1, What you saw from the nature world can be responded to the inner heart.
2, Most supreme and eternal power
3, Self- reliance
4, Has own thinking & action
5, own thinking creates own rule
After 1865, few people refer to the Transcendentalism
Emily Dickinson
Poems 465
I heard a Fly buzz- when I died-
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air-
Between the Heaves of Storm-
The Eyes around- had wrung them dry-
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset- when the King
Be witnessed- in the Room
I willed my Keepsakes- Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable- and then it was
There interposed a Fly-
With Blue- uncertain stumbling Buzz- Between the light- and me-
And then the Windows failed- and then
I could not see to see-
The individual soul chooses her self alone as a companion. Then, she closes her door, rejecting all other souls.
She disappears from the view of those others. It is sufficient.
The self-sufficiency of the soul makes her undisturbed by the passing glory of the external world. She observes the passing of the state carriage by her gate.
She is unaffected even by the powerful and mighty emperor who is pleading and kneeling upon her door-mat. I have known her; she chooses only one other soul from the whole society, and blocks all the other claims to her attention. Like a stone, she becomes insensible to their advancer.
Walt Whitman
“Preface to Leaves of Grass” 1855
“Song of Myself”
What is “Myself”- including everything touched by all the sensual parts of our bodies
Scientist uses visual most of time about measuring human being and Nature
But, it is not enough
Whitman using a method by touch sense to express
You sea! I resign myself to you also…. I guess what you mean,
I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers,
I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me;
We must have a turn together….I undress…hurry me out of sight of the land,
Cushion me soft…rock me in billowy drowse,
Dash me with amorous wet..I can repay you.
What is the grass?
The handkerchief of the Lord
The grass is itself a child
The beautiful uncut hair of graves
Hair is a part of life, it symbolize the life transcend the death, pass the meaning” all goes onward and onward” message.
What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me.
Henry David Thoreau
Walden, or Life in the Woods
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Each person has the unpardonable sin that is the invasion of the sanctity of another person’s soul.
Only through confession that can get the redemption
The Scarlet Letter
Adultery-> Able-> Angle
Hester Prynne
Arthur Dimmesdale ( minster)
Chillingworth- Hester’s husband
Pearl ( H’s daughter)
Allusion of Pearl- from Matthew/Bible
For Entering Heaven, to give up all the treasures ( Pearl of Great Price)
Does anyone live in original sin?
Herman Melville
Moby Dick
Man against nature, good against evil, an ambiguous symbol, an innocent or blankness? Or neutral forces or sinister forces?
Moby Dick not only ubiquitous, but immortal;that though groves of spears should be planted in his flanks, he would still swim away unharmed
SHIP: Pequod
Ishmael ( out cast meaning) / Queequeg- s. Pacific
Discuss the relationship between with Human being, universe, religious, race, sex, culture
Ahab / Starbuck
Moby Dick- the incarnation of Evil power from universe
Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn
The most satiric point in the novel is that Twain reveals the injustice of the slave-holding society by Huck’s inner struggle over whether or not to turn Jim in as a runaway slave. Huck’s conscience” is ill-trained by his”sivilized” society. So Huck naturally thinks that to help an escaped slave is wrong both legally and morally, for his society has taught him that a slave is an impersonal object, a piece of property.
Actually, when Huck decides to seek Jim’s freedom and says,”All right, then , I ‘ll go to hell,” his sin, on the contrary, reveals the noblest of human nature. Huck’s innate innocence at alst triumphs over the dictates of a corrupt, never genuineyly civilized, society.
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