Self Reliance

A detailed Summary of Self Reliance

S E L F - R E L I A N C E E S S A Y

"A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles." In these concluding lines of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay, he once again pounds his beliefs in nonconformatism across to the reader.

The examples of Jay Gatspy, in The Great Gatspy, and George Babbitt, in Babbitt support Emerson's strong convictions. Jay Gatspy lived a financially comfortable life but spent all of his time living not for himself, but living for his long love for Dazy, a married woman. And George Babbitt was even more ignorant. Conformatism was this man's middle name! The only thing this poor man ever thought about was impressing his "so-called" high class friends.

This type of attitude brought both of these men sorrow, and even killed one of them. There is no doubt that Emerson had some great thoughts in his essay, but in my opinion his strong belief in nonconformatism is wrong as is confromatism itself. Instead of taking an extreme "right win

g" or "left wing" stand, I think a compromise should be made between the two.

In analyzing a character such as George Babbitt, it is very simple to support Emerson's extreme claims of pro-individualism. Like many people that lived in the early 20th century, Babbitt seemed to define what we call mediocrity. He was a man that lived his life in fear of being an outcast of society, and only had ambitions of raising his social status, no matter what the cost. He was a man who wanted, craved, and needed a daily routine, and was filled with uneasiness if that routine was ever broken. He would publicly proclaim his beliefs, which coincided those of society, and numerous times would even sacrifice his own beliefs simply to gain favor with his business partners and peers.

Like Babbitt, Joe Gatspy did not have much self reliance or integrity, but he seemed to know exactly what he was getting into. In Babbitt's case, he had simply fallen into a routine; and even though he was somewhat intelligent, he didn't bother to take a look at himself to see what he had become. However Joe Gatspy, had a self awareness but simply didn't have the will-power to do anything to end his ongoing affair with Dazy.

Beneath Babbitt's exterior, there is a vague nervousness and comfortableness that plagues him his entire life. This plague seems to be caused simply by a lack of integrity-no backbone. When the novel ends, Babbitt says that he feels fine and healthy, and to all appearances he is. However, the reader knows that Babbitt's last bits of intelligence, imagination, and integrity have been distilled into the concept of what is known today as "babbittry."

There are many concepts we can derive from Emerson's essay that could have helped the people in the 1920's. Maybe Emerson's essay was so brutally stated because he was fed up with the continuing conformatism of that time. However, if the people of that particular time period would have taken Self-Reliance literally, we must ask ourselves "where would we be today?" With the many opinions of the population being spoken in "hard words," everythi

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Approximate Word count = 1416
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

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