In the story Rip Van Winkle, nature was a sign of romanticism, Rip used the nature as a get away from his nagging wife, but for his couple of hours get away it turned into a twenty year vacation, because Rip dosed off and took a nap and didnt wake til twenty years later. The time Rip woke, his wife was dead, children were grown and his dog was dead. The only thing actually stayed the same was nature. "There stood the Kaatskill Mountains-there ran the silver Hudson at a distance-there was every hill and date precisely as it had always been."
The author of Rip Van Winkle has to have a great imagination to come up with this story. In romanticism, imagination is whats important rather then reason and logic, logic is something that has a fact about it not something that you can just make up. In addition to the authors imagination the people of the town have a imagination themselves, they believe everything that comes out of Rip's mouth.
The poem is talking about all three themes of Romanticism because it talks about nature and its beauty, when it states "To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air." The focus of common people was brought into this in this statement, "As the long train of ages glides away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--"
I have given examples of identifying evidence in the last paragraph that I have wrote. The sentence that is talking about the people, supports that it is talking about common people.
Nature: It actually seems that its kind of hard to picture yourself walking through the woods and admiring nature. In these times now, people dont actually walk through the woods and admire nature, unless they actually care about the beauty of nature and the things around it. This is what Emerson is trying to encourge people to do, he wants people to see the beauty in the world. He is trying to get people to realize that just walking outside and seeing the sun is not just the sun, he wants you to see the sun for a symbol of a new day, it provides warmth and light to our day.
Self-reliance: In this reading, it seems like Emerson is trying to give advice on what ypu should do to make yourself a better person. He is also telling you that you should depend on yourself and no one else. "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist". This is saying that you should do what you think is right for you to do even though someone else thinks something is right you, you should stand up for what you think is right for yourself and please yourself.
Transcendentalists thought that God was speaking through someone through their work and what they said, and felt that God was giving them advice on their lives, while Emerson was actually giving advice through his own words and he spoke on what he thought someone should do for themselves and thought that you should try to please yourself instead of pleasing someone else.
People probably thought that he shouldn't be in the woods all alone by himself, but he felt that he had a purpose to live in the woods by himself and thats what he wanted so he did what he felt was right for him. The man in the video he was actually living out the beauty of nature himself, he saw it for himself instead of just reading about it. Self-reliance for him was making his own home and living out in his cabin in the woods, Im pretty sure people were trying to get him to move back to the city where there were other people but he didnt want to do what people thought was right for him he wanted to do what he thought was right for himself.
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