A self-reliant man: Ralph Waldo Emerson
	In the 1840’s through 1870’s a new style of writing emerged based on a fresh movement founded within the Amercian experience as it was lived. The American transcendental movement had begun to develop. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes about a philosophy called Transcendentalism, one of his recurring motifs. Emerson is optimistic about human nature and writes about being a nonconformist. One of the most prominent themes in Emerson’s literature is the reliance on property and social rankings and the effect it has on society. All these ideas came from your average American upbringing.
	Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, 1803. Emerson’s father died when he was young, leaving his family in a hardship. Emerson’s family was plunged into poverty and despite this, Emerson attended Harvard in 1817. While in college, Emerson started writing in a journal and started writing his own person philosophy. Eight years later Emerson entered Harvard Divinity School, but was forced due to personal health issues and family problems to leave school. When Emerson resigned from associate pastor of the Unitarian Second Church in his hometown, two of his brothers and his wife died. Depressed from his family’s deaths, Emerson decided to travel and learn abroad. While in Germany, he discovered Transcendentalism and brought it back to America. Emerson combined Germany Transcendentalism with self-reliance and freethinking, to form a new optimistic theory about human nature. In 1835 Emerson became noticed and started influence other writers such as: Henry Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and Bronson Alcott. With this in mind one can see how the ideas he would become known for came into fruition. (Miller et al 156)
	With the emergence of Emerson came Transcendentalism – a new, unique belief. Transcendentalism is a philosophy that says humans are good by nature. Emerson writes about this in Self-Reliance and The American Scholar. Emerson encourages individuality and to speak out about social issues. Transcendentalists wrote and found refuge in speaking for various social issues of the time period. (158) In self-reliance, Emerson makes the claim humans are dependant on property and that traveling is a only for fools. Emerson says:
		Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they 
have come to esteem the religious, learned, and civil institutions as guards 
of property. . .
 This example shows that humans have strayed away from their nature and that if one realized this they would be ashamed of their own property. (160) As his pupil Thoreau says, “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three (167).” Emerson taught his pupil the same motif, recurring not only in his works, but also in his students. Transcendentalism is the basis of all his characteristics and themes in his writings.