Ralph Waldo Emerson Research Paper

Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the many American poets and essayists of the 19th century. Known for such essays as “Nature” and “The American Scholar”, in which Emerson retorts the social and religious beliefs that were so widely upheld at the time. One of Emerson’s more well-known essays is titled “Self-Reliance”, in which Emerson delves into the idea of man’s sole reliance on oneself instead of social and spiritual constructs. Emerson’s goal in writing “Self-Reliance” and many of his other essays was to inspire “his colleagues to look into themselves, into nature, into art, and through work for answers to life's most perplexing questions.” (Ushistory.org) As the name “Self-Reliance” suggests, this essay is about mankind’s need to be unconcerned with certain social and religious constructs, instead man has, “To believe your own thought, to believe what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men,--that is genius” (269). What Emerson is talking about in this essay is conformity, or rather nonconformity, “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist…Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind” (271). Emerson longed for American writing to be simply that, American. He insisted on a shift from the religious ideas and social concepts of

Transcendentalism according to Ushistory.org, “is a very formal word that describes a very simple idea. People, men and women equally, have knowledge about themselves and the world around them that "transcends" or goes beyond what they can see, hear, taste, touch or feel” and “A Transcendentalist is a person who accepts these ideas not as religious beliefs but as a way of understanding life relationships.” Emerson himself was a leader in this movement and is considered by many to be the first “American” thinker. Emerson most definitely transcends words of wisdom when speaking about the individual their