Romanticism and Transcendentalism Essay

A Strong Ego Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer is a book surrounding the whereabouts of Chris McCandless and why McCandless really decided to take the big journey into the Bush. Into the Wild tries connect the dots with McCandless´ actions with different young adults who happened to do similar journeys like this. Krakauer interviewed different people that McCandless has encountered through his adventure and how he reacted towards them. McCandless also had a small notebook that allows us to go into…

Dead Poets Society and “Self-Reliance” are two incredibly comparable pieces that express the transcendentalist ideas which begin during the 1830-40s. They both contain a plethora of common beliefs, most notably, non-conformity, carpe diem, and self-exploration. Each of the pieces, “Self-Reliance” and Dead Poets Society, obtain multiple meaningful messages that allow the reader to learn important life lessons. Peter Weir, the director of Dead Poets Society, enforces the idea of individuality,…

In Mending Wall, nature seems to be the third wheel of the story, the silent character surrounding the neighbours. However, the protagonist of Mending Wall has profound respect for nature and the beings that occupy it. He uses nature in trying to convince the neighbour not to build a wall. This is evident when the persona says “… apple trees will never get across/ … and eat the cones under his pines…”. The apple trees are personified as the speaker claims that they will never cross onto the…

Christopher McCandless, the protagonist of the movie Into the Wild sheds his identity and life behind in exchange for the life of Alexander Supertramp who lives by transcendentalist values and ideals. He as well as the people he meets adopt beliefs similar to transcendentalist philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. In Into the Wild both philosophers and Christopher believe that a man must live and think truly independent of himself, modest and in pursuit of knowledge. They…

The Novel, “The winter of Our Discontent” written by John Steinbeck is related to the literature of the American Seminar course. Within the novel, it has many moments in which the protagonist, Ethan Hawley, reflects upon himself and his decisions in life. He often refers to his,” Place”, where he goes to sort of meditate and become one with nature. He describes his Place as, “That is my place , the place everyone needs.I was compelled to go and sit inside there and hear the little waves slap the…

1.) Thoreau’s journals, within “American Earth” by Al Gore, consolidates numerous themes and materials revolving around environmental writings. Sequentially he starts out contemplating that even after one dies they will live on through nature. He then continues to elaborate on the beauty of nature and how humans take it for granted. This is evident when he’s describing men that have grown ignorant to sounds of nature, “silence audible,” as he calls it. Why? The modernization of society, causing…

The time period of transcendentalism changed the views of many people as well as bringing the five tenets of transcendentalist. These tenants were discussed by Walden explaining confidence, self-reliance, free thought, nonconformity, and importance of nature. Many pieces of literature contain some or all of these tenets, the ones i’m going to discuss and analyze today are Still I Rise by Maya Angelou that focuses on self-reliance and stanza 1 and 52 from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman which…

Journey of the Resolute Walking is a common thing for us. Walking, jogging, strolling, running, sprinting, shopping are but a few examples of walking commonly seen in current society. However in other parts of the world, there’s a type of walking only done by the devout. It’s a long, laborious, spiritually transformative walk known as pilgrimages. Rebecca Solnit, a writer, joined one of the pilgrims on her journey and wrote about her experience in her work, ‘The Uphill Road to Grace: Some…

Ralph Waldo Emerson and James Fenimore Cooper are both well-known writers from the 1800 's. Emerson was a Transcendentalist poet, he would go around giving lectures and those lectures turned into his essays which then became his well know poem Nature. One the other hand, James Fenimore Cooper was a novelist known for his series of five novels which included The Last of the Mochicans. During these times, the work of these men were very popular and impacting, the following will depict some…

When Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution, he noted that a species’ traits changed when they inhabited different environments. Similar to Darwin’s ideas, American values varied in accordance to one’s circumstances. In the early 1630s, a religious group known as the Puritans fled from England to escape persecution. Their leader, John Winthrop, delivered a sermon known as “A Model of Christian Charity” upon the arrival of their new home, America. It listed out future actions the…