Comparison Of American Values, Attitudes And Beliefs

How does American Literature reflect/reveal American Values, Attitudes, and Beliefs? Four writers in specific reveal to us these things in their writing. Those writers are Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Walt Whitman, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. These people reveal American Values, Attitudes and Beliefs by showing us the we can be independent, we have to separate from technology every once once in a while, and we need to have moral relativism.
To begin with, David Henry Thoreau shows us that in order to see how beautiful the world around us truly is we must separate ourselves from technology. He did this at one point in his life. He spent three years in the Walden forest, only going back to society for minor supplies, such as
I hasten to inform him or her it is as lucky to die, and I know it. I pass death with the dying, and the birth with the new-washed babe.... and am not contained between my hat and boots, And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good, The earth good, and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good. I am not the earth nor an adjunct of an earth, I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself: They do not know how immortal, but I know.”
This shows that Whitman, being the deep thinker he is, looking at the limits of life to see how much of an individual he can be, and compared himself to the other people around, who are all just as fathomless as he is. In the fifty-first stanza of “Song of Myself” he states, “The Past and the Present wilt.... I have filled them and emptied them, And proceed to fill my next fold of the future. Listener up there! Here you.... what have you to confide to me? Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening, Talk honestly, for no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer. Do I contradict myself? Very well than.... I contradict myself: I am large.... I contain multitudes. I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait
Who has done his day's work? Who will soonest be through with his supper? Who wishes to walk with me? Will you speak before I am gone? Will you prove already too late?” This shows that Whitman does not know his purpose so he asks a higher power to tell him what his purpose on this planet is. Showing that even the most individualistic person needs to slightly dependent on someone. This is how Walt Whitman reveals to us that we need to be independent.
Thirdly, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories show that people need Moral Relativism. The first example is when Dr.Heidegger invites three of her close friends to drink from the water brought to him from the fountain of youth, and they all go crazy with the power of youth. Thes+

e people have given up all moral standards and do whatever they can to get more of the water so they can revert to their youth for longer periods of time. The next example is when the girl is put near a poison plant by her father so that no guy could ever get close to her. So when a guy comes into her life and she notices that her can’t get close to her she kills herself. When that happens the guy kills her father, because he was so mad that he had thought to keep her around the poison plant for all of her