Three Roads Back — A Summary and Reflection

 Three Roads Back — A Summary and Reflection 

Three Roads Back by Robert D. Richardson is a book that explores the tragedies in the lives of American philosophers Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William James, and how each responded to these losses in turn. The book also explores how these losses influenced their respective philosophies. The book is broken into three sections, each dedicated to its own philosopher's story, and throughout this blog post, I will summarize each section and give my personal thoughts on each “road back”. 

 

Building His Own World (Emerson) 

“A man must do the work with the faculties he has now, but that faculty is the accumulation of past days. That which you have done long ago, helps you now. What you have learned and done is safe and fruitful. Work and learn in evil days, in barren days, in days of debt and depression and calamity. Fight best in the shade of the cloud of arrows.” 

—Emerson 

Part one of the book opens with the death of young Emerson's wife in February of 1831, and immediately, we are plunged into the depths of sorrow that Emerson currently inhabits. Emerson is described as “Somber and preoccupied with his loss,” by Richardson and is portrayed to us, the reader, as a man lost in grief. (Richardson pg. 3) Richardson then depicts Emerson's crisis of identity, which leads him to retire from being a Unitarian minister in Boston, MA, and travel across Europe. While In France and England, Emerson was transformed from a broken man cast adrift in the dregs of grief to a man reborn with a new perspective and outlook on life. One of his greatest and most prevalent revelations is regeneration through nature, or in more familiar terms, resilience. Richardson outlines how the Emerson who left Boston in the winter of 1832 was not the same Emerson who returned in the Fall of 1833, due to his revelations in Europe that would later become a philosophy known as Transcendentalism. 

After reading this chapter several times, I continue to be in awe of Emerson's remarkable resilience. Not to spoil other parts of the book, but this is not the last tragedy that Emerson experiences before the decade is over, and even still, he is able to manage his grief through his transcendentalist ideas. I was first introduced to this philosophy briefly through the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer in the Summer of 2022. At the time, I had found the philosophy to be a more amiable version of the painfully popular Stoicism that had taken root in society at the time. Revisiting transcendentalism through the lens of this book has both affirmed my former ideas and opened my eyes to new facets I had not previously considered. Emerson had not dealt with the loss of his young wife by closing himself off to the world and steeling himself against his emotions, as the pseudo-Stoicism that plagues pop culture might suggest, but by opening himself up to the world, mind, body, and soul. In return, he learned through nature that everything came to its natural end and that the loss of something did not destroy its meaning. 

 Jardin Des Plantes, Paris 

Where Emerson comes to his "regeneration through nature" conclusion

The Cup My Father Gives Me (Thoreau) 

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours," 

—Thoreau 

Part two of the book introduces us to a young Henry David Thoreau, who at this point in his life had experienced moderate success being a Harvard graduate and running a grammar school with his older brother John in Concord, MA. As quickly as we are introduced to Thoreau and his world, we are told of how it collapses around the death of his older brother and closest companion, John Thoreau Jr. We are told how John Jr suffers a sudden and traumatic death that is caused by tetanus. Compounding this tragedy, Thoreau’s mentor’s (Emerson) young son had contracted scarlet fever and died less than a month later. In a matter of a month, Thoreau had endured more loss than he had even thought possible, leaving him pensive and displaced in his own life. Richardson quotes Thoreau's own journal in which he writes, “I feel like a feather floating in the atmosphere, on every side is depth unfathomable.” (Richardson p. 37) 

In response to this calamity in his life, Thoreau turned inward and, in a sense, withdrew from his normal life into nature. At this point in his life, Thoreau is noted as switching from a talented young thinker to a more serious, introspective thinker who valued the idea of simplicity and nature. By the end of the chapter, we find Thoreau not absolved of his pain but rather coexisting with it. Through John and Waldo Jr’s death, Thoreau is able to recognize the importance of the simplicity in life that nature itself shows us. Richardson shows us Thoreau’s transformation through a final quote near the end of the chapter, where Thoreau asserts, “We can never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features... We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.” (Richardson p.62) 

I was personally introduced to Thoreau’s work in high school through multiple excerpts from his most famous piece, Walden, which outlines the two years he spent in a cabin that he built himself. I always found Thoreau an interesting character because of his willingness to put his ideas to the test, even if it required extreme measures. After I had actually read through Walden in its entirety, I had procured an image in my head of Thoreau being an old sage who had gained his wisdom through years and years of study and lived experience, but after reading Three Roads Back, I now know that Thoreau was only 27 when he journaled Walden. While Thoreau's age doesn’t really affect my evaluation of his philosophical work, I do find it rather incredible that he was able to contribute so heavily to philosophy and especially the first American philosophical movement of Transcendentalism. 

 

Thoreau's Cabin at Walden Pond

The Death of Minny Temple (James) 

“If this life is not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.” 

—William James 

The third and final chapter is dedicated to the tragedy that propelled William James into the titan-like role William James played in the world of Philosophy and Psychology. Or at least that's what we as the reader would expect - you see, the beginning of the chapter talks about the death of a bright young woman named Minny Temple, who just so happened to be James’s second cousin, who died of tuberculosis, and instead of focusing on how this loss affects James Richardson instead spend the first half of the chapter talking about James’s brother Henry. Richardson then reveals to us, the reader, that James had been suffering a sort of disillusionment with life in his mid-to-late twenties. We find that instead of having to lose significantly to learn, James had to suffer, in a mental sense, greatly to find himself in the right mindset to learn and grow. Richardson describes how James, at his lowest, makes the decision to act, and James himself states in his journal, “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.” (Richardson p. 88) 

I must admit that out of all three parts of this book, this was my personal favorite. Having never heard of William James, I was expecting him to be outshone by two philosophers that I had already known and already held in high esteem. Much to my pleasant surprise, however, I find myself understanding and relating more to James. That being said, I do not value Thoreau and Emerson any less after reading into James, but rather I feel that William James was able to take lessons he learned from Thoreau/Emerson (they all knew each other), and multiple other sources, and create new ideas with them. I also feel that I align with James’s ideas of self-worth, constructive habits, and how (simply put) we are the captains of our own lives. 

Mount Chocorua in the fall