American Essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay "Self-Reliance expounds and backs up the ideal of how one should always rely on themselves and not depend on others, at a time when the Transcendentalist Movement during the mid-19th century and the Enlightenment and after the Scientific Revolution was occurring. Emerson's purpose is to make a change in people's lives on how they live and explain to them that one should always trust their own instincts and never rely on people because the only person you truly know well is yourself. He adopts a forthright, direct tone in order to get straight to the point and explain and get the reader to understand that they don't need anyone to succeed or get through life, they can do it themselves in his …show more content…
Ralph Waldo Emerson starts off with a short poem in his first paragraph before he starts his essay using figurative language such as repetition, allusion and metaphor. In the end of Emerson's second paragraph he uses repetition as in the phrases "one face," "one character" and "one fact" to establish his idea among his readers that when it comes to life it's always just one, and that person is just you. Which is to rely on yourself and no one else. It relates to what's going during that time because it was during the Enlightenment and Transcendentalism movement which focused on human nature and divinity of a person. It establishes the direct tone that he establishes because he just gets it right to the point, short and sweet, he's always saying "one" because you only need one person in your life to succeed and that's yourself. In the end on his very last paragraph, he alludes to important people such as "Pythagoras," "Galileo," "Jesus" and "Newton" to assist in establishing his idea on how you can't rely on others, just on yourself. He references to other people that have made an impact on society by themselves. So he's explaining that they contributed greatly