Self-Reliance

1. Self-Reliance Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841

2. Wri(gh)te Now: • Select one of the following passages; for each, continue writing as if the original statement is your own. Write down whatever thoughts and statements would follow this “topic sentence.” Don’t refer back to the original essay. • “We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.” • “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” • “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company…” • “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” • “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.” • “We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause.”

3. Well…how about it?? • How self-reliant are you? What has helped or hindered your self-reliance?

4. Yeah, but… • Is the kind of life Emerson describes possible? Why or why not?