Essay Questions

In their introduction to play, co-writers Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee assert: “Thoreau is a fascinating paradox.” What is one effective demonstration of this assertion found in the play itself?

Throughout the narrative, Henry is presented as an iconoclastic example of non-conformity. The very reason why he is in jail it he first place is as much an act of non-conformity as it an act of political activism. This rebellious characteristic of Henry has two sides; sometimes it is admirable and courageous while in other instances is can seem to be merely stubbornness for the sake of being stubborn. One of the play’s greatest moments of illuminating the paradoxical nature within Henry occurs early on in a flashback to his days Harvard when he fell under the spell of his mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. The image of Henry sliding to the floor and “sitting squat-legged as a youth admirer at the feet of an idol” while he parrots back Emerson’s philosophical commandment to cast conformity behind is a powerful moment of ironic paradox which serves to humanize Thoreau as much as it mocks him.

Henry’s teaching concept of huckleberry-hunting has a certain romantic attraction in its rejection of institutionalized learning, but is ultimately constructed upon a fatally unsound premise. What is that defect in reasoning?

While it is certainly true that no book of analysis by a music expert can convey the special magic of Mozart’s musical composition as well as actually listening to Mozart’s compositions being played, the apprehension is limited by the extent of one’s pre-existing knowledge of how various musical instruments can be combined to play at once without sound like nothing noise. Henry argues that simply meeting a huckleberry by definition makes one more an expert than reading a dull book written by an expert on huckleberries. The fundamental and inescapable flaw here is that regardless of how dull the accumulation of information may be, any accumulation of factual or useful information is superior to even comprehensive accumulation of ill-informed, misunderstood or false knowledge gained only through non-critical first-hand engagement.

How does the advice Thoreau’s mother gives him during the hallucinatory battle scene near the end ironically sum up the central dramatic tension of the narrative?

Thoreau has throughout been presented a non-conformist willing to do stand up and do the right thing even when society considers it wrong. This is the fundamental underlying stake of any act of civil disobedience: doing what may technically be legally wrong because it is presumed to be morally right. When the sergeant forces a musket into Thoreau’s hands as he being attacked as a traitor and coward for refusing to protect his country during a state of war, his mother makes one last desperate plea to her son to stop being so stubbornly contrarian and to be a good boy who will "do the right thing, even if it's wrong." The very same words could be applied to much of Henry’s actions throughout the play, but here they mean exactly the opposite. The tension at work in Henry’s acts of civil disobedience is to accomplish right by doing wrong whereas if he obeys his mother’s entreaties he will have done wrong by choosing to do what everyone considers to be right. It is a tension existing in society at all times and the very complexity of knowing when wrong is right and when right is wrong can often be a very complicated matter.