"The American Scholar"

Paper Summary:

This paper written from the writer's personal point of view discusses the powerful, yet difficult to understand, speech given by Emerson in which the American author and philosopher attempts to inspire America's youth. This paper details the main points in Emerson's speech which stresses the importance of educators and scholars and the role that they play in academia. The writer attempts to analyze the messages and metaphors used by Emerson in this particular work of writing. The writer contends and explains that while this speech is considered an outstanding piece of literature the style of writing used by Emerson is complicated and the metaphors are confusing. This paper focuses on various quotes from the actual text while pondering the author's primary intent.

From the Paper:

"In this oration, he starts off with describing that Man was divided into men to help himself just as the hand was divided into fingers. This is quite confusing and contrary to many religious doctrines. Further Emerson portrays Man as something like God. He states that Man is the master of all trades and professions and only when Man was divided into men, "these functions are parceled out to individuals". He talks about Man being perfect and the men into who Man was divided to be full of flaws. Although I do agree that men have flaws and can never be perfect, the concept of Man whom he portrays nothing less than God is confusing and the point that Emerson wishes to convey by stating this is not understood by me. What I did not understand about his essay further on was when he talks about a school-boy and a Root and refers to it as being the "soul of his soul". To me the concept of a soul having a soul is beyond my understanding of the entire concept of soul. Emerson insists that books written by men are only written by men and not Man hence people should not follow them and use them as a source of inspiration."

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