Jason瘋英文 :回首頁

Narrator Narrator Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in a literature class.
Professor Professor Professor
All right, so let me close today’s class with some thoughts to keep in mind
while you are doing tonight’s assignment. You will be reading one of Ralph
Waldo Emerson’s best-known essays ‘Self-Reliance’ and comparing it with his
poems and other works. I think this essay has the potential to be quite
meaningful for all of you as young people who probably wonder about things
like truth and where your lives are going - all sorts of profound questions.
Knowing something about Emerson’s philosophies will help you when you
read ‘Self-Reliance’. And basically, one of the main beliefs that he had was
about truth. Not that it’s something that we can be taught, Emerson says it’s
found within ourselves. So this truth, the idea that it’s in each one of us, is one
of the first points that you’ll see Emerson making in this essay. It’s a bit
abstract but he’s very into…ah… into each person believing his or her own
thought, believing in yourself, the thought or conviction that’s true for you. But
actually, he ties that in with a sort of ‘universal truth’ – something that everyone
knows but doesn’t realize they know. Most of us aren’t in touch with ourselves
in a way, so we just aren’t capable of recognizing profound truth. It takes
geniuses, people like, say, Shakespeare, who’re unique because when they
have a glimpse at this truth, this universal truth, they pay attention to it and
express it and don’t just dismiss it like m ost people do.
大家论坛托福版块 http://club.topsage.com/forum-64-1.html
So Emerson is really into each individual believing in and trusting him or
herself. You’ll see that he writes about, well, first, conformity. He criticizes that
people of his time for abandoning their own minds and their own wills for the
sake of conformity and consistency. They try to fit in with the rest of the world
even though it’s at odds with their beliefs and their identities. Therefore, it’s
best to be a non-conformist – to do your own thing, not worrying about what
other people think. That’s an important point. He really drives this argument
home throughout the essay.
When you are reading, I want you to think about that and why that kind of
thought would be relevant to the readers of his time. Remember this is 1838,
‘Self-Reliance’ was a novel idea at the time and the United State’s citizens
were less secure about themselves as individuals and as Americans. The
country as a whole was trying to define itself. Emerson wanted to give people
something to really think about, help them find their own way and what it meant
to be who they were. So that’s something that I think is definitely as relevant
today as it was then, probably, um, especially among young adults like
yourselves, you know, uh, college being a time to sort of really think about who
you are and where you’re going.
Now we already said that Emerson really emphasizes non-conformity, right, as
a way to sort of not lose your own self and identity in the world, to have your
own truth and not be afraid to listen to it. Well, he takes this a step further. Not
conforming also means, uh, not conforming with yourself or your past. What
does that mean? Well, if you’ve always been a certain way or done a certain
thing, but it’s not working for you any more, or you’re not content, Emerson
says that it’d be foolish to be consistent even with our own past. ‘Focus on the
future,’ he says, “That's what matters more. Inconsistency is good.”
He talks about a ship’s voyage and this is one of the most famous bits of the
essay - how the best voyage is made u p of zigzag lines. Up close, it seems a
little all over the place, but from farther away, the true path shows and in the
end it justifies all the turns along the way. So, don’t worry if you are not sure
where you’re headed or what your long-term goals are. Stay true to yourself
and it’ll make sense in the end. I mean, I can attest to that. Before I was a
literature professor, I was an accountant. Before that, I was a newspaper
reporter. My life is taking some pretty interesting turns and here I am, very
happy with my experiences and where they’ve brought me. If you rely on
大家论坛托福版块 http://club.topsage.com/forum-64-1.html
yourself and trust your own talents, your own interest, don’t worry, your path
will make sense in the end.