ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -The unjust and immoral act of the United States government that Thoreau was protest-ing was the Mexican War. Thoreau argued that the war was intended to extend slavery, an immoral practice, and the Mexican War was an illegal war of aggression. The Ameri-can people never would have agreed to it had they been asked.

Detailed explanation-2: -While Thoreau opposed slavery, his principal response was to resist it passively, rather than to crusade for its abolition. In contrast, William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) was moved to devote all of his energy and resources to a tireless crusade for abolition.

Detailed explanation-3: -He was a well-known advocate of transcendentalism, or the belief in the inherent goodness of people and nature, making a virtue of self-reliance. In his essay … On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, Thoreau once wrote “That government is best which governs not at all”.

Detailed explanation-4: -In probing the depths of bodies of water, imagination dives down deeper than nature’s reality. Thoreau expresses the Transcendental notion that if we knew all the laws of nature, one natural fact or phenomenon would allow us to infer the whole. But our knowledge of nature’s laws is imperfect.

Detailed explanation-5: -Thoreau was a leading figure in the Transcendentalist movement which held, as one of its premises, that the human connection with nature is necessary for intellectual and moral stability.