Unit Dos

NATURE by Ralph Waldo Emerson





This piece of writing caught my attention in a couple different ways. It was a bit hard to understand in a couple places but overall I think it was pretty interesting. It was very descriptive about the woods and the feeling that the author got from being outdoors. There are several places where you would be able to pick out some transcendentalistic traits from the excerpt. The number one connection i could make was on page 221 of the literature book, it states "In the woods, we return reason and faith. There i feel that nothing can befall me in life-


no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair. I think it related to transcendentalism because it was talking about how being in the woods made him feel as if nothing in life could befall him, it returned him to not only reason but faith.





This is a good example of Transcendentalism because they believed that god spoke through the beauty and feel of nature as well as through the hard work of people. I feel that he was trying to connect with the "oversoul." This was a lot about nature and I think the particular point he was trying to make was that god speaks through nature.



SELF-RELIANCE by Ralph Waldo Emerson



This writing was very unclear to me at first, but with some explanation I started to gradually understand the main point that Emerson was striving to get across. In a nutshell, he says to rely on your own judgement and feelings rather than to conform like the rest of society. He is saying that instead of being part of the corrupt body as a whole, be your own person, rely on the voice in your own mind. This stuck out to me because this is how I feel in some ways. This reminds me of peer pressure in a way, people could be doing something that you don't particularly think is a good idea, you can either conform, or do what you think is right.



"These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in a conspiracy against manhood of every one of its members".

I pulled out this piece of the writing because it has a lot to do with one of the key factors of transcendentalism. It touches on how people in society don't listen to this "inside" voice, this voice of god. It is stating that people would rather be like everyone else than to make their own individual seemingly correct choices.