...Comparative Essay Ginsberg, Hughes and Thoreau Confidence and self-reliance are qualities that are admired and desired by many people. Confidence is defined as a feeling or consciousness of one's powers or of reliance on one's circumstances, and a faith or belief that one will act in a right, proper, or effective way. Self-reliance is defined as the ability to care for one's self. Because people aspire to be confident and self-reliant, these qualities are common themes in literature. This essay compares three quotes, taken from three very different pieces of literature about American values, in which confidence and self-reliance are illustrated. “I refuse to give up my obsession. America, stop pushing. I know what I’m doing.” – Allen Ginsberg, “America.” Allen Ginsberg’s “America” presents a sharp criticism of American culture by someone who has almost completely rejected its values. The poem’s speaker addresses America directly, as if he were giving a lecture or a sermon to the nation itself instead of to the American people. The nation’s aggressive anticommunist foreign policy and its culture of materialism and conformity are the targets of the speaker’s criticism. This poem was written in 1956 and was one of the first widely read literary statements of political unrest in the post-World War II America. Themes from the recent wars are prominent such as the nuclear bomb or Asian foreign policy, but the poem also depicts national racial unrest...
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... Reading Summary "Walking” by Henry Thoreau Henry David Thoreau’s “Walking” was written around the 1850s and published in 1862, the essay discusses the importance of the connection to nature. Henry Thoreau starts his essay with the sentence "I wish to speak a word for nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and Culture merely civil, — to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I feel that this sentence sets the tone for the whole essay. Throughout this essay Thoreau talks of a man the leaves civilization and becomes one with nature. He sates the he has only met a few people that know the true meaning of walking. He believe that the people around he are too tied into society to pursue their connection to nature. Before going for the walk the person has to end all connection to society. He writes that "If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends and never see them again; if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man; then you are...
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...and Thoreau’s key theme in their writings was to help one reconnect with nature and gain a simpler understanding of life. For instance, Henry David Thoreau experiments the transcendentalist beliefs about nature by living at Walden Woods in a small cabin on Emerson's property. Here Thoreau discovered the simplicity in nature and the exposure it brings to our mind. Both Emerson and Thoreau believe that nature is what imposes us not to rely on others' ideas but to establish our own. Nature is always changing so we must keep seeking for the meaning of human life. Thoreau wanted to live a simple life, in order to find a deeper meaning of human existence. He writes, "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...
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...Thoreau “Walking” From the essay “Walking”, Thoreau gives an explanation of the relationship between men and nature through his first sentence “absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil”(Thoreau, 71). Throughout the essay “Walking”, the text involves much language and arguments that might be recognized as anti-civilization though today. Although Thoreau feels that men should live closer to nature in order to achieve a more fulfilled life, and stay away from the forces come from the past, society and today’s materialism, Thoreau neither fully rejected civilization nor completely embraced wildness. In “Walking,” Thoreau demonstrates his strong anti-civilization proclivities in his introduction of the essay “to...
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...Emerson's maxim "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind," means that nothing in life will have a meaning if the person's thoughts and foundation of intelligence is unstable, incomplete, or even has the slightest hint of corruption. This idea projected when reading "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail," a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee retelling the life of Henry David Thoreau. In a flashback where Thoreau is working as a school teacher, the Chairman of the School Board Committee, Deacon Ball, is scolding Thoreau for teaching ideas not proscribed by the textbook. Ball and Thoreau get into an argument in which Ball states "All they need to know is clearly spelled out in approved school texts," to which Thoreau later responds...
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...Compare and Contrast Essay Would you give up a good education in order to prove something? There are people who did this such as Christopher McCandless and Adam Shepard. These two young men both gave up their education to prove something. Chris and Adam both came from wealthy families and they both graduated college. Chris came from a family that was having problems. His parents would always argue and they were in an unstable relationship. Growing up he would read books from authors such as Tolstoy, Thoreau, and Emerson which inspired him in a way to see things differently. He was a caring young man and he helped many people throughout his adulthood. Although he was very humble and kind, he still was feeling terrible and trapped. On the other hand,...
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...Copyright © 2013 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN: 978-0-07-180360-1 MHID: 0-07-180360-2 The material in this eBook also appears in the print version of this title: ISBN: 978-0-07-180359-5, MHID: 0-07180359-9. E-book conversion by Codemantra Version 1.0 All trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than put a trademark symbol after every occurrence of a trademarked name, we use names in an editorial fashion only, and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. Where such designations appear in this book, they have been printed with initial caps. McGraw-Hill Education eBooks are available at special quantity discounts to use as premiums and sales promotions or for use in corporate training programs. To contact a representative please visit the Contact Us page at www.mhprofessional.com. Trademarks: McGraw-Hill Education, the McGraw-Hill Education logo, 5 Steps to a 5 and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of McGraw-Hill Education and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property...
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...HOW TO WRITE GREAT ESSAYS HOW TO WRITE GREAT ESSAYS Lauren Starkey ® NEW YORK Copyright © 2004 LearningExpress All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Learning Express, LLC, New York. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Starkey, Lauren B., 1962– How to write great essays / Lauren Starkey. —1st ed. p. cm. ISBN 1-57685-521-X 1. English language—Rhetoric—Problems, exercises, etc. 2. Essay—Authorship—Problems, exercises, etc. 3. Report writing—Problems, exercises, etc. I. Title. PE1471.S83 2004 808'.042—dc22 2004003384 Printed in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition ISBN 1-57685-521-X For more information or to place an order, contact LearningExpress at: 55 Broadway 8th Floor New York, NY 10006 Or visit us at: www.learnatest.com Contents Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 vii Organization 1 Clarity 11 Word Choice 21 Mechanics 39 Revising, Editing, and Proofreading 55 Untimed Essay Writing Strategies 67 Timed Essay Writing Strategies 85 Sample Essay Prompts and Essays 97 Resources 111 CONTENTS HOW TO WRITE GREAT ESSAYS v Introduction n your preparations for college, you may find yourself facing a handful of high-stakes essays. Your college application requires at least one, and the SAT requires another. Depending upon the high...
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...Neguisa Sheikhpour Civil Disobedience In his essay, “Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau discusses the injustice of the government and how it wrongfully forces people to do its will. Thoreau believes “that government is best which governs not at all,” but he also acknowledges that government serves a purpose. He writes, “It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation I which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.” Thoreau realizes that society is not ready to live free government control but he sees that people are blindly obeying authority without listening to their conscience. It is not enough for one to have the right opinion, one must take action against what they consciously believe is wrong. According to Thoreau, there are three ways to deal with unjust laws: ignore our own opinions and obey the laws, obey the laws while trying to change them, or break the laws and accept the consequences. Thoreau admits that it is not practical for everyone to fight the government but he asks those people “at least, to wash his hands of and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give is practically his support.” There is no problem with respecting the law, but when the law is so wrong and so unjust, people have a duty and obligation to make it right. Some would say that Thoreau is an anarchist because of his reference to a “government that is best which governs not at all,” but that...
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...Title: Thoreau and Emerson In today’s society each individual has the ability to thinks for themselves, but the inception of different ideas and thoughts has led to a population that’s dominated by the majority . We live in a society where a media, television and internet are the sources of manipulating a person’s mind. It also creates their mindset to determine how one think about themselves or and different view point on topic. In this particular essay I am going to be talking about two main people who had similar argument about how to be individual and not let government take control over your lives. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were most influential writers of their time. They both had encouraged and practice individualism and nonconformity. In Ralph Waldo Emerson essay “Self Reliance” and Henry David Thoreau essay “Resistance to Civil Government” both spoke about how to become individual and what improvements needed to be made in American society. Emerson’s writings focus more on the self part of humanism and independence from society. On the other hand, Thoreau focused on writing on matters of the self but tended to have more of a political overtone in his argument. They both wanted to attack the dominant religious, political and cultural values of American society in order to make people aware that the individual is more important than the government and society. Thoreau and Emerson tried to incorporate the idea of relying on others to determine...
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...and one black, but if one were to further inspect the text, they could see that Thoreau uses the ants and their battle as a satirical allegory for human conflict. Thoreau chooses to use ants as a metaphor to make it clear to the reader that war is futile, pointless, and a waste of life. “The Battle of the Ants” begins with Thoreau casually walking out to his wood-pile as he stumbles upon the battle between the red ants and the black ants. After this, he compares these ants to humans, making the allegory apparent from the start. “It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed… On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely” (575). Thoreau uses hyperbole early in his essay to reinforce its anti-war theme as he describes the fighting ants to be in the middle of war. However, he implies that this war is miniscule by reminding the reader of its setting: a wood-yard. Thoreau goes on to describe an even smaller battle he witnesses between two ants, again, amid the chips, giving more scope to the idea that war is irrelevant compared to the broader schemes of the world. “I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other’s embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noonday prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out… They fought with more pertinacity than bulldogs” (575). Thoreau also manages to include more nuances in this passage, one being a comparison between...
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...The act of not conforming to a system that conforms your own beliefs defines the ideas of civil disobedience. Likewise, the notion of civil disobedience is display in Henry David Thoreau’s “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail”. The two essays express a call to action towards the reality of our honest individual thoughts. The thoughts and actions of Thoreau and King have a great influence in America today and the ideas of civil disobedience are still widely spread. Furthermore, Henry David Thoreau’s ideas of civil disobedience have become a reflection of the American citizens. He discusses the importance of civil disobedience, when it becomes necessary. For instance, “But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it” (Thoreau 941). Similar to a game of chest, a government deciding to become unjust by constructing control over an apparent social division. The government unknowingly then, creates tension among the citizens. Furthermore, “I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward” (Thoreau 941). Individuals are becoming more thorough and coherent before any force...
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...Chronology 1837: Thoreau graduates from Harvard at twenty, comes home to Concord, and looks for a career. Probably begins a journal. 1838: Gives his first lecture before the Concord Lyceum, thus initiating a practice that was to have an important effect on his writing. 1839: With his brother John, embarks on a fluvial excursion along the Concord and Merrimack, and gather material for The Week. 1840 Makes his bow as a poet: the Transcendentalist Dial prints his lyric about Edmund Sewall. 1841 As handyman and friend, takes up residence with the Emersons. Is attracted to Linda Emerson. 1842 Publishes in eh Dial which carries nine of his best poems and his essay Natural History of Massachusetts 1843 Leaves Emersons home to act as a tutor to Emersons nephew at Staten Island and to try his luck with the New York literary market. More publications of essays and poems. 1845: Goes to live in a hut beside Walden Pond. Commences his period of greatest literary productivity. 1846 Travels to Main; gathers some of the material later to go into The Maine Woods. 1847. Ends Walden experiment; resumes residence at Emerson home. 1849: Thoreaus first book, the Week, and most influential essay, Civil Disobedience, published. 1854 Walden or Life in the Woods published. 1857 Fight over slavery intensifies; Thoreau meets John Brown and is deeply impressed by him. 1860 More essays, including two on Brown are printed. 1862 Dies of tuberculosis on spring. Where I lived. By surveying...
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...In his essay, "Civil Disobedience", Henry David Thoreau believes that "government is best which governs the least." (322) Thoreau believes that the American government is gradually losing its integrity, and that is because those in power can favor their interests to those of the people. Thoreau goes on to explain that he prefers a better government to no government at all, and he hopes that every single citizen will be able to choose a government that respects him or her. Moreover, he says that it is always the majority that rules because "they are physically the strongest." (323) Henry David Thoreau also talks about how one can behave towards the American government; his government and the slaves' government, as well. However, if you want...
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...well-written essay, discuss at least two rhetorical elements in the essay you chose from the practice AP test. Relate these devices to one or more of the rhetorical appeals. Consider the following: What effect do these devices or use of language have on the audience? How do these devices or use of language help communicate the speaker’s purpose? How effective are these devices and use of language in communicating the speaker’s purpose? Include specific details from the text. Two pages minimum. (Double spaced, Times New Roman, 12) *If you create a SOAPSTone chart, turn it in with your essay. Civil Disobedience Essay Henry David Thoreau, an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax...
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