Rejection of Romanticism

Although Emerson embraced and celebrated Romanticism during a lot of his writing career in the nineteenth century, towards the later years of his life he began to reject Romanticism and then began to completely shy away from it and changes his ideas and belief regarding philosphy and life in general. In my opinion, Emerson first started to reject Romanticism early on because of the many different hardships that he experienced during his life. First, his wife died when she was only nineteen years old and he was in this twenties. Emerson reportedly refused to mourn the death of his wife (Edmundson) and continued on with his life. Although he may have refused to mourn this loss outwardly, their is a very good chance that the emotional pain took its toll on Emerson. And then only a few years after the death of his wife, Emerson also lost one of his brothers; the one he had always been closest to. Losing loved ones, especially spouses or siblings, causes a lot of tragic emotional pain. The pain that must have come along with these various losses must have been hard on Emerson, and probably eventually made him rethink his life and what he believed in. I think that as Emerson continued to experience loss throughout his life, he started to give up on the idea of Romanticism, and along with it, the related ideas of Transcendentalism.

Transcendentalism is a branch of Romanticism that calls for people to view different objects of the world as just small versions of the whole universe. It also says to trust one's own intuition (Define). I think that as Emerson continued to go through life and experience struggles and more loss, he started to rethink his support of the ideas that go along with Romanticism and with it, Transcendentalism. I do not blame Emerson for this change of heart- I think that these ideas probably sounded good to Emerson at first. He liked the aspects of nature and beauty that went along with Romanticism, and therefore he believed in it and wrote his essays and other works in the style. However, as Emerson grew older, he experience hardships that caused his outlook on life to change pretty dramatically (Edmundson). After he endured the loss of his wife and brother, Emerson later lost his son, Waldo. He continued to change his philosophies, and I do not think that it makes him a hypocrite. As his life changed, his ideas began to change as well.

As Emerson began to move away from the ideas of Romanticism, he moved towards some Freudian ideas instead, like the belief that condensed liberation is inadequate (Edmundson). I think that as Emerson aged and experienced different things, his ideas continued to change as well. Mostly, I think that he began to reject Romanticism and Transcendentalism simply because those beliefs and ideas just did not work out for him and the things that happened in his life. He gave up on them because that was not the way his life was going.


"Define Transcendentalism." Dictionary.com. Web. 11 Nov. 2010. .

Edmundson, Mark. "Emerson and the Work of Melancholia." Facts on File. Web. 11 Nov. 2010.

Journal #21: Emerson vs. Franklin

Ralph Waldo Emerson obviously shows examples of self-reliance through his essay...which is actually titled "Self-Reliance", so it is pretty obvious that self-reliance is big for Emerson right from the start. In the essay he wrote about the importance of being able to depend on yourself and to able be to reflect upon yourself as well. Emerson wrote in the Romanticism (Transcendentalism, specifically), which put emphasis on innocence and nature and youth. His idea was that you needed to get away from the world once and a while so that you could self-reflect and think about all of the things going on in your life.

Franklin also showed signs of self-reliance. In his virtues, like the Masonic virtues, Franklin listed some traits that would take some self-reliance to accomplish. Part of Franklin's philosophy was not to lean too much on others. I cannot say if Benjamin Franklin was into self reflection, though. However, the two do not necessarily go together. Emerson wanted his self reflection to be done privately, away from the eyes of the rest of the world. This meant having to have self-reliance to be able to actually be able to "get away". Emerson brought nature into this by saying that a person can relax in and be one with nature, giving them peace so that they can start to reflect upon what has happened in their lives. Franklin, however, definitely did not place as much emphasis on nature and innocence and such. He was more concerned with society and the going on's of society, as well as how he appeared in the public eye. He was much more focused on the ideas of Rationalism, science and knowledge, than of things like nature and youthfulness.

Emerson was much less concerned with society and much more concerned with nature and one's own self. Franklin supported self-reliance to accomplish the virtues that he set out, but he did not place as much faith in it than Emerson did.

Journal #20: Self-Reflection

Hmm. Taking a break from society seems a little impossible. Society is kind of surrounding us...because we kind of are society. So unless you are planning an exorcism or are going to purposely get lost in the woods, you are going to have a problem with that whole "take a break from society" thing. Apart from mediation and intense thought, it is hard to have a serious self-reflection.

Self-reflection is still important, although I do not think you need to take a break from society to achieve this. Finding a quiet place doesn't mean that your taking a break from society...it just means you have found a a peaceful and probably really relaxing place where you can use phrases "letting go" and "be one with nature" to describe your feelings of elation. Being secluded does not always mean that you're away from society, depending on the circumstances...even if you "get away from it all", you still have your own thoughts and emotions to deal with. So unless you manage to suppress your feelings (which is kind of unhealthy. by the way...), you will never truly achieve true peace. It is good to try and relax and calm down, but it is difficult to completely shut the rest of the world out. We are so impressionable that there is always something on our minds. At this very moment, I am trying to type this blog and I am distracted by the thoughts of other homework I have to do tonight, the sound of my parents talking and watching television in the background, and my feelings of extreme exhaustion. Also, I am pretty hungry. So even though I am really trying to focus on doing my blog post, the rest of the world, not to mention the rest of me, is calling for my attention.

So, to make myself happy, I think that I will just wrap this nice little blog post up and am off to eat some frozen blueberries from a plastic cup.

Journal #19: Ideal USA

I honestly do not think there is such a thing as an ideal USA. Somewhere along the way, there would inevitably be some kind of conflict. Whether it be corruption or the economy, the chance that something would go wrong is undeniably high. If there really was an ideal USA, it would not be a Utopia, it would be a Dystopia. I really think that there is no such thing as an Utopia, because I also think that perfection is impossible. No matter what, there is always going to be some kind of flaw in the system.

Reality says that there will never been an ideal country or society. Problems are going to come up in almost every situation- poverty, recessions, hunger, disease, and violence can happen no matter what kind of world we live in. There are a lot of people who simply don't care about others, and these are the kinds of people that contribute to making societies Dystopian instead of Utopian. It all can boil down to human nature, if you look at it that way. Humans make errors- that's undeniable. Everyone lies, or cheats, or steals at some point in their lives. Some people do these kinds of bad things repeatedly, not really caring about the outcome or what is at stake. There are always going to be problems in the world and in our country. The problem can be something big like terrorism, or it could be something small like the road system. The point is, a lot of problems are unavoidable.

In an "Ideal America", everyone would have to be happy, which is also impossible to accomplish. There is no proven way to make every single person in the country happy- it just can't happen. Some people won't be happy for anything, and some people might think something will make them happy when it really won't.

I cannot describe an Ideal America because I'm facing the facts- there will most likely never be an ideal anything, because there are problems everywhere and with everything- our laptops lose battery power, our cars break down, our loved ones die, we lose our friends, our pencil runs out of lead, our alarm clocks don't go off. Just because our society cannot be ideal doesn't mean we can't be happy- it just means that we're always going to have some kind of problem.

Holmes Poem Analysis

The poem I chose to analyze was "The Height of Ridiculous" Oliver Wendell Holmes. I'm not going to lie, I chose this poem because I liked the title. It is immediately clear that Holmes is somewhat of a literal writer. He still uses the "flowery" language that was common in the romanticism period, but there are no difficult "hidden meanings" to interpret in the poem. Holmes conveys his sense of humor into the poem and manages to keep the mood light and simple- there does not seem to be any underlying issues going on throughout the story detailed in the poem.

It seems that the main purpose of the poem is to simply entertain his audience.

Holmes, Oliver W. "247. The Height of the Ridiculous." Bartleby.com: Great Books Online -Quotes, Poems, Novels, Classics and Hundreds More. Web. 03 Nov. 2010. http://www.bartleby.com/248/247.html

Journal #18: Poem

Okay, so we're supposed to write a romanticism poem? Alrighty...roses are red, violets are blue, and a bunch of other stuff. Instead of writing a poem, I'm going to take this assignment liberally and talk about Romanticism poems instead.

One of the first uses of the phrase "roses are red, violets are blue" can be traced back to Sir Edmund Spenser in "The Faerie Queene", which was written in 1590. The poem reads "It was upon a Sommers shynie day, When Titan faire his beames did display, In a fresh fountaine, farre from all mens vew, She bath'd her brest, the boyling heat t'allay; She bath'd with roses red, and violets blew, And all the sweetest flowres, that in the forrest grew." (I'm not going to lie, I got this information from wikipedia and I really don't care). Poets and other random people have continued to use this phrase throughout time and this line has changed to things like "Roses are red, violets are blue, this poems stinks, and so do you."

I read some other people's poems and they are so humiliating that I refuse to write one myself. I can't rhyme like at all...cheese, geez, moo, coo, blah, blah, blah. That would be the extent of my poem, and everyone would laugh at me and I would probably cry and I don't need anymore stress in my life. My junior year is jammed packed with weighted classes and I feel like their repeatedly kicking me in the face and in the stomach. Next year will be wonderful...two weighted classes (plus Art IV) and a bunch of other blow off classes. It will be beautiful, and I am very excited for it.

This is the end of my journal. My hatred for poetry is...eternal.

Thanatopsis Explanation

Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant is a poem that talks about nature, death, and dying.
In the first stanza, Bryant is talking about dying in general and the very thought of dying. He says that dying is sad and cold and dark, detailing the more negative aspects. As the first stanza continues, Bryant goes on to explain that when a person dies, it's not so bad because the earth reclaims that person and they become a part of nature. He says that when the oak tree's roots extend to the buried, they pierce the dead person to make them a part of the tree. Although Bryant first called death cold and sad, his tone changes slightly when he says people are not alone in death because of their connection with nature.


Everyone dies, everyone is buried, and everyone becomes on in nature is basically the point Bryant begins to convey. He says that after death you join those who have died before you and will later be joined by those who will die after you, like a repeated cycle of death and nature. Bryant writes in his poem that bodies become a part of the earth and the beauty of nature is due to those who have died.

Bryant also says death is not bad because people remain immortal through death because they are technically still living through nature. Because of this, Bryant says that there although there are many people on earth, this number is even larger because he thinks dead people are still technically a part of earth because they have become a part of the nature that surrounds living people. Bryant says the worst part of death would be dying without anyone else noticing, even though everything that breathes will die one day and become one is nature so it does not really matter. People will continue living even after you die, but no matter how each individual acts after your death, they will all have the same fate. According to Bryant, the individual lifestyles that people led do not matter because at the end, everyone will die and be placed with each other.

The most important part of the poem is that Bryant wants people to realize that they will die along with everyone else; it is important to be happy while living so that when your day comes they will go in to death happily.