Ralph Waldo Emerson, the author of Self Reliance, was one of the leading transcendentalists of the American movement and a truly "American" writer. However, he was not as devout as Henry David Thoreau, who spent two years living in the woods and detailed his life and thoughts there in Walden. Emerson was a different breed, writing from behind a desk. His respected position as an intellectual (attending Harvard College and Divinity School) allowed him to maintain respect for his writings. But what does it really mean? While it holds true to the idea of ​​believing in yourself and not copying others, it seems to contradict itself in many places. His contradictions ultimately seem to point to a balance between isolation and conformity, while his language reveals a more important discovery about what he thinks his audience believes and how he tries to influence their opinions. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayEmerson tries to make the point right from the start about believing in one's own thoughts, but in the first appearance of these feelings in Self Reliance, he presents a troubling contradiction. Emerson writes: "To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true of you in your private heart is true of all men, that is genius. Express your latent belief, and it will be the universal sense; for the deepest in time debt becomes the extreme” (19). Believing in your “private heart” and “expressing your latent belief” are two very different things. The problem with these words is: how can men believe what is true for them is true for everyone else if everyone else believes something different is true for themselves? It seems that a world of men who embraced this idea would be uncooperative and there would be mass chaos of individuals trying to impose their own ideas? to others. However, Emerson is not an idealist. His lifestyle compared to the lives of the transcendentalists mentioned above clearly shows this. That said, Emerson is astute in his mission to achieve a practical goal. He tries to push his readers to think beyond the limits of their comfort, to consider the extreme. This allows its audience to embrace the ideas of self-sufficiency to an extent that is not the extreme presented in these main lines. The effect can be equated to putting a large foot in a shoe that is too small to stretch it. Emerson forces the foot of extreme self-confidence into the reader's shoe as soon as possible, so that when we are done walking around in it, the shoe might at least be comfortable. Emerson later expresses what his real idea of ​​"good adaptation" is. Emerson presents his practical vision of self-sufficiency as a balance between external and internal relationships, placing greater weight on the individual: What I have to do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule, equally arduous in real and intellectual life, can serve to make the entire distinction between greatness and meanness. This is the most difficult thing, because you will always find someone who thinks they know what your duty is better than you do. It is easy in the world to live according to the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live according to ourselves; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd preserves with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. (23) Clearly, Emerson believes that the weight of the individual's perception of himself is the ultimate factor in anything. Use strong language (“What must I do”) to emphasize the belief the individual should have and more vivid language (“the perfect sweetness, the independence of solitude”) to,.