PR Paper contrast & compare on Twain & Thoreau Essay

PR Paper contrast & compare on Twain & Thoreau - Essay Example According to Thoreau in the book â€Å"Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,† the world is but a faà §ade that is ever being manipulated by the mass media and other personalities to suit their selfish interest. Just like the way the Germany confederacy was in perpetually transformation before the war such that a German national could never tell at any given time its boundaries, ‘reality’ as we know it is also involved in an unending cycle of metamorphosis (Thoreau, 2006). Even the multiplicity of the so-called internal improvements is just but a faà §ade that only complicate life further. While Thoreau thinks that there is always an escape route from these lies camouflaged as realities and developments, a route that can enable a person to experience reality that is devoid of any manipulation, Mark Twain thinks that these kinds of lies camouflaging themselves as realities characterize our lives, at times even spicing it up and therefore indispensable in our lives. In fact, Thoreau idea of what we call reality in our daily life is something is a creation of a number of tools the prominence of them all being the mass media which continuously elongated itself the responsibility of shaping people opinion. According to Thoreau, even what we call progress in our daily life is just a creation of the mass media and therefore unrealistic. Contrary to Mark Twain, Thoreau believes that there is nothing that can be gained from this distortion of reality that surrounds our life. Thoreau even goes out of his way to blame the so-called reality by the mass media for wasting precious time that people can use to attend to serious things that adds value in their life. Mark Twain is of a different view. According to him the ‘reality’ that we perceive is only a faà §ade that disappears after some time, however, despite this act of disappearing it most importantly spice-up our life.