This semester we have read many essays, stories, and poems on the “self”. The question is what do all of these writings mean? What did the authors want us to take from their writings? I believe they were wanting to give us a road map to learn what it means to be self-reliant, self-secure, and also to stand up to injustices that we see in the world, or at least our new world. The authors we have studied in this class wanted to write to give America its own identity separate from Europe. There are so many examples of this it is hard to narrow it down to just a few for the purpose of this essay but I will do my best. Our country has been founded on the principles of self-reliance, self-sacrifice, and love.
In Ralph Waldo Emmerson’s essay “Self-Reliance” …show more content…
In Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark”, he writes of a woman that loves her husband so much she is willing to go to any length to please him, even death. Georgiana is willing to endure many experiments that her husband, Aylmer, concocts just to rid herself of a small imperfection on her cheek because it is dis pleasing to him. She is so selfless and self-sacrificing that as she is laying there dying she tells him “You have aimed loftily! - You have done so nobly! Do not repent, that, with so high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best that earth could offer. Aylmer- dearest Aylmer- I am dying!” she loves him so much that even though he killed her over a small imperfection she does not want him to mourn or be sad. She fully gave herself to him and sacrificed the one thing that made her …show more content…
There is love of country, love of others and love of oneself. I believe that love is something that everyone searches for and only the lucky are able to find. Edgar Allen Poe wrote many stories and poems about love (some darker than others). In Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” he writes of a love so deep that not even death can separate them. Poe writes “And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee.”(643) His love of Annabel cannot be stopped by heaven or hell. That kind of love can leave one lonely and vulnerable, but that is the essence of true unwavering and unyielding love. With love there is loss and the writers we have read suffered tremendous loss. Longfellow wrote a poem “The Cross of Snow” he writes about the death of his second wife. Longfellow is setting at night unable to sleep because of the pain of losing his love and he writes “These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes and seasons, changeless since the day she died.” I believe we can all relate to losing someone that so profoundly changed our life that we can no longer live the life we lived before. But, it does pose the questions what is life without love and can you truly love without loss? We have studied so many exceptional writers this semester that it does not seem fair to leave any out but this paper does have a limit. I believe that
In Ralph Waldo Emmerson’s essay “Self-Reliance” …show more content…
In Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark”, he writes of a woman that loves her husband so much she is willing to go to any length to please him, even death. Georgiana is willing to endure many experiments that her husband, Aylmer, concocts just to rid herself of a small imperfection on her cheek because it is dis pleasing to him. She is so selfless and self-sacrificing that as she is laying there dying she tells him “You have aimed loftily! - You have done so nobly! Do not repent, that, with so high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best that earth could offer. Aylmer- dearest Aylmer- I am dying!” she loves him so much that even though he killed her over a small imperfection she does not want him to mourn or be sad. She fully gave herself to him and sacrificed the one thing that made her …show more content…
There is love of country, love of others and love of oneself. I believe that love is something that everyone searches for and only the lucky are able to find. Edgar Allen Poe wrote many stories and poems about love (some darker than others). In Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” he writes of a love so deep that not even death can separate them. Poe writes “And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee.”(643) His love of Annabel cannot be stopped by heaven or hell. That kind of love can leave one lonely and vulnerable, but that is the essence of true unwavering and unyielding love. With love there is loss and the writers we have read suffered tremendous loss. Longfellow wrote a poem “The Cross of Snow” he writes about the death of his second wife. Longfellow is setting at night unable to sleep because of the pain of losing his love and he writes “These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes and seasons, changeless since the day she died.” I believe we can all relate to losing someone that so profoundly changed our life that we can no longer live the life we lived before. But, it does pose the questions what is life without love and can you truly love without loss? We have studied so many exceptional writers this semester that it does not seem fair to leave any out but this paper does have a limit. I believe that