Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson


Properly Acknowledged by 


     Ralph Waldo Emerson certainly took his place in the history of American

Literature .  He lived in a time when romanticism was becoming a way of thinking

and beginning to bloom in America, the time period known as The Romantic Age.

Romantic thinking stressed on human imagination and emotion rather than on basic

facts and reason.  Ralph Waldo Emerson not only provided plenty of that, but he

also nourished it and inspired many other writers of that time.  "His influence

can be found in the works of Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman,

Emily Dickinson, Henry James, and Robert Frost.".  No doubt, Ralph Waldo Emerson

was an astute and intellectual man who influenced American Literature and has

rightly received the credit that he deserves from historians.  He has been

depicted as a leading figure in American thought and literature, or at least

ranks up there with the very best.  But there is so much more to Ralph Waldo

Emerson when we consider the personal hardships that he had to endure during the

course of his life and when we see the type of man that he becomes. He certainly

was a man of inspiration who knew how to express himself by writing the best of

poems and philosophical ideas with inspiration.


     To get an idea of how Ralph Waldo Emerson might have become such an

inspiration to the people, some background on his life is essential.  Can you

imagine living a life with all your loved ones passing away one by one?  A

persons life could collapse into severe depression, lose hope, and lose meaning.

He can build a morbid outlook on life.  Ralph Waldo Emerson suffered these

things.  He was born on May 25, 1803 and entered into a new world, a new nation

just beginning.  Just about eight years later, his father would no longer be

with him, as William Emerson died in 1811.  The Emerson family was left to a

life marked by poverty.  Ralph's mother, Ruth, was left as a widow having to

take care of five sons.  However, Ralph's life seemed to carry on smoothly.  He

would end up attending Harvard College and persue a job of teaching full time.

While teaching as a junior pastor of Boston's Second Church, his life gained

more meaning when he married Ellen Louisa Tucker.  Journal entries and love

letters he wrote at that time expressed lots of feelings and emotions that he

had.  But after two short years of marriage, Ellen died of tuberculosis.

Suddenly, the one true person he had in his life was gone.  Life was losing it's

meaning, and Ralph Waldo Emerson was in need of some answers.  This dark period

drove him to question his beliefs.  Emerson resigned from the Second Church and

his profession as a pastor in search for vital truth and hope.  But his father

and wife were not the only deaths that he had to deal with.  His strength and

endurance would be put to the test much further with a perennial line of loved

ones dying.  His brother Edward, died in 1834, Charles in 1836, and his son

Waldo (from his second wife Lydia Jackson) in 1842.  After such a traumatic life,

you might expect that Emerson, like any other person,would collapse into severe

depression, lose hope, and lose meaning to his life.  But Emerson waThis is ONLY a preview of the article. If you would like to view the entire document, you must subscribe to Electronic References. Please register below now!


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