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Emerson

In: English and Literature

Submitted By kabudayah
Words 424
Pages 2
Alkhansa Abudayah
American Romanticism
Dr. Balkun

Emerson’s Essay “Self-Reliance” “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men”(132),trusting yourself and being honest with the person you are inside are what you need to be an individual. This is the massage that Emerson tries to give us through his essay “Self-Reliance” .

Emerson’s essay implies that to an independent or individual you have to have trust in yourself, thoughts, opinions, and feelings. You need to accept the person that you are truly are inside because Everybody is born possessing every things he needs to be an individual. Emerson writs” Trust thyself every heart vibrates to that iron string”(133). And you just need to learn how to use and utilize the things that you have.

Emerson discusses some points that the reader should think of to be a “Self-
Reliant “ . One of the most important point is to know who you are, what do you want to be, what do you love to do, and how do you want people think of you ?
He writs” What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think” and
“the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude”(136). He also talks about the fear of being misunderstood , sometimes we fail to present our ideas and thought or even we may not be able to present our ideas because our fear of misunderstood. But
Emerson tells us that our greatness coms with misunderstood as well as it’s our truth. So he writs “‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and
Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood,”(138).

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