Comparing Letters from an American Farmer and Thoreaus Various Essays

Comparing Crvecoeurs letter from an the Statesn Farmer and Thoreaus assorted Essays St. Jean De Crvecoeurs Letters from an American Farmer and Henry David Thoreaus discordant essays and journal entries present opposing views of what it imagines to be an American. To somewhat simplify, two writers agree that there are two kinds of Americans those who are farmers and those who are not. Crvecoeur views farmers as the accredited Americans, and those who are not farmers, such as bourn men, as lawless, idle, inebriated wretches (266). Sixty years later, Thoreau believes the opposite farmers are infernal and bound to their land, and free men who own nothing posses the only true liberty (9). Both Crvecoeur and Thoreau judge men and their professions on industry, hold of nature, freedom, and lawfulness. As America grew during these six decades, industrialization and higher education created to a greater extent compact communities unable to economically provide the land needs of farm ers. In Crvecoeurs America, some few towns excepted, we are all tillers of the earth(263). In 1850, Thoreaus Concord was among the many towns allowing people to leave their farms for a more urban setting to house their law practices, shoe stores, or surveying businesses. The musical interval of farmers from the rest of society leads to intellectualizations of the profession by thinkers like Thoreau. Removed from the simple, unverbalised labor of farming, it is easy for urbanized society to forget the farmers purpose and impressiveness in Western civilization. Crvecoeur states that industry, which to me who am but a farmer, is the mensuration of everything(264). Indeed, a lack of industry in any vocation lastly leads to failure. Thoreau, however, sees little value in indu... ...d as Thoreau was from self-supporting agriculture, modern America is light years away. Thoreaus ideal lifestyle is now an impossibility. Many Americans would bury for an unadorned life on a small farm, a nd a clean, ironic home. Possibly the day will come when the land will be partitioned reach into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only-when fences shall be multiplied, and man-traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the surface of Gods earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentlemans grounds. ... Let us improve our opportunities, then, originally the evil days come. (Thoreau 667) Works CitedCrvecoeur, J. Hector St. John de. Letters from an American Farmer and Sketches of Eighteenth-Century America. Ed. Albert E. Stone. New York Penguin, 1981.