Monday, October 18, 2010
Thank God its Over
Spending all this time on this one piece of Emerson's, really woke me up to realize that my reading comprehension is not perfect. As I worked at understanding about how a scholar should live his life and how he should contribute his the larger system he is a part of, I began to understand the piece as a whole. The very end stresses the importance of the American scholar to break away from their European influences and create their own ideologies. Creating their own scholarly pieces/works would set America apart and let it grow into the nation of freedom and equality that it was predicted to be.
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You've got it. Emerson's effect on this country is, in my opinion, profound. Those who write do affect what the readers think and do. As the writers continue to wrestle with what it means to be American, the constantly growing number of readers get to see this development in thought. I believe that it makes a difference in how the people think of themselves. Many thinkers look back to Emerson's call to this group of scholars to get up and look for the stories that are taking place here, the stories that he says are so compelling that they will tell themselves if these folks don't get out there and go to work; many of those thinkers then say that his challenge helped to shape the way that we are. We have a ways to go in our study of the literature of this country, but I hope that the thoughts that we are covering are stirring your mind up a bit. If your blog entries are any indication, they are.
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