Write Like Jo, Think Like Thoreau: Transcendentalism Meets AI

Sara Lauren Purifoy
Jul 27
6 min read

“We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.” - Thoreau (Walden, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”)

A few weeks ago, I found myself standing again at the edge of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. Aside from the open-pond swimmers and their fluorescent, floating buoys, the water was glassy and still. And the world around me churned with the same restless questions that I imagine troubled Henry David Thoreau nearly two centuries ago.

Thoreau's Cove at Walden Pond - Left: April, 2017 | Right: July, 2025

I first went to Concord in 2017 to visit the house where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women in 1868. Orchard House is a little reader's dream - intimate, creaky, and full of treasures. As you walk from room to room, it's easy to imagine Meg mending gloves by the fire, Amy sketching by the window, Jo upstairs wiping ink-stained fingers on an apron, and Beth’s quiet music filling the home. Despite not having sisters of my own, these characters, who so closely resemble their real-life Alcott counterparts, have resonating passion, grief, and insight.

Orchard House, Home of the Alcotts - Left: April, 2017 | Right: July, 2025

But what was most impactful about that trip to Concord eight years ago was that I unexpectedly found a deeper, personal, sense of understanding and belonging. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and the Alcott Family spoke a language I didn't even know I was speaking. Suddenly I made sense. What I saw and thought and felt was normal - interesting even! Worth pursuing.

So I was drawn back to the heart of American Transcendentalism to continue to walk in the footsteps of these brilliant minds. What I didn’t expect this time around was how urgently their ideas would echo into my daily work as a librarian navigating the rise of artificial intelligence in 2025.

It is my hope that this post weaves place, history, philosophy, and present-day practice in a way that connects with readers who care about mindful work and learning.

What is Transcendentalism, Anyway?

The Librarian in me says do your own research.

But for me, transcendentalism is about noticing the world, my own mind, and the small truths under my feet with trees around me.

In the mid-1800s, thinkers like Emerson, Thoreau, and the Alcotts believed that truth doesn’t come from authority alone. That is, not from institutions or machines or even (dare I say it!?) libraries stacked high with other people’s ideas. It comes, first, from the self: conscience, intuition, direct experience with nature and community.

Emerson Family Homes - Left: Old Manse, April, 2017 | Right: Emerson House, July, 2025

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. - Emerson, (Nature, "Introduction")

Is it a radical sort of hope that each person is capable of original thought in 2025? That our own questions and experiences not only matter, but can be trusted? That we can resist the temptation to drift along with the current? I hope not. I hope that we can continue to choose to live deliberately. I hope I can.

Thoreau's Cabin Site - Left: April, 2017 | Right: July, 2025

Contrary to romantic perception, Thoreau didn’t live as an antisocial recluse on some timeless pond. He visited with family and friends, took surveying jobs, and walked the woods with Emerson before returning home to listen to the rumble of the Fitchburg Railroad cutting past his cabin. That train was the Industrial Revolution in motion: new speed, new connections, new markets. All that promise barreling through the woods.

My understanding is that Thoreau didn’t hate the train. He just didn’t trust it to know when to stop. He wrote about how easy it is to ride the rails without asking where they’re going...or what they’re running over on the way.

I hear the whistle of the locomotive… the iron horse makes the hills echo with his snort… Instead of going to Fitchburg, let us go to heaven! - Thoreau (Walden, “Sounds”)

Got it! The train from Walden Pond - July, 2025

Progress, for Thoreau, was only real if it still left space for the human spirit to keep up.

How Do We Keep Up?

If the railroad was the great accelerant of the 19th century, artificial intelligence is ours. It hums through my inbox and my students’ screens. It sits in my pocket. It writes cover letters, solves math problems, spins up (questionable?) essays in seconds. It moves.

And like the train, it’s not inherently evil - it’s just fast. Faster than our thinking. Faster than our questions. Faster than our reflection. Yikes!

So the old Transcendental question remains: What do we lose when we move too fast to hear ourselves think? And, as librarians we have to ask: What do we protect when we slow down on purpose?

We protect the momentary pause between question and answer.

We protect the idea that information is not the same as understanding.

We protect curiosity from convenience.

We protect the space where learners fail safely.

We protect the conversation.

When the world speeds up, we protect the slow work of becoming.

The Work of Staying Human

Louisa May Alcott grew up in a household shaped by similar questions. Her father, Bronson Alcott, was one of the more radical Transcendentalists. He built experimental schools where conversation and self-reflection mattered more than rigid curriculum. Although sometimes at odds with her father and an overall prickly person, Louisa turned her restless, questioning spirit into resonating works of fiction.

Bronson Alcott's Concord School of Philosophy at Orchard House - Left: April, 2017 | Right: July, 2025

I turn to Little Women again and again because Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy make mistakes. They dream big, argue, care for each other, break rules, and try again. And again. They remind me that real learning is messy and deeply personal. It’s not about producing perfect work (says the recovering perfectionist!), it’s about becoming someone honest enough to stand by your words, your actions, and your imagination. That's hard work.

And now I wonder what the March sisters would do with a tool like AI:

Meg might have used it to plan her household budget or write polite letters for social duties that exhausted her. She’d probably feel secretly relieved for the help but quietly guilty about it.
Jo would have hated it...or at least claimed to hate it. She’d publicly scorn the idea of letting a machine spin her stories but might have been curious enough to test it late at night when no one was watching.
Beth would probably ignore it altogether. She’d be at the piano or tending to something small and good that didn’t need improving.
Amy? Oh, Amy would use it proudly. She’d find ways to make her artistic ambitions larger than her skill, taming the tool into something uniquely hers. She’d brag about how she did it all herself too.

Who do you see yourself in? I fall somewhere between Meg and Jo.

In the end, though, the sisters would still gather at that same worn table, crying, forgiving each other, pushing each other to be braver and kinder and more honest. No algorithm could do that part for them.

When I think about what AI can do for us in education and information access, it's overwhelming. And we're only at the beginning of figuring it out.

It can break down complex data sets in seconds. It can help a nervous student draft an outline when they don’t know where to start. It can translate, summarize, troubleshoot, and organize to save us from the busywork that too often blocks real thinking. It can help us see patterns and possibilities we might miss on our own.

But it can’t wrestle with a sister late at night over a draft of a play. It can’t make mistakes in front of a friend and learn something about forgiveness. It can’t pause to question whether this story, this thought, this sentence is really yours. Not yet anyway.

It can help us get somewhere faster, but it can’t tell us if it’s the right place to go. It can churn out words, but it can’t stand by them. It can simulate conversation, but it can’t sit with you under a tree by a pond and wonder what comes next.

So maybe our job is to keep remembering both truths at once. Use the tool. Ask it for help. Let it open doors. But keep a piece of your mind for the messy, human parts.

The parts that don’t move on rails.

Author's Ridge at Sleepy Hallow Cemetery - Left: April, 2017 | Right: July, 2025

An initial outline of this post was created with the help of ChatGPT. I also prompted it to suggest relevant quotes from Emerson's Nature and Thoreau's Walden, both of which I have read.

Introduction

Sara Lauren Purifoy, MLIS

Write Like Jo, Think Like Thoreau: Transcendentalism Meets AI

What is Transcendentalism, Anyway?

How Do We Keep Up?

The Work of Staying Human

Further Reading

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