Self reliance
I will, in the following, discuss the theme of self-reliance in the above-mentioned texts. But what exactly is self-reliance? In his 1841 publication called Essays, Ralph Waldo Emerson includes an essay simply entitled Self-Reliance in which he states “Trust thyself…Great men have always done so and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age…” . Self-reliance is thus defined as the ability to be your own master and to seek your own fortune free from influences from your surroundings. Hawthorne wrote Young Goodman Brown in 1835, some 6 years before Emerson’s Self-Reliance. Still it is obvious from the text that the notion of self-reliance was, if not named, very much alive. In the text we encounter Goodman Brown – a pious puritan settler - as he embarks on a strange and perilous journey into the woods surrounding the settlement. Hawthorne, being a harsh critic of the puritan society from which he himself derived, uses the story as an allegory, a metaphor, for the necessity of facing your internal demons and doing it alone. The Puritans believed that the wilderness was the home of the devil and his minions (Indians, wild beasts and the like) and as such was a place to be shunned. Still, Goodman Br
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1072
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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