LITERATURE QUESTIONS
TRANSCENDENTALISM LITERATURE
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Question
[CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
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treason
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mail fraud
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tax evasion
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heresy
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Detailed explanation-1: -Thoreau had already stopped paying his taxes in protest against slavery. The local tax collector had ignored his tax evasion, but decided to act when Thoreau publicly condemned the U.S. invasion and occupation of Mexico. In July 1846, the sheriff arrested and jailed Thoreau for his tax delinquency.
Detailed explanation-2: -Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an American philosopher, poet, environmental scientist, and political activist whose major work, Walden, draws upon each of these various identities in meditating upon the concrete problems of living in the world as a human being.
Detailed explanation-3: -“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
Detailed explanation-4: -Thoreau’s rhetoric of paradox, indirection, authority, and irony works to define, interest, and ultimately involve the reader in a shared experience of discovery.
Detailed explanation-5: -Explain the irony. The ironic statement is that in jail, Thoreau was more free than the townsmen. They are locked in their hypocrisy, but his thoughts and their power can’t be stopped by a jail cell, making him more free. (The people must “break through a still more difficult wall to be as free” as Thoreau.)