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U.S. and World Literature Passage Videos 25 videos
Thoreau was all about simplicity; anything that took away from his vision was the enemy. Mechanical aids were one of them. Guess he had to train a...
Thoreau wants our lives to be simplified. He claims that we gain less from life when we over-complicate things.
How does Thoreau feel about commerce? He writes, "We don't ride upon the railroad; it rides upon us." He wants and end to the war fighting for the...
SAT Reading: Assessing the Reasoning Behind Thoreau's Argument 7 Views
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Description:
Railroad ranchor. Modern life damages human life. Metaphorically. We all sacrifice our lives to be part of The System which doesn't really mirror natural human nature.
Transcript
- 00:02
okay people the last question in this section here we go what is the most
- 00:07
likely reason that water makes the statement we do not ride on the railroad [text on screen]
- 00:09
it rides upon us all right so let's go back to the very end here we're kind of
- 00:13
skimming and would go through a whole mile road you're not ride on the
- 00:19
railroad it rides upon us the correct answer here yeah it's a there's the
Full Transcript
- 00:23
suggestions it's a to show through a metaphor that modern life damages human [students in school]
- 00:28
life it's pretty powerful statement but it's also another metaphor the rose not [texting while driving]
- 00:32
suggesting actual bodies are in fact buried under railroad tracks this is not [tomb stones along rail road tracks]
- 00:38
like people falling into a hot dog meat VAT and becoming hotdogs themselves like [tiny person falls into boiling caldron]
- 00:42
another fine book Thoreau is using the railroad as a metaphor for progress in
- 00:46
commerce and saying that while all of us are sacrificing our lives if we waste [crowded city]
- 00:51
them waste the time in our lives laboring just for the sake of the
- 00:55
almighty dollar or commerce as he calls it well the history of the
- 00:59
Transcontinental Railroad was brutal and hazardous yes see people lost their [old train movie]
- 01:03
lives doing work they were forced to do be however thorough isn't really [tomb stones]
- 01:07
concerned with those practical dangers in the passage like you see any direct
- 01:11
references to this stuff he does criticize the need to move rapidly but
- 01:15
in the case of the railroad it's the sacrifice of a person's time to commerce [crowded city time lapse]
- 01:19
that really bothers Thoreau so get rid of D there the answer is a all right [women shopping
- 01:23
good luck we're gonna move on to a new passage now finally we're done with the [man in the mountains next to a fire]
- 01:27
rub thoroughly
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