Emerson, Whitman, and Melville
The way I view the world has been greatly affected by my reading this semester. Thought I had read Emerson and Melville before, I never before was able to sound the depths of their work and fully appreciate it. This semester was my first real exposure to Whitman, as well. The best analogy for my new outlook is an image of the universe as a yin-yang; it is a complete, unbroken whole within which two polar opposites are constantly in conflict. But more significantly I have taken to heart the doctrine of "Self-Reliance," which is one shared by all three authors. Emerson presents a different system of learning than I had ever encountered. Throughout my previous education, I was taught to learn whatever was in the book. The only place original thought was accepted was in occasional creative writing assignments, and even then a stylistic formula was required. The sentence from "Self-Reliance," "A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages." (263) was a completely new idea to me. My mind originally dismissed the concept from his journals that "The dead sleep in their moonless nigh
From their arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived me taking the altitude of the final rib. " (200) Life and death are directly opposed other places in the novel, if not in conflict per se. On the above-mentioned whale skeleton, vines grow. Melville blatantly refutes the utility of the "transparent eyeball" in everyday life. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. " (428) Ahab himself is an example of binary symbolism. Melville frequently supports these ideas in his writing. Melville also denies that Emerson or any man can truly view the infinite. " (442) Regarding duality, Whitman falls between Melville and Emerson. In his story "I and My Chimney," he decries the practice of placing chimneys on the outside walls of a house, for then the occupants find themselves "fairly sitting back to back. Emerson eliminated boundaries between his soul and the physical world. If a sailor's attention wavers while at the mast-head, "perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise forever. One of the most significant things impressed on my mind by Melville is the duality of the universe. -Why then do you try to "enlarge" your mind? Subtilize it.
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Acceptance Essays
