Figurative Language In Emerson's Self Reliance

On the occasion of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, “Self Reliance,” Joy Zhou chooses to positively embrace his writing in a reflective argument. Although the essay seems to present itself in a traditional style, her words resemble a more opinionated approach that is supported by her personal life; she comes across as an inspired individual who agrees with Emerson’s ideology. Zhou tackles her claim by breaking off short quotes from Emerson’s essay directly and supporting his relevance with modern, personal experiences. Her first main paragraph discusses Emerson’s quote, “‘[t]here is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.’” Responding, Zhou provides an anecdote in which

1. Describe Emerson’s idea of self-reliance in your own words. To what extent do you agree or disagree with his philosophy? Would you consider yourself to be self-reliant and to what degree? a. Emerson’s idea about self-reliance is doing what makes you happy and not worrying about what people will think of you; alsfheo doing things individually.

In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self Reliance, he passionately expresses his views on individualism. Emerson’s views on individuality are views of following oneself’s own thoughts and passions, rather than fearing men and following the world. The speaker is successful in getting his point across with the use of allusions, anaphora, and thought triggering metaphors.

Many people rely on the opinions of others, never truly stopping to personally consider the subject at hand. Ralph Waldo Emerson, an impactful American writer, wrote a piece entitled Self- Reliance. In Self-Reliance, Emerson’s purpose is to promote ideas of individualistic thinking. Emerson uses strong, rhetorical strategies, such as figurative language, allusions, and complex syntax and parallelism to effectively persuade his audience to trust their own thoughts.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote Self-Reliance during the time period when transcendentalism emerged, thus based his essay off of this ideology. Transcendentalism is known as the philosophy that divine truth is present in all created things and that truth is known through intuition, not through the rational mind. This principle seems to be a reoccurring theme throughout many of Emerson’s essays. In fact, he is known as a transcendentalist philosopher. In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance, Emerson is convincing his readers that self-reliance is more important than being dependent on others by using metaphors and pathos.

In the piece “Self Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of Americas most influential thinkers, Emerson talks about the subject of individuality. Using many different rhetorical strategies, he makes his perspective on the subject loud and clear by using personification, alliteration and analogy.

He made a strong case for acting on one's individual conscience and not blindly following laws and government policy. " The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right," he wrote (Thoreau,1854). The timely and inaccurate injustice of society led Thoreau to a new height of revolution and it spooked the immeasurable feeling of human justice we human possess. An average person living about his daily life in the society is somewhat barred from taking those brave acts as he becomes a part of the system.

In Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, he explains his beliefs, criticizes the issues he sees within the government, and proposes how we should handle these injustices especially after experiencing jail. Thoreau didn't pay poll taxes, which supported a war and slavery itself (Costly, n.d.). Thoreau regards that the government shouldn’t completely interfere with our lives, but should not be completely done away with. Also, that it is not used correctly and tends to only benefit the majority who may or may not have logical or just views. People are supposed to do what they think is right and not go against their conscience, but to follow it and not what is proposed by the majority.

Which means that everything is up to the individual and you have to be self-reliant rather than rely on others. Emerson also states, “self reliance gave me permission to be a free thinker and to rigorously question everything around me.” What Emerson really is saying is that him being self reliant gives him the right to think however he wants and he doesn’t have to listen to anyone else’s thoughts because he doesn’t rely on them only on himself.

In his essay of Civil Disobedience, Thoreau exclaims many social issues that were going on around that time that also inspired his essay. The social issues that were going on around the time were the Relocation of the Native-Americans, which ties in with Manifest Destiny, slavery, poll taxes, Mexican-American war, and many more. Henry Thoreau didn’t believe in what the government was doing and how they were running American. Manifest Destiny was a big concept during all those times which really triggered the Domino effect with disagreement of how the Mexicans were being forced out of their territory which eventually led up to the Mexican-American

Throughout history there have been many political changes that are either supported, or not, by citizens. In the given passage from, "Civil Disobedience," by Thoreau, a perspective of disagreeing with the government ways, is provided. Thoreau explains how a government should be in comparison to how it really is by utilizing his words to set the tone and mode, imagery to achieve his audience's understanding, and diction to make his writing scholarly. Although tone and mode are not directly stated, you can infer that Thoreau meant for his writing to be taken as serious and powerful. His implementation of words such as, "inexpedient," "execute," " integrity," and "command," makes one think about their lawful rights and reflect on what rights are supported or

The purpose of Thoreau's "Resistance to Civil Government" is to make an argument between what is right and what is convenient. He describes the dangers of listening and agreeing with everything a government says, or any large group of people, instead of paying attention to one's own conscience. Thoreau relates this idea to one personal experience he had when he was forced to spend a night in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax. He describes how the instance made him feel and how it differentiated from the way he saw his village. Before he understood how his everyday actions were similar to his knowledge of a larger democracy and government.

Today, the bureaucratic American government exerts widespread influence over the American people through economic policies, high tax rates, and even blatant spying. If Thoreau were a registered voter living today, I do not believe he would even want to vote for any politicians, although he would probably associate with the Libertarian movement that advocates for personal freedoms. However, Libertarians represent a miniscule portion of our overall government, which Thoreau would surely not support. Thoreau believed that citizens should revolt if the government gained too much control. If Thoreau were alive today, there is a likely chance that he would advocate strongly for civilians to speak out against the government, as he surely did not foresee a government this bloated and

Another famous essay Thoreau’s is Civil Disobedience. Civil Disobedience was published in 1849. In this essay he talks about his belief on how individuals shouldn’t blindly follow the government if they thought the rules and laws are unjust. This was partly motivated by Thoreau’s hatred towards slavery and the government support of it. Thoreau thought we would be better without the government as he mentions in the first paragraph of Civil Disobedience, “that government is the best which governs not at all.”

This citation shows that Thoreau did not want to follow the laws. Thoreau also believed in living life by following moral law and not law stated in the constitution. Thoreau also believed that the government does best if it does not rule over the people. In the essay Civil Disobedience it says “That government is best which governs least”. This shows what Thoreau felt the government should not do.