Dean Grodzins: Transcendentalists In The 19th Century

The most influential writers of the 1820’s-30’s such as Thoreau, Whitman, and Emerson were transcendentalists who believed in the strong opposition of an imperfect government and called for a deep connection to nature and to ourselves. These authors’ works are analysed nationwide in high schools and colleges. Evidently, the transcendentalists writers would be appalled by modern society and equally disgusted by how they are being frequently taught in schools. Modern society today is rarely in touch with nature, is obsessed with the lives of others, and is ruled by governments that most would agree are flawed. The hypocrisy of modern society on teaching the transcendentalists, of lecturing on the beliefs of a deep connection to nature and to ourselves and opposition to vile institutions, yet completely

The movie Dead Poets Society has quite a few connections with the world of transcendentalism. The movie ties in with some of the writings and themes. It also talks about a transcendentalist writing directly in the movie. The movie is about a group of boys who learn to express themselves and decided who they want to be. They learn this because of their teacher in Mr. Keating and the Dead Poets Society, which they found out about because of Mr. Keating.

“I went into the woods because i wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” This meant that you live how you want to live and do whatever you want to be free from conformity in your life. This quote by Henry David Thoreau is what the Dead Poets Society and its members lived by everyday. The transcendentalist members always acted differently and disobeyed many so that they could follow in the footsteps of the original Dead Poets Society.

Was Chris McCandless a true transcendentalist? Transcendentalism is a system developed by Immanuel Kant, based on the idea that, in order to understand the nature of reality, one must first examine and analyze the reasoning process that governs the nature of experience. Influenced by romanticism, Platonism, and Kantian philosophy, it taught that divinity pervades all nature and humanity, and its members held progressive views on feminism and communal living. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were central figures. In Jon Krakauer’s novel, Into the Wild, McCandless is viewed as a transcendentalist.

Raplh Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Jon Krakauer, and Michael Donova were all believers in a theory called transcendentalism. Krakauer wrote a non fictional book about a boy who went of on an adventure to Alaska and Donovan wrote a poem about himself. Knowing this information they do not seem to be comparable with each other, but can be. Krakauers’ book is about a young man from a welthy family who decided one day to hitchhike into Alaska and walked alone into the the wilderness where he died. Along the way he met alot of interesting people and seen a lot of great places and lands throughout the country.

“We need the tonic of wildness... At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because it is unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature” -Henry David Thoreau, Walden. In Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, a biographical account of Chris McCandless’s life, after graduating from college, 22-year-old McCandless decides to cut all ties from his family and hitchhike across America and live as simply as possible.

The rise of Transcendentalism in the 19th century is similar to the more extreme and vocal supports of popular modern movements in today’s modern world. Upon researching the topic, i found that Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Putnam, and Frederic Henry Hedge founded the Transcendental Club and began publishing journals and other papers on the topic. I related this to modern day individuals who make use of social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to post their thoughts and philosophies on the topic of political correctness and individuality. Transcendentalists believed that people were naturally good and were corrupted by political and religious institutions.

Transcendentalist Era In the 1830’s, a group called the transcendentalist arose. It lasted from 1836 to just about 1861. Some people were upset about how the Unitarian church was running things so instead people turned to nature. Basically they believed that any individual was more powerful than any institution.

In order to discuss a topic, one must know what said topic is. Transcendentalism is a movement in the nineteenth century and it encourages the idea of individualism, dislike for materialism, a strong connection to nature, and to rely on one’s intuition above all else. This belief and the well-educated people who followed it were decades ahead of their time, as it was for self-independence and was against slavery. These ideas are demonstrated in the story. Henry David Thoreau and his brother, John Thoreau, are teaching a class to their young students out in a field when Henry notices that a woman, Ellen Sewell, is scribbling away at her notebook.

Transcendentalists were writers from the American Romantic Era that held unique beliefs about life and how to live it. They wrote many essays that provided guidelines on how to live a successful life. Most of what they articulated was very out of the ordinary for their time, especially their characteristics. Transcendentalists demonstrated a multitude of characteristics throughout their writing, but the three most obvious were lawlessness, individualism and simplicity. One main characteristic of Transcendentalists was lawlessness.