Henry David Thoreau/compréhension CORRECTION

Answer the following questions based on the text :

I. Say if the following statements are right or wrong, then justify your answer with a quote
from the text :
1. H.D. Thoreau was not good at studying. ▢ right ■ wrong

« He was a brilliant student » (L.5)

2. H.D Thoreau was in poor health when he was young. ■ right ▢ wrong

« He had to stop university for several months for financial and health reasons » (L. 5/6)

3. H.D Thoreau never worked in his life. ▢ right ■ wrong

« He was hired as the teacher of the Concord public school » (L.8)

4. H. D. Thoreau was an abolitionist. ■ right ▢ wrong

« Thoreau refused because of his opposition to the Mexican-American war and slavery »
(L.16 :17)
5. H. D Thoreau was an ecologist. ■ right ▢ wrong

« He anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history »

(L.29/30)

II. Answer the following questions with your own words :

1. Why did H. D. Thoreau refuse to pay his taxes ?

H. D Thoreau refused to pay his taxes to express his opposition to the Mexican-
American war and to slavery.

2. What is H. D. Thoreau’s book Walden about ?

Walden is a narrative of his two-year experience in a small house in the middle of nature
at Walden Pond.
3. According to Thoreau, what should a citizen do if a law is unfair ?
According to Thoreau, a citizen should disobey a law if it is unfair. A person should obey
his conscience.

4. Find two activists, leaders or politicians who were inspired by H. D. Thoreau’s essay Civil
Disobedience. What were their achievements ?
1. Rosa Parks was a civil right activist who refused to give up her seat to a white
passenger during segregation in Alabama in 1955. She refused to obey a law that was
unfair because it discriminated black people. She was arrested and it triggered a boycott
of the buses in Montgomery (Alabama). This boycott lead to the decision of the supreme
court in 1956 to declare unconstitutional the segregation in buses.

2. Gandhi used civil disobedience to gain the independence of India. At the time, Indians
were treated as second-class citizens in their own country by the British. To fight these
unfair laws, Gandhi used several methods: refusal to pay British taxes, the boycott of
British goods, non-violent demonstrations (which were considered illegal by the British).
Finally, thanks to all these actions, India gained its independence in 1947.