Read This Excerpt From Ralph Waldo Emerson's Essay
Lesson sponsored by
Advisor: Charles Capper, Professor of History, Boston University; National Humanities Heart Fellow
Copyright National Humanities Center, 2014
In his essay "Self-Reliance," how does Ralph Waldo Emerson define individualism, and how, in his view, can information technology affect order?
Understanding
In "Self-Reliance" Emerson defines individualism as a profound and unshakeable trust in one's own intuitions. Embracing this view of individualism, he asserts, can revolutionize lodge, not through a sweeping mass motility, but through the transformation of one life at a time and through the creation of leaders capable of greatness.
Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1878
Text
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance", 1841.
Text Type
Essay, Literary nonfiction.
Text Complexity
Class 11-CCR complexity band. For more information on text complexity run into these resources from achievethecore.org.
In the Text Analysis section, Tier 2 vocabulary words are defined in pop-ups, and Tier 3 words are explained in brackets.
Click here for standards and skills for this lesson.
Ten
Common Cadre State Standards
- ELA-Literacy.L.11-12.4 (Make up one's mind the meaning of unknown and multiple-significant words and phrases.)
- ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.1 (Cite textual prove to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as drawing inferences.)
Avant-garde Placement US History
- Key Concept 4.i – Ii.A. (…Romantic beliefs in human perfectibility fostered the rise of voluntary organizations to promote religious and secular reforms…)
- Key Concept 4.i – III.A. (A new national civilisation emerged…that combined European forms with local and regional cultural sensibilities.)
- Skill Type III: Skill seven (Analyze features of historical show such equally audience, purpose, indicate of view…)
Advanced Placement English Language and Composition
- Reading nonfiction
- Evaluating, using, and citing primary sources
- Writing in several forms about a variety of subjects
Teacher's Note
"Self-Reliance" is central to understanding Emerson's idea, but it can exist hard to teach because of its vocabulary and judgement structure. This lesson offers a thorough exploration of the essay. The text analysis focuses on Emerson's definition of individualism, his assay of gild, and the way he believes his version of individualism can transform — indeed, save — American society.
The first interactive do, well-suited for individual or small group work, presents some of Emerson's more famous aphorisms equally tweets from Dr. Ralph, a nineteenth-century self-aid guru, and asks students to interpret and paraphrase them. The 2nd invites students to consider whether they would embrace Dr. Ralph's vision of life. Information technology explores paragraph vii, the nearly well-developed in the essay and the only 1 that shows Emerson interacting with other people to whatsoever substantial degree. The do is designed to raise questions about the implications of Emersonian self-reliance for 1'southward relations with others, including family unit, friends, and the broader society. The excerpt illustrates critic'due south Louis Menand's contention, cited in the groundwork note, that Emerson's essays, although by and large taken as affirmations, are "securely unconsoling."
This lesson is divided into two parts, both accessible below. The teacher'southward guide includes a background note, the text analysis with responses to the close reading questions, access to the interactive exercises, and a follow-upward consignment. The student's version, an interactive worksheet that can exist e-mailed, contains all of the above except the responses to the shut reading questions.
Teacher'south Guide (continues below)
| Student Version (click to open)
|
Teacher's Guide
Background
Background Questions
- What kind of text are we dealing with?
- For what audience was it intended?
- For what purpose was it written?
- When was it written?
- What was going on at the time of its writing that might take influenced its composition?
Ralph Waldo Emerson died in 1882, but he is still very much with us. When yous hear people affirm their individualism, possibly in rejecting help from the government or anyone else, you hear the voice of Emerson. When you hear a self-help guru on Goggle box tell people that if they change their fashion of thinking, they will change reality, you hear the voice of Emerson. He is America's campaigner of individualism, our champion of mind over matter, and he set forth the core of his thinking in his essay "Self-Reliance" (1841).
While they influence us today, Emerson'southward ideas grew out of a specific time and place, which spawned a philosophical motility called Transcendentalism. "Cocky-Reliance" asserts a central belief in that philosophy: truth lies in our spontaneous, involuntary intuitions. We practise non have the space hither to explicate Transcendentalism fully, but nosotros can sketch some out its fundamental convictions, a bit of its historical context, and the way "Self-Reliance" relates to information technology.
By the 1830s many in New England, specially the young, felt that the organized religion they had inherited from their Puritan ancestors had become common cold and impersonal. In their view it lacked emotion and failed to foster that sense of connectedness to the divine which they sought in organized religion. To them it seemed that the church building had taken its eyes off heaven and fixed them on the cloth earth, which under the probings, measurements, and observations of science seemed less and less to offer assurance of divine presence in the globe.
Taking direction from ancient Greek philosophy and European thinking, a small group of New England intellectuals embraced the idea that men and women did not need churches to connect with divinity and that nature, far from being without spiritual pregnant, was, in fact, a realm of symbols that pointed to divine truths. According to these preachers and writers, nosotros could connect with divinity and understand those symbols — that is to say, transcend or rising to a higher place the material world — merely by accepting our own intuitions near God, nature, and experience. These insights, they argued, needed no external verification; the mere fact that they flashed across the mind proved they were truthful.
To hold these beliefs required enormous self-conviction, of course, and this is where Emerson and "Self-Reliance" come into the moving-picture show. He contends that there is within each of us an "ancient Cocky," a first or ground-floor self beyond which at that place is no other. In "Self-Reliance" he defines it in mystical terms equally the "deep forcefulness" through which nosotros "share the life by which things be." It is "the fountain of activeness and thought," the source of our spontaneous intuitions. This self defines not a item, individual identity but a universal, human identity. When our insights derive from information technology, they are valid not only for us only for all humankind. Thus we tin can be assured that what is true in our individual hearts is, as Emerson asserts, "truthful for all men."*
But how tin can we tell if our intuitions come from the "ancient Self" and are, therefore, true? We cannot. Emerson says we must have the cocky-trust to believe that they do and follow them every bit if they do. If, indeed, they are true, eventually anybody will accept them, and they will be "rendered back to united states" as "the universal sense."
Daguerrotype of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Until the balance of the earth accepts our beliefs, withal, nosotros will be out of step; we will be nonconformists. Emerson tells us not to worry. The essence of self-reliance is resistance to conformity. Indeed, nonconformity is a sign of strength: "Whoso would be a man," he writes, "must exist a nonconformist." In a sense "Self-Reliance" tin be seen as a pep talk designed to strengthen our resolve to stand up up to society'south efforts to make the states conform. "Nothing," Emerson thunders, "is at last sacred but the integrity of your own listen." This is individualism in the extreme.
While "Self-Reliance" deals extensively with theological matters, we cannot overlook its political significance. It appeared in 1841, just 4 years later President Andrew Jackson left office. In the election of 1828 Jackson forged an alliance among the woodsmen and farmers of the western borderland and the laborers of eastern cities. (Encounter the America in Class® lesson "The Expansion of Democracy during the Jacksonian Era.") Emerson opposed the Jacksonians over specific policies, chiefly their defence of slavery and their support for the expulsion of Indians from their territories. But he objected to them on broader grounds besides. Many people similar Emerson, who despite his noncomformist thought still held many of the political views of the sometime New England elite from which he sprang, feared that the rise of the Jacksonian electorate would turn American republic into mob rule. In fact, at one point in "Self-Reliance" he proclaims "at present nosotros are a mob." When you run into the word "mob" hither, practice non picture a large, threatening crowd. Instead, think of what we today would call mass society, a society whose culture and politics are shaped not by the tastes and opinions of a small, narrow aristocracy but rather past those of a broad, diverse population.
Emerson opposed mass-political party politics because information technology was based on null more numbers and bulk rule, and he was hostile to mass civilization because information technology was based on manufactured entertainments. Both, he believed, distracted people from the real questions of spiritual health and social justice. Like some critics today, he believed that mass society breeds intellectual mediocrity and conformity. He argued that information technology produces soft, weak men and women, more prone to whine and whimper than to cover nifty challenges. Emerson took equally his mission the task of lifting people out of the mass and turning them into robust, sturdy individuals who could face life with conviction. While he held out the possibility of such transcendence to all Americans, he knew that not all would respond. He bodacious those who did that they would achieve greatness and become "guides, redeemers, and benefactors" whose personal transformations and leadership would rescue democracy. Thus if "Cocky-Reliance" is a pep talk in back up for nonconformists, information technology is besides a manual on how to live for those who seek to be individuals in a mass society.
Describing "Self-Reliance" as a pep talk and a manual re-enforces the manner almost people have read the essay, as a work of affirmation and uplift, and at that place is much that is affirmative and uplifting in it. Withal a careful reading besides reveals a darker side to Emerson's self-reliance. His uncompromising embrace of nonconformity and intellectual integrity can breed a chilly arrogance, a lack of pity, and a lonely isolation. That is why one critic has called Emerson's work "securely unconsoling."1 In this lesson we explore this side of Emerson along with his bracing optimism.
A word most our presentation. Because readers can accept "Self-Reliance" equally an advice transmission for living and because Emerson was above all a instructor, we plant it engaging to cast him non equally Ralph Waldo Emerson, a nineteenth-century philosopher, but as Dr. Ralph, a twenty-first-century self-help guru. In the terminate we ask if you would embrace his approach to life and sign up for his tweets.
*Teacher's Annotation: For a more detailed discussion of the "aboriginal Self," run into pp. 65-67 in Lawrence Buell'southward Emerson.
1. Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Order (New York; Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001) p. xviii.↩
Text Analysis
Paragraph ane
Shut Reading Questions
Action: Vocabulary
Learn definitions by exploring how words are used in context.
What is important almost the verses written by the painter in sentence i?
They "were original and not conventional."
From evidence in this paragraph, what practise yous retrieve Emerson means past "original"?
He defines "original" in sentence 6 when he says that we value the work of Moses, Plato, and Milton because they said not what others take thought, but what they thought.
In sentences 2 and three how does Emerson suggest we should read an "original" piece of work?
He suggests that we should read it with our souls. We should respond more to the sentiment of the piece of work rather than to its explicit content.
In telling us how to read an original work, what do you think Emerson is telling us about reading his work?
In sentences 2 and 3 Emerson is telling us how to read "Self-Reliance" and his work in full general. We should attend more to its sentiment, its emotional impact, rather than to the thought it may incorporate. The reason for this advice will get apparent as we find that Emerson's essays are more collections of inspirational, emotionally charged sentences than logical arguments.
How does Emerson define genius?
He defines information technology as possessing the confident belief that what is truthful for you is true for all people.
Considering this definition of genius, what does Emerson mean when he says that "the inmost in due fourth dimension becomes the outmost"?
Since the private or "inmost" truth nosotros observe in our hearts is true for all men and women, it volition somewhen be "rendered dorsum to us," proclaimed, as an "outmost" or public truth.
Why, according to Emerson, practise we value Moses, Plato, and Milton?
We value them because they ignored the wisdom of the past (books and traditions) and spoke not what others idea merely what they thought, the "inmost" truth they discovered in their own hearts. They are great considering they transformed their "inmost" truth to "outmost" truth.
Thus far Emerson has said that we should seek truth past looking into our own hearts and that nosotros, like such neat thinkers equally Moses, Plato, and Milton, should ignore what nosotros observe in books and in the learning of the past. What implications does his communication hold for educational activity?
Information technology diminishes the importance of education and suggests that formal education may actually get in the style of our search for knowledge and truth.
Why then should we bother to study "neat works of art" or even "Self-Reliance" for that matter?
Because great works of art "teach us to bide by our spontaneous impressions." And that is, of course, precisely what "Cocky-Reliance" is doing. Both they and this essay reassure us that our "latent convictions" are, indeed, "universal sense." They strengthen our ability to maintain our individualism in the face up of "the whole cry of voices" who oppose us "on the other side."
Based on your reading of paragraph 1, how does Emerson define individualism? Back up your answer with reference to specific sentences.
Emerson defines individualism every bit a profound and unshakeable trust in 1's ain intuitions. Just virtually any sentence from four through 11 could be cited as support.
[i] I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. [2] The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, permit the subject be what it may. [iii] The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may incorporate. [iv] To believe your ain thought, to believe that what is true for y'all in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. [five] Speak your latent conviction, and information technology shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered dorsum to us by the trumpets of the Concluding Judgment. [6] Familiar as the vocalism of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they prepare at cipher books and traditions, and spoke non what men merely what they thought. [7] A man should learn to find and lookout that gleam of light which flashes beyond his mind from within, more than the lustre of the empyrean of bards and sages. [8] Notwithstanding he dismisses without find his thought, considering it is his. In every piece of work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come dorsum to u.s. with a certain alienated majesty. [ix] Great works of art accept no more affecting lesson for us than this. [ten] They teach usa to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most [especially] when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. [11] Else [otherwise], to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly skillful sense precisely what we take idea and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to have with shame our own opinion from another.
Paragraph 34 (excerpt)
Close Reading Questions
Notation: Every proficient self-help guru offers communication on how to handle failure, and in the excerpt from paragraph 35 Dr. Ralph does that by describing his ideal of a cocky-reliant beau. Here we see Dr. Ralph at perhaps his nearly affirmative, telling his followers what self-reliance can do for them. Earlier he does that, still, he offers, in paragraph 34, his diagnosis of American gild in 1841. The case of his "sturdy lad" in paragraph 35 suggests what self-reliance tin exercise for society, a theme he picks upwardly in paragraph 36.
What, according to Emerson, is incorrect with the "social state" of America in 1841?
Americans have become weak, shy, and fearful, an indication of its true problem: it is no longer capable of producing "great and perfect persons."
Given the political context in which he wrote "Self-Reliance," why might Emerson think that American society was no longer capable of producing "great and perfect persons"?
In Emerson's view, by giving power to the "mob," Jacksonian democracy weakened American culture and gave rise to social and personal mediocrity.
What is Emerson's solution for America's problem, and how does that solution illuminate what he is trying to exercise in "Self-Reliance"?
His solution is to create "men and women who shall renovate life and our social state," and this is the goal of his essay.
[1] The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. [2] Nosotros are afraid of truth, agape of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. [three] Our age yields no great and perfect persons. [4] We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social land, but we see that almost natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their ain wants [needs], have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force [aim at goals they cannot achieve], and exercise lean and beg twenty-four hours and dark continually…. [five] We are parlour soldiers. [half-dozen] Nosotros shun the rugged boxing of fate, where force is born.
Paragraph 35 (excerpt)
Shut Reading Questions
What does Emerson mean by "miscarry"? What context clues assist the states discover that meaning?
Here "miscarry" ways "to fail." We tin can see that past noting the parallel structure of the kickoff 2 sentences. Emerson parallels "miscarry" and "fails" past placing them in the same position in the starting time two sentences: "If our immature men miscarry…" "If the immature merchant fails,…"
What is the human relationship between the young men who miscarry and the immature merchants who fail in paragraph 35 and the "timorous, desponding whimperers" of paragraph 34?
They are the same. The young failures illustrate the bespeak Emerson makes in the previous paragraph well-nigh the weakness of America and its citizens.
According to Emerson, how does an "united nations-cocky-reliant" person respond to failure?
He despairs and becomes weak. He loses "loses center" and feels "ruined." He falls into cocky-pity and complains for years.
Emerson structures this paragraph as a comparison between a "urban center doll" and a "sturdy lad." With reference to paragraph 34 what does the "sturdy lad" represent?
He represents the kind of person Emerson wants to create, the kind of person who volition "renovate" America's "life and social state."
What are the connotations of "metropolis doll"?
The term suggests weakness with a hint of effeminacy.
Compare a "metropolis doll" with a "sturdy lad."
Metropolis Doll: defeated by failure, urban, narrows his options by studying for a profession, learns from books, postpones life, lacks confidence and self-trust.
Sturdy Lad: resilient, rural, at least expert in rural skills, "teams it, farms it", realizes he has many options and takes advantage of them, learns from feel, engages life, possesses conviction, trusts himself.
What point does Emerson make with this comparison?
Here Emerson is actually trying to persuade his readers to embrace his version of cocky-reliance. His comparison casts the "sturdy lad" in a positive light. We desire to exist like him, non like a "city doll." Emerson suggests that, through the sort of men and women exemplified by the "sturdy lad," self-reliance will rescue American life and society from weakness, despair, and defeat and restore its capacity for greatness.
What do you notice almost the progression of the jobs Emerson assigns to his "sturdy lad"?
They ascend in wealth, prestige, and influence from plow mitt to member of Congress.
We take seen that Emerson hopes to raise to a higher place the mob people who will themselves exist "swell and perfect persons" and restore America'south ability to produce such people. What does the progression of jobs he assigns to the "sturdy lad" propose most the roles these people will play in American society?
As teachers, preachers, editors, congressmen, and land owners, they will be the leaders and opinion makers of American society.
[1] If our young men miscarry in their kickoff enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. [two] If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in lament the residuum of his life. [iii] A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township,* so along, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his anxiety, is worth a hundred of these metropolis dolls. [4] He walks beside with his days, and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not 1 chance, merely a hundred chances.
*Emerson does not hateful that the "sturdy lad" would purchase a town. He probably means that he would buy a big piece of uninhabited land (townships in New England were six miles square). The point here is that he would become a substantial landowner.
Paragraph 36
Shut Reading Questions
Why does Emerson retrieve that "a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men"?
On one level Emerson is suggesting that when individuals become self-reliant, their new found power will bring fresh strength and robustness to everything from their work to their family life. When individuals change, institutions alter. On another level, he is suggesting that as leaders in American lodge, the newly empowered cocky-reliant will bring about social alter.
[1] It is like shooting fish in a barrel to meet that a greater cocky-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their organized religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.
Follow-Upwardly Consignment
In a well organized essay explain what club would be like if everyone embraced Emerson'due south idea of self-reliance. Your assay should focus on Emerson's attitudes toward law, the family unit, and education. Exist certain to employ specific examples from the text to support your argument.
Vocabulary Pop-Ups
- admonition: gentle, friendly criticism
- latent: hidden
- zippo: ignored
- lustre: brightness
- firmament: heaven
- bards: poets
- sages: wise men and women
- alienated: made unfamiliar by being separated from u.s.a.
- else: otherwise
- sinew: connective tissues
- timorous: shy
- desponding: discouraging
- renovate: alter
- miscarry: fail
- modes: styles
- speculative: theoretical
Images:
- Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson engraved and published by Stephen A. Schoff, Newtonville, Massachusetts, 1878, from an original cartoon by Samuel W. Rowse [ca. 1858] in the possession of Charles Eliot Norton. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-pga-04133.
- Daguerreotype of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 4 x 5 black-and-white negative, creator unknown. Courtesy of the Yale Drove of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale Academy, New Haven, Connecticut.
Read This Excerpt From Ralph Waldo Emerson's Essay
Source: https://americainclass.org/individualism-in-ralph-waldo-emersons-self-reliance/