Emerson, Melville and Whitman :: Free Essay Writer

The way I view the world has been greatly affected by my reading this semester. Thought I had read Emerson and Melville before, I never before was able to sound the depths of their work and fully deem it. This semester was my first real exposure to Whit human being, as well. The best analogy for my sensitive outlook is an image of the universe as a yin-yang it is a complete, unploughed whole within which two polar opposites are constantly in conflict. But more(prenominal) significantly I subscribe to taken to content the doctrine of Self-Reliance, which is one shared by all three authors.Emerson presents a different system of learning than I had ever encountered. Throughout my prior education, I was taught to learn whatever was in the book. The only place skipper thought was accepted was in occasional creative writing assignments, and veritable(a) then a stylistic formula was required. The sentence from Self-Reliance, A man should learn to detect and watch that gle am of light which flashes across his foreland from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. was a completely new mood to me. My mind originally dismissed the concept from his journals that The dead sleep in their moonless night my business is with the living. . . . But on further reflection, it do sense. Self-reliance is an intimidating concept. Students are taught to externally justify any send we take. If we declare a thesis statement we must find leap out for it in the crumbling stacks of the library. Yet in the end I provoke found that self-reliance is the most satisfying way to grapple with life.Melville much supports these ideas in his writing. When Ishmael encounters the whale skeleton that a tribe of islanders have elevated to the status of a god, he demonstrates the gravity one should fit in to others ideas of religion Cutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived within the skeleton. From their arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived me taking the altitude of the final rib. How flat they shouted Darst thou measure this our god Thats for us. Aye, priestswell, how long do ye make him, then? But hereupon a fierce contest rosaceous among them, concerning feet and inches they cracked each others sconces with their yard-sticksthe great skull echoedand seizing that lucky chance, I chop-chop concluded my own admeasurements.