can someone please help me??

Question

i have to do a 5 page report on a historical person, and i have to do henry david thoreau. i already typed up like a page about him..but it was more general things like what he was, and where he was born and that he went to harvard. but i need some more info and i have no idea how i am going to do 5 pages about him!! please someone help. i have already gone to wikipedia, but that didnt give me much. please someone help?! - much appreciated =)

Answer 1

The art of elaboration comes in very handy here. You cannot simply jot down all the points, because that will just be an extremely short piece, which obviously isn't what you're looking for.

Add in your own opinions, give the "consequences" of certain events in his life and what they led to. For instance, when saying where he was born, you could talk about how that gave him an advantage because he was well provided for/ given many oppurtunities which in turn led to him getting a great education (I really don't know if this the the case, but it's just an example) You could also say how going to Harvard possibly helped him in the later part of his life due to oppurtunities etc.

Also, talk about his believes and how they have shaped lives today, or what impact they have.

You also can't just use Wikipedia. Search then net in more depth by going to biographies of his site. Use Google.

Answer 2

Go onto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau
Do a page on:

1. His Early Life
2. Walden Years
3. Late Years
4. Books he wrote (Include quotes from the books and briefly describe them)
5. Why he is so important
6. How you can apply his life to yours

I guarantee that any teacher will LOVE it if you put (at the end) on how you can apply what you learned to your everyday life.
Good Luck on you report!

Answer 3

Henry David Thoreau



"...it represents Henry just as he was
in that summer...", said Eben J. Loomis
of this 1854 portrait of Thoreau
(by Samuel Worcester Rowse)


Biography
Henry David Thoreau was a complex man of many talents who worked hard to shape his craft and his life, seeing little difference between them. Born in 1817, one of his first memories was of staying awake at night "looking through the stars to see if I could see God behind them." One might say he never stopped looking into nature for ultimate Truth.

Henry grew up very close to his older brother John, who taught school to help pay for Henry's tuition at Harvard. While there, Henry read a small book by his Concord neighbor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, and in a sense he never finished exploring its ideas -- although always definitely on his own terms, just as he explored everything! He and his brother taught school for a while but in 1842, John cut himself while shaving and died of lockjaw in his brother's arms, an untimely death which traumatized the 25 year old Henry. He worked for several years as a surveyor and making pencils with his father, but at the age of 28 in 1845, wanting to write his first book, he went to Walden pond and built his cabin on land owned by Emerson

While at Walden, Thoreau did an incredible amount of reading and writing, yet he also spent much time "sauntering" in nature. He gave a lecture and was imprisoned briefly for not paying his poll tax, but mostly he wrote a book as a memorial to a river trip he had taken with his brother, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.

After two years (and two months), Thoreau returned to Concord -- a bare two miles away which he had visited frequently during his stay at the pond, having completed his experiment in living and his book. Unfortunately, few people were interested in purchasing his book, so he spent the next nine years, surveying and making pencils at times but primarily writing and rewriting (creating seven full drafts) Walden before trying to publish it. He supported himself by surveying and making a few lectures, often on his experience at Walden pond.

Many readers mistake Henry's tone in Walden and other works, thinking he was a cranky hermit. That was far from the case, as one of his young neighbors and Edward Emerson attest. He found greater joy in his daily life than most people ever would.

He traveled often, to the Maine woods and to Cape Cod several times, and was particularly interested in the frontier and Indians. He opposed the government for waging the Mexican war (to extend slavery) eloquently in Resistance to Civil Government, based on his brief experience in jail; he lectured against slavery in an abolitionist lecture, Slavery in Massachusetts. He even supported John Brown's efforts to end slavery after meeting him in Concord, as in A Plea for Captain John Brown.

Thoreau died of tuberculosis in 1862, at the age of 44. His last words were said to be "Moose" and "Indian." Not only did he leave his two books and numerous essays, but he also left a huge Journal , published later in 20 volumes, which may have been his major work-in-progress. Many memorials were penned by his friends, including Emerson's eulogy and Louisa May Alcott's poem, "Thoreau's Flute."

Over the years, Thoreau's reputation has been strong, although he is often cast into roles -- the hermit in the wilderness, the prophet of passive resistance (so dear to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King) -- that he would have surely seen as somewhat alien. His work is so rich, and so full of the complex contradictions that he explored, that his readers keep reshaping his image to fit their own needs. Perhaps he would have appreciated that, for he seems to have wanted most to use words to force his readers to rethink their own lives creatively, different though they may be, even as he spent his life rethinking his, always asking questions, always looking to nature for greater intensity and meaning for his life.

Ann Woodlief

Answer 4

you can write four pages on trancedentalism

nature and god are one etc