1998. In his essay "Walking," Henry David Thoreau offers the following assessment of literature:
In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but another name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in Hamlet and The Iliad, in all scriptures and mythologies, not learned in schools, that delights us.
From the works that you have studied in school, choose a novel, play, or epic poem that you may initially have thought was conventional and tame but that you now value for its "uncivilized free and wild thinking." Write an essay in which you explain what constitutes its "uncivilized free and wild thinking" and how that thinking is central to the value of the work as a whole. Support your ideas with specific references to the work you choose.
Many authors choose love as a topic worthy of their extensive time and prowess. As there are a wide variety of works written about love, inevitably the average reader will come across those which do not appeal to him. This could be because of the works being poorly written, a duplication of ideas, or an expression of this most complex of topics in a simplified way. These are components which would lead a knowledgeable reader to think "predictable and tame." Romeo and Juliet is an example of a work which starts out as another predictable love story and evolves into an idea with "uncivilized free and wild thinking."
The meeting of Romeo and Juliet begins as any simple love story begins: they meet at the Capulet's ball and begin a heady flirtation. It's unclear exactly why they fall instantly in love; anything that real lovers would value-- for instance, common interests, a deep mental connection, physicality-- are rather absent. Some might argue that it is this that makes the play unpredictable. Yet many love stories seems to unfold from intense scenarios featuring lovers who fall in love under the flimsiest of circumstances. Considering that the characters are both teenagers, one could psychologically analyze them and point to the appeal that doing something against their families' wishes would bring. Teenage hormones would explain their intense attraction. Given the context in which Romeo and Juliet shortly court, the reader can clearly see the social constrictions that they must overcome. Based on the above analyzation, one could realize that they didn't fall in love in spite of their environment-- they fell in love because of it. These explanations that takes away from the idea of instant love is what makes Romeo and Juliet appear as another love saga.
By the end of the play, the reader has seen their entire tragedy unfold. It's not even when Romeo plunges a dagger into his chest to join his beloved that the reader feels a jolt of unpredictability. But in the final scene, when the families gather to commiserate over the death of their children, the reader finally experiences what one might call "uncivilized free and wild thinking." The families have two basic choices: they can keep fighting, or they can end their extensive feud that has now taken away the prospect of a future that every parent values in his offspring. Given past evidence of the intensity of their fighting, one would suppose they would continue to wage a war against the other-- with even greater intensity because of the destruction of their children at what they could easily see at the other's hand.
Yet it is in the wake of such disaster that Shakespeare gives the reader something unpredictable. The families ending their feud is an example of a paradoxical ending in that one would not expect peace to come about through such brutal violence. In the end, Shakespeare's ability to use "wild and free thought" arises not through the hypocrisy of a wealthy families' uncivilized acts of violence that occur throughout the play. It results from the quiet peace in the wake of two young lovers sacrificing themselves, thereby showing their families the capacity of love.
