Henry D Thoreau Dark Ages Analysis

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In, “Dark Ages” published in Early Essays and Miscellanies, Henry D. Thoreau reasons that people should only focus on broad ideas learned through history, as time distorts and causes lost of pertinent details make small conditions uncertain and “cloudy”. Thoreau continues, exposing historians as people who can only provide detail of events that took place, such as a battle, but other than fact they cannot provide emotional motivation of solders in that war. He concludes with the fact that people know very little about the past and, although there is evidence that something happened in history there are many where there truly is no way of knowing when or what happened. Ultimately, the author wants to force people to consider history as a source to learn form, but no to get caught up in unsure details and …show more content…
Thoreau suggests that looking at the past is like looking at the fleeting beauty of a sunset and details such as motivations and feelings of people in the past “can be lost” causing necessary details of the events to become unclear.
Secondly, Thoreau condemns the historian to acknowledge the vial that covers many facts of the past and “to find out not what was” but to use physical evidence of “what is”. Thoreau to further his point explains the role of the historian to find where a “battle has been fought”, but not to speculate on the “hearts [that were once] beating”.
Finally, Thoreau explains that it makes sense that portions of that past are “dark”; though the “darkness” isn’t a characteristic of time passing, but rater a symptom. Thoreau clarifies that “yet no era has been wholly dark” no historian should be congratulated for shining a light that claims complete understanding, for there will never be a “full blaze of
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