Selected final projects from the 2005 Capstone

Jenny Dziurawiec

Senior Capstone:  Emerson

Sean Meehan

6 December 2005

Wanted:  American Scholars

            In our everyday encounters, our ideal situation is often different from the reality in which we find ourselves.  We wish to make more money, to live in larger houses, or to have easier occupations.  When we think of the ideal, we often neglect to consider one of the single most important institutions that exists today:  our public school system.  Many of the characteristics of the average public school have been in place for well over a hundred years, and many people don’t consider what else an education system should be.  But as time goes on, more and more people realize that students aren’t ready for college.  Literacy levels and writing proficiency abilities are steadily declining, but nothing appears to be changing.  As early as 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson had very specific beliefs concerning what an institution of higher learning should be doing, but he was well aware of the reality of the situation.  Emerson generally wrote and spoke of American colleges, but many of the same principles could be applied to any secondary institution.  Emerson would hardly be any happier with the American educational system of students’ inability to think for themselves, the seeming “worship” of books, and the schedule of a school day than he was in 1837. 

            How many times has any person heard the phrase, “He just isn’t able to think for himself”?  This inability is found in people of all ages, but it seems to be more prevalent in the adolescent years.  Bickman argues that this is largely due to the current education system.  He writes, “The central irony here is that the institution in our society most explicitly charged with encouraging thought has become the most impervious to reflective, unbiased thinking about its own workings; it has been running on autopilot for the past two centuries” (8).  Numerous teachers or administrators don’t want to change the ways things are done because it’s simply easier to leave them the way it has always been.  Bickman goes on to list the elements of schooling that have been viewed as constant and unchanging structures, such as “the grouping of students by age in self-contained classrooms with a single teacher; the division of knowledge into ‘subjects’; the use of textbooks to teach these subjects”, and others (8). 

            Much of what is seen in current secondary institutions was put into place by Horace Mann.  Mann was the first secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, a position that he himself had a large part in creating (Bickman 7).  These include the ideas of separating students into grades, knowledge into lessons and textbooks, and days into fixed periods. 

            Ralph Waldo Emerson would speak out against several things that have become almost universal in secondary schools.  The first of these is the lack of students thinking for themselves.  Students in high school may not always be able to form the most complete thoughts, but they should still have some opinions of their own.  In “The American Scholar”, Emerson mentions the various stages of thinking.  He writes, “In the right state, he is Man Thinking.  In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking” (Porte 57).  Emerson’s ideal would naturally be the Man Thinking, but I see few students fitting into this category.  In all reality, today’s high school students, and even many college students, fit into this parrot state.  They repeat the opinions of the teacher because they think this is the correct thing to do – the students don’t have to venture to be “wrong” and can continue to be as passive as they wish.  They memorize the information required for tests and quizzes, only to forget it in a few days’ time.  The parrot, in Emerson’s opinion, learns nothing.  He is too dumb to even question what is being presented to him and accepts what he is presented with to be the truth. 

            But the “mere thinker” isn’t much better.  In Emerson’s opinion, this person has maybe attempted to think for themselves at some point.  The word thinker is past tense, meaning the person in question was once doing the action but has stopped for some reason.  I believe some students find themselves in this position.  Maybe they ventured to question the opinion of a teacher and were ridiculed for their opinion.  Maybe they were repeatedly told that what they believed was simply “wrong.”  If it happens enough, as it very well may in some classrooms, a student will simply stop thinking.  Emerson would be displeased with this notion.  He would suggest that teachers step back from the all-too-common lectures and allow the students a more active role in their education.

            The one area of modern education that I would foresee Emerson having the largest problem with is the almost religious use of textbooks in practically every American classroom.  In “The American Scholar”, Emerson writes “Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.  The books of an older period will not fit this” (Porte 59).  In my own high school experience, textbooks were issued in every class.  Some of the books were over eight years old and didn’t seem to have as much relevance as they could.  I attended a small, rural high school, and money, or a lack thereof, was always an issue.  We were using texts that probably contained much of the same information as newer ones, but they weren’t written in an appealing manner.  When new books were purchased, we were constantly lectured about keeping the books in excellent shape because they would have to last.  Because of the threats of fines, the books were opened only when absolutely necessary and were never to be marked in.  As students, we never experienced anything the books could offer us because the consequence of fines outweighed any knowledge that could be gained by actually using the books. 

            Aside from texts that don’t fit the time period, Emerson would also disapprove of the consistent use of the books.  In “The American Scholar”, Emerson tell us that, “Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst” (Porte 59).  Emerson isn’t arguing that everyone should start their own book burning clubs; he’s saying that books have a place, but students and teachers alike should not become dependent solely on books.  He goes on to say, “Books are for the scholar’s idle times” (Porte 60).  Books have a role in American education, but Emerson believes these books should take a backseat to active participation in learning.  Because of this, I believe Emerson would approve of at least one current educational trend.  One style of education that has gained use in the last few years does just what Emerson would like education to do.  Constructivism is a style of teaching in which the classroom teacher takes the role of a facilitator, and the students are more active in their education.  Constructivist lessons contain no lectures.  The teacher aids students in their understanding and assists them when they are having difficulty with some material, but the student is required to come to his own opinions and conclusions.  I believe Emerson would be in favor of all American teachers using constructivist lessons.  In “The American Scholar”, Emerson wrote, “The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul” (Porte 59).  Later in the same work, he continues, “So much only of life as I know by experience” (Porte 61).  In giving students the opportunities to take more active roles in their education, teachers allow their students to experience more of their worlds and to gain that much more knowledge about themselves.  Emerson writes, “Build, therefore, your own world” in Nature (Porte 55), and constructivist lessons do just that for today’s students. 

            One may now pose this question:  If Emerson believes books are only for the scholar’s idle times, and students should take more active roles in their education, could America establish an education system without the use of any books at all?  In theory, I believe Emerson would propose this could happen.  Toward the middle of “The American Scholar”, Emerson writes, “We all know, that, as the human body can be nourished on any food, though it were boiled grass and the broth of shoes, so the human mind can be fed by any knowledge.  And great and heroic men have existed, who had almost no other information than by a printed page.  I only would say, that it needs a strong head to bear that diet” (Porte 60).  Students can be “fed by any knowledge”, meaning that they are able to learn without the use of textbooks.  Students learn things from parents, siblings, and peers.  The media may also play a large role in what American students are learning, from television shows, video games, and the Internet.  But in order for this theory to work, American students would need “a strong head to bear that diet.”  Students would need to be able to differentiate between what useful and important knowledge is and what is unnecessary information and knowledge that is corruptive to their education.  I believe most American students would need to be at Emerson’s “Man Thinking” stage, and in all honesty, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.  My reasoning for this lies mainly in the reality that students have been exposed to too many lectures, too many worksheets, and too many other activities that haven’t contributed to their being able to think well for themselves.  If the lectures were lessened, and activities in the classrooms became more meaningful, then perhaps an American education system without books could eventually happen – just not anytime too soon. 

            The third area of American education that would cause Emerson great displeasure is the format of a typical school day.  Generally, high schools have seven or eight periods in a day, and the same subject is taught during the same period of every day for at least a semester, sometimes for the entire year.  For example, my high school journalism class met from 9:15 until 10:00 everyday for an entire year.  This consistency helps provide a framework for a typical day, but it often doesn’t allow for students to get the time and assistance needed in order to complete a task or assignment.  Because of the sheer amount of material that must be covered due to state standards and benchmarks, some topics aren’t given adequate time.  In addition, there are often days in which students simply don’t want to do math, but wouldn’t mind a double period of physics or English.  Emerson would see this typical school day as foolish.  In “Self-Reliance”, he says, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.  With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.  He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall” (Porte 125).  This consistency in the school day doesn’t allow students to do the things that he needs more time for.  In not getting this time and instead moving on to other things, he is doing as much for his intellectual well-being as staring at a wall would .

             The biggest problem now is to find a way to solve all these effectively.  There are going to be some students who will never want to learn math, or science, or English, but all are required for acceptance into higher educational institutions.  Getting through school days without depending on books will take time and extra work.  And getting students to be able to think for themselves, without the teacher pouring knowledge into them or forcing opinions onto them, may prove to be one of education’s most difficult issues yet.  But Emerson would believe they must be attempted, no matter the work involved.  In Nature, he quotes Bacon, “good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed!” (Porte 39). This more ideal school setting will only come to be when teachers and administrators set the stage for such things to happen.  Emerson writes in “The Over-Soul”, “The soul looketh steadily forwards, creating a world before her, leaving worlds behind her” (Porte 165).  As educators, we must look to the future, not how things were done in the past.  We must devote ourselves to create free thinkers in our classrooms and to move away from the worship of books.  “Not any profane man, not any sensual, not any liar, not any slave can teach”, but a new influx of American educators can.  We must aim “not to drill, but to create” and to “set the hearts of youth on flame.”  Only when we as educators can begin to do just those things, Emerson’s “Man Thinking” will exist in every secondary school in the country.  We will create Emerson’s American scholars. 
 

Works Cited

Bickman, Martin.  Minding American Education:  Reclaiming the Tradition of Active Learning.

     New York:  Teachers College Press, 2003.

Porte, Joel and Saundra Morris, ed.  Emerson’s Prose and Poetry.  New York:  W. W. Norton

     & Company, 2001. 

Emerson Capstone Essay

Meehan

December 6, 2005

Cliff Thompson

The Initial Reading of Emerson’s Unique Literary Style

            We find ourselves picking up Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays.  Perhaps because we have been told we have to do so by our teacher or professor, maybe even voluntarily we experiment. We have heard great things about his writing; that the essays are insightful and will change our perspective, that the content will teach us a life lesson.  

As careful readers we find ourselves underlining passages, making notes in the margins.  We think outside the text.  Inspired to move in tangents, we fly away, lost in an Emersonian journey of thought. Eventually our minds return to the book, but we are lost, unable to retrace the steps that sent us on our mental voyage.  With any text there is difficulty in coming back, sometimes after even a short interlude, but with Emerson it is more; often we have an immediate disorientation from his words.  We cannot re-engage the language in mid sentence or mid paragraph, where we so easily slid away.  We have read difficult works before, so we are frustrated.  Why is Emerson so much harder to cope with—particularly for the neophyte reader?  Certainly some of his philosophy is new to us.  The vocabulary is complex.  Emerson comes off as an eccentric, impractically wandering through the woods muttering to himself and scribbling in his journal. Of course we cannot read this, this guy was crazy.  The very structure of the sentence and paragraph are not what we expect from a nonfiction essay.  It is unrecognizable to our uninitiated eyes.  For new readers, Emerson’s essential difference in style comes in his elaborate and consistent use of dense figurative language:  metaphor, simile, fantastic symbols and images.  This style requires the reader to have an intense focus on the train of his thought, and magnificent memory for where the text has come from.  If the mind wavers at all, one risks losing the essay’s magic entirely. 

            There may be no passage which resonates more perfectly with the frustration of the reader than the opening lines of “Experience ”:

Where do we find ourselves?  In a series, of which we do not know the extremes, and believe it has none.  We wake and find ourselves on a stair:  there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight.

            The passage echoes the sentiments of our frustrated reader.  He “wakes” in the middle of an essay—indeed a series of them—unsure how he has come this far.  There are paragraphs on pages prior, which he seems to have read, the page ahead has paragraphs which are yet to be read, they seem to go on forever, out of sight.  It seems incomprehensible that we have come through pages of an essay, or weeks of reading and yet do not really know what we have read.  We scan back up the page, flip back to the introduction.  Where is the thread of thought?  Where is the thesis?

            The major discrepancy with Emerson is that he does not align with the structures of writing we have been trained to recognize.  He ignores the conventional responsibility of the author, to make the reader’s job easy, to engage the reader and help them get lost in the pages of a book.  The best writers mean to disappear from the pages; revision after revision removes every intrusion in the text that could make the reader put the book down.  The author strives to become transparent.  Emerson flies in the face of this convention.  The writing is so intensely and extraordinarily crafted that the uninitiated reader, no matter the level of their comprehension ability, often finds him or herself experiencing the “stairway effect.” 

            The primary phenomenon that triggers this disparity in Emerson’s writing style is the abundance of figurative language.  Metaphors permeate the text, similes abound.  His imagery is often obscure, bizarre and difficult to read.  The figurative phrases are everywhere in a continuous barrage which only compounds their difficulty.  Dr. Eric Wilson, now of Wake Forest University, looks at the root of the density of Emerson’s writing in his article “Terrible Simplicity”: Emerson’s metaleptic style.  “Emerson always wanted a highly charged writing style…[he] desired that his words be as dynamic as nature”.  Wilson calls the primary literary mover toward this “highly charged” style “metaleptic”—where metonymy of one figurative sense is substituted for another.  Wilson’s thesis is that metalepsis is the perfect style for Emerson’s content and philosophy, that indeed, the figurative style of metalepsis has a basic similarity with nature itself. 

Emerson believed that the "virtue of rhetoric is compression" (W 12:290): the writer should compose "dense," contracted sentences resembling the human face, "where in a square space of a few inches is found room for every possible variety of expression" (W 12:348). In good writing, "[w]ords are also actions, and actions are a kind of words" (CW 3:6). Nature's writing inspires man, who is "born to write," to record nature in a "new and finer form of the original," in a recording that "is alive, as that [nature] which is recorded is alive" (CW 4:151-52). The live words of this writing of nature are, like nature itself, "waves" that cannot be chained by "hard pedantry" (CW 4:68), "one thing and the other thing, in the same moment," not to be "orbed" in a single thought (CW 3:139).

Emerson's tropes are the conductors. In "The Poet," he declares that "[a]n imaginative book renders us more service at first, by stimulating us through its tropes" (CW 3:18-19). "The value of a trope," he writes in "Poetry and Imagination," "is that the hearer is one: and indeed Nature itself is a vast trope, and all particular natures are tropes. As the bird alights on the bough, then plunges into the air again, so the thoughts of God pause but for a moment in any form" (W 8:15). Tropes are actions. They turn univocal words into multivalent sites. Just as nature is constantly troping as it proceeds in '.'perpetual inchoation" and "rapid metamorphosis" (CW 1:124), converting "every sensuous fact" into a "double," "quadruple," "centuple," or "much more manifold meaning" (CW 3:3-4), so Emerson's tropes, aspiring to be one with things, "flow" like nature and are "fluxional," "vehicular and transitive," expressions of "manifold" meanings (CW 3:20).

            The seminal passage which Wilson looks at to explain the metaleptic style of Emerson is from “Nature.” The infamous “transparent eyeball” section, which has inspired everything from awe to ridicule to downright confusion in its readers since Emerson first published the essay anonymously in 1836.  Wilson’s analysis is filled with literary jargon and perhaps too intense for readers who are already decently confused simply by reading the passage, which presents its own problems:

            Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed perfect exhilaration. Almost I fear to think how glad I am. In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and a sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,--no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

            What does a beginning reader of Emerson make of a passage like this?  The writing is a veritable minefield of caesura, every other word seems to be a metaphor or simile of some type.  For the novice, Emerson’s prose style can be seen as a fundamental departure from the nonfiction they have read.  Really, through metalepsis and the crowded, continuous imagery , Emerson’s writing takes on a feeling that is one of poetry, rather than prose even (and maybe even especially) in his non fiction essays.

The difference between the two, poetry and prose, is an ongoing mystery.  Even in the classrooms of today’s colleges, creative writers face the challenge.  The instructor passes out a sheet of text examples.  The examples have been chopped up and realigned from their structures so that famous poems are in solid blocks, prose sections become lines all the way across the page.  The instructor then poses the question:  “What is the difference between poetry and prose?”  The students are generally unsure, guesses are made.  The conclusion usually reached is that the difference is only in the mind, that poetry is often only different due to “white space” or broken line elements in the text. 

Another basic difference between the two is that poetry often contains a much denser concentration of ideas.  Learning to write poetry, the student is taught always to compact the ideas into smaller bursts of language.  This is Emerson, whether in his prose forms or his poetry.  For example I’ve taken the liberty of breaking the introduction of “Divinity School Address” into lines of poetry.

In this refulgent summer,

            It has been a luxury to draw

            the breath of life.  The grass grows,
            the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire

            and gold in the tint of flowers.  The air is full

            of birds and sweet with the breath of the pine,

            the balm-of-Gilead, and the new hay.  Night

            brings no gloom to the heart

with its welcome shade.  Through the transparent

darkness the stars pour their almost

spiritual rays.  Man under them seems a young child,

and his huge globe a toy. 

            The words read well in the form of poetry.  The language is dense with verbs and nouns, there is physical description.  As the introduction, this sets the scene for the entire essay.  The metaphors are there, the last sentence making the world equitable to a toy.  Each word is calculated, each word carries an impact.  This is certainly intentional and represented throughout his essays.  The concept is further illustrated by J. Trevor McNelly in his “Beyond Deconstruction:  America, style, and Romantic Synthesis in Emerson.”

"…the near explains the far[;] [t]he drop is a small ocean" says Emerson, and "everything in Nature contains all the powers of nature . . . the universe is represented in every one of its particles" ("The American Scholar," 112; "Compensation," II, 100). But it is less in his articulation of the principle, than in its ingrained structural presence in his work that the real strength of his commitment to it is shown. I am referring here to its expression in his style, specifically in the famous aphoristic structure of his "risings, by which each sentence, indeed each phrase and each word, while part of a larger whole or unity, at the same time stands alone, a self-contained universe of truth, needing nothing from beyond itself to justify or support it. If there is one Emersonian trait which it is wholly superfluous to illustrate with examples, it is surely this, the single most striking feature of his style;

            McNelly here confirms some of the ideas of Wilson.  The essays and the writings style are a microcosm of Emerson’s philosophy, and of nature itself.  It may or may not be that we are supposed to be confused, but we as the neophyte reader certainly cannot approach Emerson’s essays with the intention of understanding all of what Emerson puts forth, at least not in our first reading.  We first must make a fundamental adjustment in our approach, to look at the writing as not prose, not poetry, but distinctly Emersonian.

Bibliography

Bishop, Jonathan.  Emerson on the Soul.  Harvard University Press.  (1964)

J., McNelly, Trevor. "Beyond Deconstruction: America, style and the Romantic synthesis in Emerson." Canadian Review of American Studies 22 (91): 61-83.

Poirier, Richard.  Poetry and Pragmatism.  Harvard University Press.  (1992)

Porte, Joel. "The Problem of Emerson." Harvard English Studies 4 (1973): 85-114.

Wilson, Eric. "'Terrible Simplicity': Emerson's metaleptic style." Style 31 (1997): 58-81.

Emerson’s Matrix:
Emersonian Ideas and Theories within The Matrix Mythology

Jess C. Horsley

Morningside College

Introduction

In 1999, Andy and Larry Wachowski released the visually-stunning and philosophy-rich film The Matrix.  Followed in 2003 by a compilation of animated short films entitled The Animatrix, and two live-action films – The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions – the numerous philosophical theories and ideas present in The Matrix mythology have been studied – and continue to be studied – by numerous scholars.

Academics have studied and applied Plato’s Cave, Nietzsche’s Tragedy, Gnosticism, modern and historical economics, world governments, domestic democracy, industrial robotics, artificial intelligence, and women’s roles to the films;[MC1]  hoping to reach a new and unique audience when shown in connection to the fictional world of The Matrix.

One scholar whose influence and ideas in relation to The Matrix have been, until now, ignored includes [MC2] noted 19^th century essayist and academic Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Emerson’s many philosophical ideas, when understood, recognized, and administered within the scope of the films’ philosophical messages, become instantly necessary to properly understanding one of these new and unique perspectives[MC3] .

Considered by some to be the quintessential American philosopher, Emerson and his influence seem somewhat shallow in relation to today’s popular culture.  Even with a title such as the one stated above, Emerson’s influence has been seemingly limited to motivational posters, wall plaques, and a well run 1988 Reebok advertising campaign (Pattell 440).  

Instead, Emerson is primarily studied by academics like author Cornel West, an actor in two of The Matrix films, who states in his essay The Emersonian Prehistory of American Pragmatism, “The long shadow cast by Ralph Waldo Emerson over American pragmatism has been often overlooked and rarely examined.”  West continues, “…Emerson is a singular and unique figure on the North Atlantic intellectual landscape who defies disciplinary classification” (743).  And Kerry Larson, another Emerson scholar, states, in her essay Emerson’s Strange Equality, “Ralph Waldo Emerson is American culture’s evangelist of equality” (315).  So, as Emerson’s shadow continues to cover American pragmatism and his ideas on equality continues to influence writers and readers 125 years after his death; in reality, in few places do we truly find study of Emerson’s influence on such pop culture phenomenon as The Matrix.

In this essay, I hope to break down the barriers of understanding between a number of Emerson’s finest essays and their relation to The Matrix films.  Utilizing comparing and contrasting dynamics as well as passages from both Emerson and some of his critics; I hope to bring due attention to Emerson’s influence on a film series that critic Steven D. Greydanus called “the most influential action movie since Star Wars” (Decent Films Guide).

The Question

“There is one mind common to all individual men.  Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same.” - History

Where are the above lines truer than in The Matrix mythology?  Mankind lives within a false, illusionary world called the Matrix; constructed by intelligent machines to ensure humanity’s pacification, the Matrix allows these machines to utilize “the bioelectric, thermal and kinetic energies of the human body” to power themselves.  The men, women, and children imprisoned within the Matrix share this common “mind” and experience this “same” world without ever realizing they’re imprisoned (The Second Renaissance).  What’s worse, however, is humanity’s lack of suspicion, lack of understanding, and lack of questioning.

Emerson, in much of his writing, asked more questions than he answered.  Like Emerson, Neo, the main protagonist in the films, understands the need to ask questions.  (Though he, too, asked far more questions than he or his actions ever answered).  The real question, however, when looking at both Emerson and Neo, becomes “Which questions are most important to ask?”

Emerson, in his essay The Over-Soul, questioned the “hidden source” from which man receives his “being.”  “Man is a stream whose source is hidden.  Our being is descending into us from we know not whence…I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine.” (163).  This statement becomes instantly comparable to the primary question within the film The Matrix.  This question, which became not only the basis for the entire first film, but also the film’s primary advertising campaign, had not only Neo asking it, but us, the audience, asking as well: “What is the Matrix?”

Kerry Larson, in the essay Individualism and the Place of Understanding in Emerson’s Essays, focuses on Emerson’s History.  She states, “…by portraying each individual as ‘one more incarnation’ of (the Universal Mind), Emerson democratizes genius and accordingly suggest a fundamental equality across all generations and ages” (1000).  When applied to The Matrix, the idea that each man and woman, from generation to generation, shares the same “source” and the same “origin” becomes instantly clear[MC4] . 

This “origin,” to Emerson, was the “Over-Soul,” the “greater nature in which we rest” (163).  However, within the Matrix mythology, this “origin” becomes the Matrix computer program, which not only imprisons men, but enslaves them without their knowledge.  Larson’s comments demonstrate the belief that each individual connected to “the Universal Mind” shares a “fundamental equality.”  Within the Matrix, this proves again true. 

However, how does [MC5] Emerson justify the fact that characters like Neo, with an ability to manipulate the Matrix, exists?  As stated above, Neo, like Emerson, knew it was necessary to ask questions and believe in one’s own thoughts.  Larson states, “Unthinking rejection of one’s own beliefs for no other reason than they are one’s own is…bound to appear unnatural or even pathological” (1001). 

Morpheus rejects not only his own beliefs but those fed to him by the Matrix; and becomes the epitome of the thinking revolutionary in The Matrix mythology.  In Circles, Emerson warns the world about men like Morpheus, “Beware when the greater God lets loose a thinker on this planet” (177).  As this “thinker,” Morpheus epitomizes Emerson’s own attitude in Circles: “I unsettle all things.  No facts are to me sacred… (180).  Additionally, as this thinking revolutionary, Morpheus becomes the beginning of the end of Matrix’s reign; for, as Emerson states in History, “Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era” (RWE.org[MC6] ).  As Neo’s beliefs ultimately parallel Morpheus’s, Neo allowed these beliefs to evolve into conscious thoughts and, instead of consulting the “Universal Mind” (in this case, the Matrix program); he instead sought answers from another unique source which understands not only the basis for his questions, but also the reason for them as well: Morpheus.  This becomes a quest for Neo – finding a different standpoint from which to answer his questions. 

Larson comments on this in her essay also, stating “…one framework favors a third-person perspective which, for Emerson, ultimately gets caught up in ‘surface differences,’ while the other, informed by ‘the deeper apprehension of the spirit,’ provides ‘a clearer vision of causes’” (1002).

When Neo first encounters Trinity and asks her the pertinent question “What is the Matrix?,” we, like Neo, do not yet fully understand the question’s importance or, if the question’s importance is important at all.  All we know is the mysterious Morpheus – our “third person perspective” – has an answer.

The Matrix’s – and Emerson’s - Characters

There exists three types of human beings within the Matrix and Emerson, in his essay Prudence, poses a similar idea, “There are all degrees of proficiency in knowledge of the world. It is sufficient, to our present purpose, to indicate three.”  The first type of individual within the Matrix are those imprisoned within the computer’s illusionary world.  Program or human, they are able to be manipulated by the Matrix and serve their purpose.  Emerson, in his essay, states, “One class live to the utility of the symbol; esteeming health and wealth a final good.”  Within the Matrix, characters like the Merovingian and Cipher; characters who desire power and esteem above all, play this part.

The second type within the Matrix includes those who question their existence in the Matrix and seek answers from a source other than their supposed “reality.”  These people, Emerson continues, “…live above this mark to the beauty of the symbol; as the poet, and artist, and the naturalist, and man of science.”  Revolutionaries like the Kid (who I will talk about later), Trinity, and even the evil Agent Smith all fulfill the role of “creators,” or those within the Matrix that realize its need for change.

The third type of character within the Matrix includes one of the films’ main characters Morpheus and others like him, The Oracle and Councilor Hammon.  Emerson tells us these men and women “…live above the beauty of the symbol to the beauty of the thing signified; these are wise men.”  As stated above; Morpheus, the Oracle, and Councilor Hammon epitomize this type, each understanding the need and purpose for both man and machine to coexist.

However, Emerson concludes this section of Prudence, stating, “The first class have common sense; the second, taste; and the third, spiritual perception.  Once in a long time, a man traverses the whole scale…” (RWE.org).  Neo, the savior and “poet” within the Matrix, that fulfills this function.  Retaining “common sense,” “taste,” and “spiritual perception,” Neo becomes humanity’s doubting, questioning, and – eventual – avenging angel within the Matrix[MC7] .

Free Will[MC8] 

Emerson, in his essay Circles, states, “Sturdy and defying though he look, (man) has a helm which he obeys, which is, the idea after which all his facts are classified.  He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own” (175). 

In “commanding” humanity’s thoughts, the Matrix obviously holds a powerful influence over those imprisoned within.  Emerson, in his essay Intellect, again comments on this type of confinement, “We have little control over our thoughts. We are the prisoners of ideas” (RWE.org).  For just as Emerson states, those detained within the Matrix truly personify “prisoners of ideas.” 

In The Matrix Reloaded, in a conversation between Neo and Councilor Hammon, we are introduced to one definition of “choice” and “control.”  Hammon, a powerful leader in the last free city of Zion, upon observing the operation of machines which control the city’s heat, water, lights, and air, comments, “I like to be reminded this city survives because of these machines.  These machines are keeping us alive while other machines are coming to kill us.”  Hammon draws the same conclusion as I have in the above paragraph, understanding that the machines, as the primary source of power, have control and, thus, “the power to give life and the power to end it.”

Neo, however, states that humans have the same power.  “We control these machines. If we wanted, we could shut these machines down.”  Hammon, however, understands what Neo does not yet fully grasp and asks, “What would happen to our lights, our heat, our air?” 

It is at this time Neo finally understands Hammon’s lesson: each and every thing – be it man or machine – serves a purpose and has a reason.  “We need machines and they need us,” Neo finally says, understanding Hammon’s lesson (and expanding toward that fourth type of person Emerson described).

Emerson understood humanity’s reason when he wrote, “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate; to have it make some difference that you have lived, and lived well” (BrainQuote.com).

This point is later reinforced to Neo during his meeting with the Oracle.  When asked by Neo why she, as a program of the machine world, helps the human resistance, she replies, “We’re all here to do what we’re all here to do” (The Matrix Reloaded). 

Conflict, Slavery, and Freedom

“We do not determine what we will think.” - Intellect

In order to obtain a control of their own, the revolutionaries chose to fight.  However, the blame for this conflict can not instantly be placed upon the machines.  Though their enslavement of humanity seems immediately unjustified, the roots of this tension-filled debate stems from the biased relationship between the humans and machines which began with the trial of robot B1-66ER. 

As seen in “historical file 12-1” in the animated short The Second Renaissance Part I, the machines were treated as a “subordinate and inferior class” “working tirelessly” doing all of “man’s bidding,” while humanity, “corrupt and vain,” enjoyed the spoils.  Dissent obviously grew within the robot ranks and; as Emerson so blatantly states in his Address to the Citizens of Concord on the Fugitive Slave Law, “When justice is violated, anger begins” (365).

The robot B1-66ER, “the first of his kind to rise up against his masters,” was tried for murder after defending himself against his owner, who, the plaintiff said, wanted to destroy his “property.”  “B1-66ER testified that he simply did not want to die,” but, as stated in the animated short, “who was to say the machine, endowed with the very spirit of man, did not deserve a fair hearing?” (The Second Renaissance).

The revolution against slavery and the desire to become at once both free and a recognized individual entity is apparent not only in all of The Matrix films, but also in Emerson’s address on the fugitive slave law.  In his speech, Emerson, who normally steered clear of political debate, made it abundantly clear where he stood on the issue.

Quoting Sir William Blackstone, British educator and author of Commentaries on the Laws of England, Emerson states, “…we should live honestly, should hurt nobody, and should render unto everyone his due.  If any human law should allow or enjoy us to commit a crime, we are bound to transgress that human law; or else we must offend both the natural and divine” (364).

Unfortunately, the fictional human government within the Matrix mythology did not fully understand these words.  With the decision to destroy the robot B1-66ER (as well as all of machines of its type), mankind took the first step in what would ultimately lead to the total imprisonment of the entire race.

A comparison between the enslavement of Africans in the United States and the enslavement of the robots by humanity – and the eventually enslavement of humanity by the machines – becomes immediately apparent[MC9] .  Emerson, in his address, again stated, “An immoral law makes it a man’s duty to break it, at every hazard.  For virtue is the very self of every man” (Porte & Morris 362).  And both the “corrupt and vain” men and the machines, following man’s example, ignored both Emerson’s and Blackstone’s words; thus beginning a conflict between the two.

Nature, Causality, and Choice

            The lifestyle of the revolutionaries within - and out of - the Matrix and the desire to live a “carefree life in the country” becomes the subject of a heated debate between Cis, a strong-willed female revolutionary, and Duo, a cocky revolutionary-turned-traitor, in the animated short Program. 

            While dueling within the construct of the Matrix, Duo states, “It crosses everyone’s mind at least once.  The wish to return to an ordinary life.  A carefree life in the country” (Animatrix).  Duo’s mention of a “carefree life,” especially during a swordfight in a peaceful bamboo forest, seems especially appropriate; he trying to tempt her into betraying humanity and joining him in returning to the Matrix. 

            However, Cis asks, “Even if that life was just an illusion?”  Oddly enough, it is, as stated above, only a “carefree life in the country” Duo seeks, answering, “It’s ironic that one could be more at peace in the virtual world” (Animatrix).

An odd contradiction to the rough lives we see the revolutionaries living outside of the Matrix, this desire lifestyle instead sounds strikingly similar to Emerson’s protégé Henry Thoreau’s.  However, Thoreau’s life – and the life Duo wishes to live – belongs in stark contrast to Emerson’s approach to nature.

            Emerson calls nature “the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges like a god all men that come to her.”  According to Emerson, nature, described as both “unreal and mocking,” consistently modifies itself from a state of rest to a state of change.  Dubbed by Emerson to be the “first and second secrets” of nature, these rules of change and rest coincide with the Merovingian’s beliefs in the Matrix films (RWE.org).

            The Merovingian, one of the most powerful and oldest programs in the Matrix, has a strong tie to Hades in Greek mythology.  Married to Persephone, The Merovingian keeps prisoners (including the much-needed Keymaker in The Matrix Reloaded) just as Hades did according to myth.  The Merovingian, when speaking to Morpheus, states, “There is only one constant.  One universal.  It is the only real truth: causality.  Action, reaction.  Cause and Effect.”  As I said above, this differs little from Emerson’s perspective, in which change is natural and happens constantly and consistently.  Morpheus, however, believes “everything begins with choice.”  Here, a philosophical conflict between “causality” and “choice” is made within the film (The Matrix Reloaded).

            Emerson states, in his essay Power, “A belief in causality, or strict connection between every trifle and the principle of being…characterizes all valuable minds, and must control every effort that is made by an industrious one” (RWE.org).  Thus, Emerson’s support of the Merovingian’s idea of “valuable minds” utilizing and believing in causality undermines Morpheus’s belief that “choice” matters. 

            In Power, Emerson continues, “The most valiant men are the best believers in the tension of the laws. ‘All the great captains,’ said Bonaparte, ‘have performed vast achievements by conforming with the rules of the art, -- by adjusting efforts to obstacles’” (RWE.org).  And while the Merovingian states, “Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without;” Neo, a powerful human within the Matrix, believes it is Morpheus’s idea of “choice” that gives him his power.

            This theory is later supported by the Architect, the builder of the Matrix, in The Matrix Reloaded.  The Architect reveals that the ultimate “problem” with the Matrix is, indeed, the ability for humans imprisoned within it to choose to disobey it’s rules.  As the Architect says, “the anomaly is systematic, creating fluctuations in even the most simplistic equations.”  Thus, what would be a perfect system of control for the machines ultimately meets its fate thanks to human free will and the opportunity to choose.   

Conformity

“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.” - Self-Reliance

It’s no secret Emerson considered conformity an enemy.  As he says in Self-Reliance, “Imitation is suicide” (120).  So it is no surprise conformity becomes the ultimate enemy within The Matrix mythology.  Agent Smith, the main antagonist in films, personifies conformity perfectly.  His name itself is derived from one of the most common surnames in many English-speaking countries, reinforcing his generic, conformist appearance – black suit, black tie, white shirt – as an agent.

Smith, in the first film, fulfills the role of the leader of the Matrix’s agents, imposing the will of the computer program upon the imprisoned humans within.  However, once Neo defeats Smith at the end of the first film, Smith assumes another role. 

As Smith states when reunited with Neo in The Matrix Reloaded, “You destroyed me…I knew the rules, I understood what I was supposed to do, but I didn’t.  …I was compelled to stay.  Compelled to disobey.”

The Oracle, in The Matrix Revolutions, tells Neo, “He (Smith) is you.  Your opposite, your negative.  He is a result of the equation trying to balance itself out.” 

As Emerson says in Fate, “Once we thought, positive power was all. Now we learn, that negative power…is half” (RWE.org).  Like Neo, Smith is an “anomaly,” able to change the Matrix to fit his personal needs. 

Smith – and his numerous replicas - cites “purpose” as their primary reason for attacking Neo: “Without purpose, we would not exist.  It is purpose the created us.  Purpose that connects us.  Purpose that pulls us.  That guides us.  That drives us.  It is purpose that defines us.  Purpose that binds us.  We are here to take from you what you tried to take from us: purpose” (The Matrix Reloaded).

What purpose than, does Smith fill besides the stereotypical “bad guy?”  Smith’s role is simple: ultimate “infant” conformity.  Not only of a specific type of person or people, but of all people, all beings, and, within the Matrix, all programs.  Emerson, in the essay Self-Reliance, states, “Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it” (122).  Smith, as this “infant”, conforms not four or five but ultimately every being and program within the Matrix, causing not only problems for humanity, but ultimately problems for the machine’s source as well.

Once again, a dependency between the humans and machines is born and it is at this time the machines must utilize Neo to defeat the rogue Smith.  Eventually, it is Smith’s conformity that must be defeated in order to restore balance within the Matrix as well as in the real world.

Saving Ones Self…and Humanity

In the animated short Kid’s Story, we are introduced to a teenage boy who, like Neo imprisoned within the computer’s construct, knows there are questions to be asked.  Like Neo, Kid does not seek answers from the “Universal Mind” of the Matrix (through his parents and teachers).  Instead, he puts his faith in an untested belief in Neo, who, by now, has assumed the role of Morpheus in the first film and is believe to be humanity’s savior (at least by many of the freed humans in Zion).

The animated short begins with Kid asleep at his computer, dreaming he is floating high above the earth.  Suddenly awakened, he types into his computer the first questions that come to mind: “Somebody tell me.  Why it feels more real when I dream than when I am awake?  How can I know if my senses are lying?” 

Emerson’s journal entry on Oct. 25, 1840 states:

 “I dreamed that I floated at will in the great Ether, and I saw this world floating also not far off, but diminished to the size of an apple.  Then an angel took it in his hand & brought it to me and said, ‘This must though eat.’ And I ate the world” (505).

To Emerson, this “angel” that he speaks of often includes “wisdom.”  As he states in Divinity School Address, “Courage, piety, love, wisdom, can teach; and every man can open his door to these angels, and they shall bring him the gift of tongues” (RWE.org).  These “gifts,” for Kid, include not “tongues,” but understanding via his own angel – Neo, who anonymously delivers the message via Kid’s computer screen.

Neo answers Kid’s message, writing “There is some fiction in your truth, and some truth in your fiction.  To know the truth, you must risk everything.”  When Kid then asks, “Am I alone?”, Neo answers him, “No, you are not alone” (Kid’s Story).

We learn from the Architect in The Matrix Reloaded that 99% of all humans in the Matrix, when allowed a choice (be it at the unconscious level); choose to accept the Matrix as their reality.  We also learn from numerous animated shorts in The Animatrix that once an individual is identified as a part of the 1% that does not accept the Matrix, that specific individual becomes “a questioner” within the computer program and is deemed a threat and systematically eliminated. 

Kid ultimately dies, forced to commit suicide in order to escape agents intent on his destruction.  However, unlike Neo, Kid’s body outside of the Matrix becomes “self-substantiating.”  Though how is never explained, it’s no doubt important Kid survives.

In Individualism and the Place of Understanding in Emerson, Larson states, “(Emerson) will only be fully satisfied that he has understood the actions of another once he has convinced himself that, under similar circumstances, he would have acted the same way – ‘so motivated and so armed’” (998). 

Using this definition of understanding, Neo armed with his questions and faith in an answer to the all important question “What is the Matrix?”, understands Kid’s actions and will later be forced to make a similar decision. 

Though Kid’s ability to “self-substantiate” surprises even Neo; and Kid’s presence in the real world seems to annoy Neo (as seen in The Matrix Reloaded), Kid’s ultimate fate is left undecided, at least until The Matrix Revolutions, when he helps save Zion and becomes a hero himself.

 

Neo the Savior…and Poet

It is no secret the name “Thomas Anderson” was given to the main character Neo for a particular reason.  “Thomas,” a reference to the doubting disciple of Jesus Christ and “Anderson,” a surname coming from the prefix “Andrew” – which in Greek means “man” and suffix “- son” which means “son of.”  Thus, as the doubting “son of man,” Thomas Anderson is reborn out of the Matrix and into the real world as “Neo,” (meaning “new”), a new man with powers unlike other humans.

Neo, as the non-conformist, learns to disregard the “absolutes” of nature and harness his powers to fight the machines.  As Emerson states in Nature, “…the question of the absolute existence of nature still remains open.  It is the uniform effect of culture on the human mind…to lead us to regard nature as a phenomenon, not a substance.”  (44[MC10] ).

As such, a phenomenon occurs naturally and can not be altered or controlled without outside influence, while a substance, no matter its makeup, can be molded and formed to fit a specific need.  Neo, understanding this, molds the Matrix to fit his need, thus, allowing him to fly, stop bullets, and other unnatural acts.

            Morpheus first exposes the Matrix as a substance to Neo when, while asking for a martial arts demonstration, he asks “Do you think that’s air you’re breathing?”  Prior to this point, we never question the need for our characters to breath within the Matrix program.  Suddenly, the Matrix, and the “nature” our heroes know and work in, becomes a substance made to be manipulated.  For, as Emerson later states in his essay, “man and nature are indissolubly joined” (44). 

            As a writer and scholar, Emerson believes the poet to be the highest manner of being; as a Christian refers to Christ.  In The Matrix Reloaded, many of the humans saved from the Matrix by Neo believe him to be their savior.  And thus, a comparison between Emerson’s poet and humanity’s savior from the Matrix can be drawn.

As Emerson states in Nature, “He (the poet) unfixes the land and the sea, makes them revolve around the axis of his primary thought, and disposes them anew.  Possessed himself by a heroic passion, he uses matter as symbols of it…conforms things to his thoughts” (Porte & Morris 45).  So too, does Neo when in the Matrix program.  As stated above, Neo utilizes these things as substances, molding them to his very needs.  This again reflects Emerson’s view of the poet.  In Nature, he states, “To him (the poet), the refractory world is ductile and flexible…” (45).  So, too, is the Matrix to Neo, the savior of the human race in The Matrix mythology.

The Death of Conformity via Suicide

Emerson’s belief of “imitation as suicide” ultimately ends The Matrix films.  Reminiscent of Kid’s Story, in which Kid must kill himself while imprisoned within the Matrix in order to be reborn outside in the “real world,” so too must Neo allow himself to be killed by Smith in order to give new life to not only the machine’s Matrix, but humanity’s hope as well.

 When Neo finally understands it is necessary to join both his own great power and Smith’s own in order to save the Matrix and thus, humanity; Emerson’s line from Idealism: “No man touches these divine natures, without himself becoming, in some degree, divine” (47).  It is this moment – when both Neo and Smith’s powers combine, that Smith realizes, in making this power whole, they – together – have become divine and his end, as well as Neo’s, has come. 

Though triumphant, the cost of victory for Neo is death.  Neo, while dying, cracks open Smith’s body to reveal an explosion of brilliant white light.  As if taking a cue directly from Emerson’s Nature: Chapter 3 – Beauty, in which he says, “There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful” (31); Neo, Smith, and the entire Matrix program are, together, reborn. 

This rebirth signifies a “triumph of principles,” Morpheus’s belief in Neo as the true “One,” Neo’s faith in his abilities to conquer Smith, and the Matrix’s faith in mankind as a savior as well.  As Emerson’s last lines in Self Reliance read, “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.  Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles” (137).  And so, peace is restored with the death of both Neo and Smith, and the Matrix as well as all programs and humans – those imprisoned within the Matrix and those living in Zion – are saved.

Though the film ends with our hero’s death, a beautiful sun rises in the Matrix, and, as observed by The Oracle, becomes reminiscent of Emerson’s line in Nature, “When a noble act is done…are not these heroes entitled to add the beauty of the scene to the beauty of the deed? (33).  Thus, this “beautiful scene” reminds those within the Matrix of the “beautiful deed” committed by Neo in sacrificing himself for them.

Conclusion

Emerson’s philosophical relationship to The Matrix’s mythology becomes apparent after careful examination and, though few scholars have studied Emerson’s influence on such films and pop culture phenomena as The Matrix, this essay demonstrates that Emerson’s work does indeed continue to influence and affect popular culture today (though many of us either misinterpret it or ignore it).[MC11] 

Emerson’s Matrix continues to live on each and every time students or scholars read Emerson’s colorful essays or watch the Wachowski Brother’s Matrix films.  And though some may not recognize it, The Matrix and its mythology demonstrate Emerson’s own personality, summed up perfectly in his famous line from Circles which I have previously quoted: “I unsettle all things.  No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker…” (180).  So, too, do we become after studying and understanding Emerson’s Matrix.

Bibliography

BrainyQuote.com. Ralph Waldo Emerson. 20 Nov 2005. BrainyMedia.com. 2005.

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Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Address to the Citizens of Concord on the Fugitive Slave Law.”

Emerson’s Prose & Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte & Saundra Morris. W.W. Norton &

Co., New York: 2001. 359-372.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Circles.” Emerson’s Prose & Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte & Saundra

Morris. W.W. Norton & Co., New York: 2001. 174-182.

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Emerson, Ralph Waldo.  “Intellect.” 20 Nov 2005. RWE.org. 2005.

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Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “From Journals and Notebooks: Oct. 25, 1840.” Emerson’s

Prose & Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte & Saundra Morris. W.W. Norton & Co., New

York: 2001. 505.

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Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The Over-Soul.” Emerson’s Prose & Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte &

Saundra Morris. W.W. Norton & Co., New York: 2001. 174-182.

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Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Self-Reliance.” Emerson’s Prose & Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte &

Saundra Morris. W.W. Norton & Co., New York: 2001. 120-137.

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(Dec 2004): 315-339.  

Larson, Kerry.  “Individualism and the Place of Understanding in Emerson’s Essays.”

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Patell, Cyrus R.K. “Emersonian Strategies: Negative Liberty, Self-Reliance, and

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Lauren Marie Stinson

Capstone: American Literature: Emerson

Dr. Sean Meehan

Morningside College

Seminar Paper

December 12, 2005

Coming to Terms: The Death of a Child and One’s Own Childhood

In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate, - no more. I cannot get it nearer to me. If tomorrow I should be informed of the bankruptcy of my principal debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconvenience to me, perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me as it found me, --neither better nor worse. So is it with this calamity: it does not touch me: some thing which I fancied was a part of me, which could not be torn away without tearing me, nor enlarged without enriching me, falls off from me, and leaves no scar (Exp. 200).

In response to the death of his eldest son, Waldo, two years after his passing, Emerson’s words in “Experience” may seem rather disturbing, as well as extremely selfish and insensitive.  Though this passage seems to hold a callous, disregard for human life, this is simply not the case.  In order to achieve the full effects of Emerson’s emotional state, one must recognize that there is an underlying tone.  In “Experience,” his tone is that of utmost despair.  Mary Chapman, author of “The Economics of Loss: Emerson’s ‘Threnody’,” suggests that like most deaths, Waldo’s may have “opened the wounds of earlier losses” (76).  This in mind, Emerson’s seemingly cold-hearted attitude may reflect the paternal bond that he himself had not received as a child, and may be attributed as the death of his own childhood.

The son of William Emerson, a stern and over-bearing Unitarian minister, from a long line of ministers, Emerson had not had a mutually loving relationship with his father.  Feeling particularly isolated, Robert D. Richardson, Jr., author of Emerson’s biography, “Emerson: The Mind on Fire,” notes that Emerson remembered that as a child he had felt “imprisoned in streets and hindered from the fields and woods” (18).  As a minister’s son, he had undoubtedly felt significant pressure that he needed to live up to an impossible standard set by both the community, as well as his father.  Richardson further states that Emerson’s father had “prized education” (18).  Though he had instilled this value into his family, his active involvement in the community and consistently full schedule had left little time to spend with his family.

The “third of six sons,” as the middle child, Emerson was frivolous and cheerful; however, he was thought by his relatives to be the “least promising of the Emerson children.”  In a surviving document from his childhood, this negative characterization was displayed by his father, as he is seen complaining, before his son was three, that “Ralph does not read very well yet” (19).  A relatively insignificant figure in his life, Emerson had held few positive memories encompassing his relationship with his father in his childhood.  Those which stuck with him did not necessarily portray his father in a good light, and perhaps, had influenced Emerson’s own paternal instincts when he had become a father. 

The following incident demonstrates however a particularly negative incident can forever scar a child into their adulthood.  Remembering him as a “somewhat social gentleman” (Richardson 20), in a letter to his brother William, Emerson reminisced on one particularly frightening incident, in which his father had taught him to swim: he “put me in mortal terror by forcing me into the salt water off some wharf or bathing house” (Letters 4:179).  This particularly excruciating memory remained with him into his forties. 

Given these circumstances and the outcome of William Emerson’s death in 1811, it is not surprising Richardson emphasizes Emerson’s “lack of interest” (20) in his father.  Though he had never been especially fond of his father, Emerson, like all children, had to have struggled with feelings of resentment, relief, and release.  To a child, the loss of a parent threatens the foundation of their world ; however, at eight years old, Emerson merely wished to understand the rejection he had suffered.  Like most children, Emerson, at eight years of age, did not know what to feel.  As such, as Richardson states, Emerson “paid more attention to his aunt’s response than to his father’s death (26); meaning, he imitated his aunt Mary Moody Emerson’s lead. 

Having experienced the deaths of numerous family members, including two siblings during his childhood, his first wife, Ellen, at 20, and his brother, Charles, in 1836, Emerson seemed to have reached a turning point when Waldo died.  An emotional build-up that had occurred over the years had finally exceeded maximum capacity, as Emerson reacted to his own son’s death.  Such innocence lost has forced Emerson to reminisce, and delineate his own life experiences.  By understanding and accepting his stages of grievance, and personal losses, he can recuperate in a more positive way.

Meant to hold power over us, on the surface it is clear that Emerson is expressing negativity within the above passage from “Experience.”  However, perhaps he is doing so in order to dissuade himself from feeling guilt or anger.  Wishing to make a connection with the reader, by doing so, he is provoking an emotional response from us.  In the outcome that we too have experienced the loss of a child, or another loved one, he wishes us to cope and come to terms, just as he has. 

Described as the “apple of his father’s eye,” and “constant companion” (Richardson 355), Waldo’s innocence had touched something deep inside Emerson’s core.  In his less-known elegy, “Threnody,” Emerson depicts Waldo as “O child of paradise, / Boy who made dear his father’s home” (l.166-67).  Karen Sanchez-Eppler, author of “Then When We Clutch Hardest,” further states that, “Waldo’s presence permeated his father’s life (…) The belief that Waldo’s touch endowed the world with value characterized his role in the family all along” (65).  His sudden death [from Scarlatina], at five years of age, had to have been the most heartrending of grief’s—not only for Emerson, but for his entire family, as well.

Arnold and Gemma concur, stating that the death of a child represents “the loss of the future, of hopes and dreams, of new strength, and perfection,” (qtd. in “Death of a Child”); not to mention, the loss of vulnerability and dependency.  Emerson concurs, stating in “Threnody”: “In whose deep eyes / Men read the welfare of the times to come, / I am too much bereft. / The world dishonored thou hast left” (l.168-71). 

Bringing us into his world, he gives us the ability to face openly our loss, he directs us to understand the complexity of our emotions.  Comparing his son to that of a “beautiful estate,” a piece of “property,” he visualizes his loss as temporary; a mere separation from a material possession.  Stating that his “property” was “some thing which I fancied was a part of me, which could not be torn away without tearing me,” nevertheless, it “falls of from me, and leaves no scar.”  By acknowledging his son’s death, and going through the grieving process, Emerson has accepted the nature of death.  People, like property, hold no physical worth; yet spiritually, their memory, Waldo’s memory, will last forever. 

Works Cited

Chapman, Mary. “The Economics of Loss: Emerson’s ‘Threnody’.” American Transcendental Quarterly 16 (2002): 73-87.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Experience.” Emerson’s Prose and Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte and Saundra Morris. New York: Norton, 2001. 198-213.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Vols. 1-6, ed. Ralph L. Rusk. New York: Columbia University Press,1939–.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Threnody.” Emerson’s Prose and Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte and Saundra Morris. New York: Norton, 2001. 455-62.

Richardson, Jr., Robert D. “Emerson: The Mind on Fire: A Biography.” Berkeley: U of California Pres, 1995.

Sanchez-Eppler, Karen. “Then When We Clutch Hardest: On the Death of a Child and the Replication of an Image.” Sentimental Men: Masculinity and the Politics of Affect in American Culture. Ed. Mary Chapman and Glenn Hendler. Berkeley: U of California P, 1999. 65-85.

“The Death of a Child - The Grief of the Parents: A Lifetime Journey.” NSIDRC. 14 Sept. 2005. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau. 6 Dec. 2005      < http://www.sidscenter.org/Downloads/S124.htm>.

Angela Phillips

Dr. Sean Meehan

Emerson Capstone

Research Link Final Draft

December 7, 2005

Reincarnated Circles: Connecting R. W. Emerson with Hinduism

            A major controversy involving Emerson is his religious beliefs. In “‘A Religion by Revelation’: Emerson as a Radical Restorationist,” Charles-John Duffy points out that many people put Emerson into two categories: aligned with Christianity and completely against Christianity (227). One reason Emerson is so hard to understand is that he does not fit nice and neatly into a certain religious category. In the letter “To the Proprietors of the Second Church, Boston, September 11, 1832” he writes, “Nor do I think less of the office of a Christian minister... I have the same respect for the great objects of the Christian ministry, & the same faith in their gradual accomplishment... I should be unfaithful to myself, if any change of circumstances could diminish my devotion to the cause of divine truth” (Porte, Morris 536). By this letter, it is obvious that Emerson did not reject or think less of Christianity but only thought that there was something lacking in his search for the “divine truth” when he was at the church and that there was “a difference of opinion as to the value of an ordinance.” He hopes that this difference of opinion “will be overlooked by us in our common devotion to what is real & eternal” (Porte, Morris, 536). He does not consider himself a heretic for the leaving the church, and he still believes in the Christian faith.

            On the other hand, it does not seem that Emerson is completely with Christianity. There are times when he almost denounces Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and writes that “in a thousand years does any man dare to be wise and good, and so draw after him the tears and blessings of his kind” (Porte, Morris, Divinity School Address, 77). He is referring to the fact that in a thousand years we have not had a man who “dared” to be “wise and good.” He is looking for that man who can “draw after him the tears and blessing of his kind.” Emerson states that Christ was a man who was wise and good but we need another one to come along. He is looking for a man to come along to have as much influence or more than Christ had . Furthermore, Emerson writes in “American Scholar” that “The man has never lived that can feed us ever. The human mind cannot be enshrined in a person, who shall set a barrier on any one side to this unbounded, unboundable empire” (66). Christ came to save us and we  should worship Him, but Emerson does not believe that a man has lived that we should worship. These ideas do not seem to synchronize with Christian theology. In Duffy’s article, he states that Emerson is not in either two groups but is on a different plane altogether (227). Additionally, he argues that Emerson is not being read against the right texts and that is why Emerson’s theology is not understood. In his article, Duffy reads Emerson against Mormon texts and feels that both Mormon texts and Emerson’s writings are on the same plane. However, there are other religions or beliefs that Emerson should be read against besides the Mormon texts. Even though there are connections between Emerson and Mormonism, there are also connections to Hinduism apparent in his writings. Understanding Hinduism is one-step towards understanding Emerson’s theology.   

            In Hinduism, it is believed that we all come from the pure essence or Brahman. In  the Dance of Lila, Brahman is separated into fragments and everything that is, is a part of Brahman. Brahman is the Supreme Absolute. Brahman is referred to as “It” because to qualify Brahman as God would be describing it as a male rather than a female and this would go against the belief that Brahman is nirakara or “without form”(Fowler, 9). Then at the end, or when we die, we reestablish ourselves with Brahman, and we all come together.

            Gavin Flood in An Introduction to Hinduism states that Hinduism is “not so much a religion, but a way of life” (1). In Hinduism: Beliefs and Practices, Jeaneane Fowler discusses the idea of how Hinduism is so deeply interwoven into an individual’s life that he or she does not consider Hinduism a religion like the western world. To the Hindu, Hinduism is “all things to all men” (Flood, 7). They do not believe that God exists only in temples or altars, but that God is everywhere. They believe in many different gods and goddesses, but they also believe that there is a Supreme Absolute and that these different gods and goddesses are only creations of this Supreme Absolute. The Supreme Absolute can take many forms, and we can approach It in many different ways. Hindus work toward self-realization and the idea of recognizing the Truth of It.

            Emerson relates directly to the theme of searching for the Truth in Hinduism in “Divinity School Address,”

Meantime, whilst the doors of the temple stand open, night and day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely; it is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing (Porte, Morris 72).

Emerson speaks about how a person can find God anywhere, but if he finds God he “cannot” do so “second hand.” A person must be able to find the truth or God within himself. However, a person may use knowledge of another man to inspire him, but in the end, the knowledge of the other man must be true in the individual. This search for truth is similar to the Hindu belief of Brahman being everywhere, that worship of It and understanding of It can take place anywhere and everywhere and in everything we do. We do not need a person telling us what to believe. Hindus believe that the Supreme Absolute is in everyone and “in everything in life, whether living or not comes from Brahman. Every creature, every plant, every individual, every stone, every tree – everything in existence – has its source as Brahman” (Fowler, 8-9). There is a definite link between Emerson and Hinduism in the belief that worshipping God or Brahman can take place anywhere.

            Again, when Emerson writes, “The spirit only can teach. Not any profane man, not any sensual, not any liar, not any slave can teach, but only he can give, who has; he only can create who is. The man whom the soul descends, through whom the soul speaks, alone can teach” (Porte, Morris, Divinity School Address, 75), we see the connection of learning about God through a person’s own experiences and not through someone else’s. This idea connects to the Hindu belief of living our life through Brahman and as a part of Brahman. Moreover, in the Hindu belief, daily worship is called puja, which is hard to translate but has “connotations of respect, honour, and veneration and therefore can be directed to parents, to one’s teacher, one’s guru, or to a holy man, as well as to a god or goddess” (Fowler, 41). Hindus see their teachers and holy men with respect and honor; however, the respect that is given is not universal like it is with western religion leaders. In western religions, such as Christianity, many people see their pastors and/or reverends with a reverence of always being right. Hinduism does give respect to their teachers and holy men, but “the sacredness of time, objects or persons depend upon context and the boundaries between the sacred and the everyday are fluid” (Flood, 9). Hinduism allows individuals to give freely respect and honor to those they believe deserve it. However, once a Hindu feels that respect and honor is no longer deserved, they will not be shunned if they no longer respect and honor the teacher .

            In the biography, Emerson on Fire, Robert Richardson Jr. discusses the influence of Mme. de Stael on Emerson. He was reading her works and Richardson noted that she stated “Religion is nothing if it is not everything, if existence is not filled with it, if we do not incessantly maintain in the soul this belief in the invisible, this self-devotion, this elevation of desire...naturally and without effort, an act of worship at every moment” (Richardson, 53-54). This thought becomes an important part of Emerson’s theology and the concepts he portrays in many of his essays. We can see that Emerson is trying to understand the concept of religion as “everything” and bring that point across to his readers. He wants us to live “incessantly” with the “Soul,” “Man Thinking,” etc.  Additionally, he wants us to “incessantly” search for the connection with God or the Absolute Supreme.

            Another idea of Hinduism is the thought of life being “cyclical” (Fowler, 10). Cyclical, in Hinduism, is the concept of Samsara or reincarnation, which is “the idea that at the end of each life, the individual is born again in another existence in order to carry on his or her evolutionary path” (Fowler, 10). In reincarnation, it is also believed that individuals are composed of the personality self, jivatman, and a part of Brahman, atman. The personality part of life is “constantly changing and is the sum total of all our experiences in life, all our desire and aversions and all our conscious and subconscious characteristics” (Fowler, 10).  The concept of the personality is similar to Emerson’s philosophy of life being like an ever-expanding circle. In “Circles,” Emerson writes that “Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens” (Porte, Morris, 174). The circle that is drawn around the other circle could be our “desires and aversions” that we experience throughout our lives. We are “constantly changing,” and those changes are the new circles.

            Emerson also writes, “Permanence is a word of degrees. Every thing is medial... the life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, ruses on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end” (Porte, Morris, Circles, 175). The idea of the circle is that a person cannot find a beginning or an end within the circle as a person can with a segment of a line. Additionally, the ever-expanding circle suggests that we are never done learning from Nature or God or the Spirit. Emerson states that “there is no virtue which is final; all are initial” (Porte and Morris, Circles, 180). He hints at the idea of everything being in the middle of something: that we will never reach the end or remember the beginning because there is no end or beginning.

            Moreover, the idea of the circle is similar to the Hindu idea of involving Brahman in your life completely. The only person we can learn from in Hinduism is Brahman and the only reason to live your life is to worship It and become closer to It. The ever-expanding circle, in Hinduism, is becoming closer to the truth of Brahman.

            On the other hand, the idea in Christianity, of God being the creator and creating everything is similar to the idea of the “Soul” and always being connected with Him. Emerson writes in his letter “To the Second Church and Society, Boston, December 22, 1832” that

“Yet, my friends, our faith in the great truths of the New Testament makes the change of places and circumstances, of less account to us, by fixing our attention upon that which is unalterable... I hope, to the love and service of the same external cause, the advancement, namely of the kingdom of God in the hearts of men. The tie that binds each of us to that cause is not created by connexion, and can not be hurt by our separation. To me, as one disciple, is the ministry of truth, as far as I can discern and declare it, committed and I desire to live no where and no longer than that grace of God is imparted to me – the liberty to seek and the liberty to utter it” (Porte, Morris, 537).

It is obvious in the excerpt that Emerson is not giving up Christianity or the “truth” but is trying to bring “the advancement, namely of the kingdom of God in the hearts of men.” Emerson wants the Church and its members to understand that he is not leaving because he does not believe in Christianity. Furthermore, there is the idea in the letter that what connects him with the congregation is not whether they are together or separated but because they have a “connexion.” This concept can also be seen in the essay “Over-Soul.”

            In “The Over-Soul” Emerson writes, “that Unity, that Over-Soul, within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other” (Porte, Morris, 163). This statement relates back to the idea that Emerson is just connected with his congregation no matter what; that every living person is connected to one another because there is a similar “Unity” or “Over-Soul” in everyone. Additionally, the idea is directly related to the idea that Brahman is a part of our life and is a part of everything. Emerson is using a Hinduism idea in his philosophy of how everything is connected, but in his letter, it is obvious that he is not giving up his Christian theology or faith.

            Emerson’s theology is hard to understand and there will probably never be an agreement between people about exactly what his theology is. However, if we take Emerson and read him against other texts, as suggested by Duffy, we may start to see links and concepts that come across different religions and into his writings. When looking at Hinduism and comparing his ideas and concepts, we see that there are definite links between the two beliefs. However, we cannot say that Emerson is a Hindu, because in his letters to his church and to others, he states specifically that he does not “think less of the office of a Christian minister” (Porte, Morris, 536) and that he still has faith in the New Testament. Additionally, we cannot put Emerson directly in Christianity because he does not conventionally follow beliefs of Christ and many a time almost denounces Christ as the Son of God in his essays. An important concept in Emerson’s writing is revelation. He wants us to continue looking for God in the present and the future, not in the past, but that the revelation is still to come and that it is individual to each person. Emerson wants us to believe that God is everywhere around us and is in everyone.
Works Cited

Bishop, Jonathan. “Emerson and Christianity.” Renascence 50(1998): 220-238.

Duffy, John-Charles. “‘A Religion by Revelation’: Emerson as Radical Restorationist.” ATQ 14(2000): 227-250.

“An Essay on the Hindu Way of Life.” 2000. HinduWeb. Accessed on November 21, 2005. <http://www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduwayoflife.htm>

Flood, Gavin. An Introduction to Hinduism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Fowler, Jeaneane. Hinduism: Beliefs and Practices.  Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 1997. 

Emerson, Ralph. “The American Scholar.” Emerson’s Prose and Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte, Saundra Morris. New York: W.W. Norton Company, 2001. 56-69

Emerson, Ralph. “Circles.” Emerson’s Prose and Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte, Saundra Morris. New York: W.W. Norton Company, 2001. 174-182.

Emerson, Ralph. “Divinity School Address.” Emerson’s Prose and Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte, Saundra Morris. W.W. Norton Company, 2001. 69-81.

Emerson, Ralph. “To the Proprietors of the Second Church, Boston, September 11, 1832.” Emerson’s Prose and Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte, Saundra Morris. W. W. Norton Company, 2001. 536.

Emerson, Ralph. “To the Second Church and Society, Boston, December 22, 1832.” Emerson’s Prose and Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte, Saundra Morris. W.W. Norton Company, 2001. 536-538

Emerson, Ralph. “Spiritual Laws.” Emerson’s Prose and Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte, Saundra Morris. W.W. Norton Company, 2001. 150-162.

Emerson, Ralph. “Over-Soul.” Emerson’s Prose and Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte, Saundra Morris. W.W. Norton Company, 2001. 163-174.

Richardson, Robert D. Jr. Emerson: The Mind on Fire. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Angela: