates, when he imagines former inhabitants? Is there any relation to your interesting idea from the discussion board on Civil Disobedience that Thoreaus going to jail was in some way like being enslaved? Is there a difference between Thoreau, who lives in the woods because he chooses to do so, and people who once lived nearby because they had little choice? The thought of most of the former inhabitants, who were generally unfortunate, does not give Thoreau much cheer in his winter loneliness. Does this seem to bring him closer to some of their lives? Do visits from a poet and a philosopher show a difference between Thoreaus life than those of former inhabitants?
