Similarities Between Emerson And Frederick Douglass

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Mary Kate McTeigue
American Literature to 1865 - Section 1
Sean McPherson
April 28, 2013

Emerson’s, Self-Reliance and It’s Parallel with Frederick Douglass’s Journey to Self

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in 1803 in Boston although his family were not wealthy they were well connected, privileged and educated. Emerson attended Harvard, Harvard Divinity
School and became a minister interested in such topics as non-conformity, the individual and the soul. Frederick Douglass was born in 1817 in Maryland the son of a slave and white man. He was born into slavery, saw his mother only a few times and did not know his father. Douglass went on to be an abolitionist, an editor of a newspaper, an avid writer and lecturer.
These
To quote Emerson, “What I

McTeigue 4 must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. The rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness” (Emerson
1337). But to non-conform as a slave was to beaten regularly by the overseer or master and if that didn’t work the slave was sold and sent away. In one extreme case Douglass tells the story of an overseer shooting a slave in the face in front of other slaves because the slave didn’t get out of a creek when told to by the overseer. When asked by the owner of the plantation why he shot the slave, Douglass recalls the justification, “He was setting a dangerous example to the other slaves,-one which, if suffered to pass without some such demonstration on his part, would finally lead to the total subversion of all rule and order upon the plantation” (Douglass 1758). With these experiences and stories slaves were kept down from entertaining thoughts of freedom or individuality. They conformed not only because it was a way of life; it was
Both these men listened to their intuition, trusted them selves and were not afraid to be non-conforming and became self-realized free men. But in the case of Frederick Douglass not only did he became intellectually free but physically free from slavery using all the same tools spelled out in Emerson’s, Self-Reliance. To end, Douglass shares an exchange with one of his masters, “He told me, if I would be happy, I must lay out no plans for the future. He said, if I behaved myself properly, he would take care of me. Indeed, he advised me to complete thoughtlessness of the future, and taught me to depend solely up him for happiness. He seemed

McTeigue 7 to see fully the pressing necessity of setting aside my intellectual nature, in order to contentment in slavery” (Douglass 1792). Douglass flings, deflects and resists each point listening only to his ministering angels until they flew him into the hands of freedom.

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Works Cited
Perkins, George and Barbara Perkins. The American Tradition in Literature. 12th ed.
New York: McGraw-Hill. 2009. Print.
Douglass, Frederick. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas.” Perkins and Perkins 17541792.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Self-Reliance.” Perkins and Perkins