"Richard Cory"

Between the two of the Edwin Arlington Robinson poems that we could choose to write this blog about, I would have to go with “Richard Cory.” I would pick “Richard Cory” over “Miniver Cheevy” because I personally think that “Richard Cory” shows more of a similarity and a better display of Robinson’s philosophies than “Miniver Cheevy” did.

“Richard Cory” is a short poem about a man named Richard Cory who is admired by all of the normal people in his town. He was “richer than a king” and every time he talked, he would “flutter pulses” of whomever he was addressing (Robinson 575). Even though everyone looked up to him and envied him, the end of the poem throws in a little twist; one night, Richard Cory goes home and kills himself by shooting himself in the head (Robinson 575). It is very easy to determine what the point to this poem is; money can not buy you happiness.

I think that this philosophy of “money can not buy you happiness” shows a similarity to the philosophy of Emerson and Thoreau. This shows a connection to the transcendentalist idea that material wealth and money is no way to true happiness and understanding. Nature is the only way to find truth and understanding of one’s self and the universe around them. Another little thing that stood out to me in the poem was the little phrase “And he was always human when he talked” (Robinson 575). The reason why this stood out to me was because it implies that the people did not think of him as a human, something more, a god of some sorts maybe. During the entirety of the description of Richard Cory, it never once mentioned anything about what he did nature wise, like how he hiked or anything like that. All it said was about how well he dressed, how formally educated he was, and how wealthy he was. That ended up meaning nothing to him.

Robinson, Edwin Arlington. "Richard Cory" Glencoe Literature. By Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Douglas Fisher, Beverly Ann. Chin, and Jacqueline Jones. Royster. New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2009. 575. Print.

"The Darling"

“The Darling” by Anton Chekhov is a short story about a woman named Olga “Olenka” Semyonovna who “was constantly in love with someone and could not live otherwise” (Chekhov 558). Although on the surface it might seem like this short story is simply about a girl who moves from husband to husband as each one leaves her in different ways, I think that there is much more meaning to it than that.

The main thing that stood out to me about this short story was the fact that whenever Olenka found a new husband to attach on to, she took up all of the traits and the opinions that they had. This effectively meant that she had no opinions for herself, which is why she was left so sad and empty each time her husband left. While the story does seem to show how happy she is when she has someone to love and to form opinions from, it also seems to warn about the dangers of someone not having the capacity to have their own thoughts and opinions. This comes from the fact that Chekhov writes about how she is wilting away when she has nobody to love.

The point that Chekhov is trying to make is that it is better for one to have their own opinions so that even when they have no one to love and to share ideas and opinions with, they still have independence in their own heads. I personally think that this is similar to the idea of Emerson’s philosophy of self reliance because they both promote the importance of being an individual. This story also strongly reminded me about the story of Echo in Greek mythology. This is yet another reason why this story shows influences of writers like Emerson and Thoreau.

One thing that I would like to point out, on the other hand, is that there is little chance that Emerson or Thoreau had any influence on this work because Chekhov was Russian.

Chekhov, Anton. "The Darling" Glencoe Literature. By Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Douglas Fisher, Beverly Ann. Chin, and Jacqueline Jones. Royster. New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2009. 558-565. Print.

"I Will Fight No More Forever"

“I Will Fight No More Forever” is a famous speech by Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé peoples in the late 1800’s after his father died in 1871.

Even though this speech is a very short work, it contains as much emotion and meaning as a normal, full length short story. The main message that the reader gets when they read this is deep desperation and defeat of someone that was once considered strong by the people he lead and protected. When I read this in our literature books, I had the pre recorded voice read to me because to me, a speech, especially one like this, should be heard coming from someone else because that is how it was intended on being read to the listener. Even hearing it from some person hired by Glencoe Company to read it from a script was able to impart much feeling and emotion mostly because it would be hard not to read it without any emotion. I can not even imagine how moving it must have been to have heard it from Chief Joseph himself.

I do not think that this speech has or an show much similarity to the philosophies of Emerson and Thoreau. The main issue that I think that sets the two groups apart would be the fact that Emerson and Thoreau thought that one should be “Self-Reliant,” for Emerson, and Thoreau thought that if something is against a person’s morals, they should not participate in those rules. These two philosophies differ from Chief Joseph’s in this instance because he, as a leader, can’t be self-reliant. He has an entire tribe that he has to look out for and keep safe. In this instance, he had to make the decision to stop the suffering of his people by surrendering and giving in to the government’s orders, which would also be against Thoreau’s philosophy. On the other hand, it was the peaceful option so maybe Thoreau would have approved.

Joseph, Chief. "I Will Fight No More Forever" Glencoe Literature. By Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Douglas Fisher, Beverly Ann. Chin, and Jacqueline Jones. Royster. New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2009. 533. Print.

"Spoon River Anthology"

The two excerpts that I read from Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology were “Lucinda Matlock” and “Fiddler Jones.” The poem “Lucinda Matlock” was about an outgoing woman who went to parties in her younger years, who met her husband whom she settled down with for the rest of her life. She enjoyed the simple things in life and died contentedly. “Fiddler Jones” was about a man who knew how to play the fiddle so he was always playing at parties and get-togethers. Everything he did reminded him on the dances he played at; the rustling of dry leaves remind him of the movement of a certain girl, “Red Head Sammy,” dancing or how the wind tousling the corn in the fields reminds him of the dancing and rustling of a girls skirt at a dance. He was always willing to join in on a good time.

From reading just these two poems from Spoon River Anthology, I got the impression that his philosophies might be similar to the philosophies of Emerson and Thoreau. I make the connection between their writings because, for one, in “Lucinda Matlock,” towards the end of the poem the narrator refers to the children of the next generation as “degenerate sons and daughters” (Masters 516). This idea that the new generation is becoming distanced from where they are supposed to be is an idea shared by Thoreau. Thoreau believed that Americans had lost sight of what was really important in their pursuit of material gain and wealth (Grant 2). This claim could be easily backed up by the fact that Thoreau thought that the only way to real meaning is a better “relationship” with nature and in the poem Lucinda was said to have gone out to the fields frequently and singing to the forest (Masters 16). This close connection with nature brought Lucinda to the conclusion that it was the way to find true happiness just like Thoreau did.

Grant, P. B. "Individual and Society in Walden." McClinton-Temple, Jennifer ed. Encyclopedia of
Themes in Literature. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2011. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

Masters, Edgar Lee. "Spoon River Anthology" Glencoe Literature. By Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Douglas Fisher, Beverly Ann. Chin, and Jacqueline Jones. Royster. New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2009. 516-517. Print.

"Two Views of the River"

To me, “Two Views of the River” shows a great deal of similarities to the philosophies of Emerson and Thoreau. The easiest connection to make between the writers’ writing styles would have to be the fact that most of the short story was written describing a river. This fascination and reverence for the beauty of nature is very similar to Emerson and Thoreau because they were people who held Nature in the highest regards. One of the more in depth connections that can be made is the fact that when Clemens was talking about the river, one little word showed a connection to Emerson and Thoreau’s transcendentalist ideas. The word I am talking about would be “rapture,” which he says twice in the second paragraph (Twain 505). Even though he may not mean the literal rapture, although it is always possible he did, it still makes the reader look at the description of the river in more of a religious light just because of the religious implications the word “rapture” holds. This religious view of nature is very similar to the views of transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau because they saw nature as proof of the existence of a divine power and that true knowledge could only come from studying nature (Quinn 1).

The other important part of this short narrative is the fact that, as the name implies, it is a comparison between how he used to view the river as opposed to how he views it now. When he describes the beauty and splendor of the river, he uses language that conveys love and compassion for the new landscape. When he talks about how he sees the river now, though, he puts it in a way that seems cold and full of distaste. This association with nature as beautiful and the industry on the river as cold and calculated is very similar to Thoreau’s ideas that the society of his time had become obsessed with material wealth and less concerned with the spirit of the individual (Grant 2).

Grant, P. B. "Individual and Society in Walden." McClinton-Temple, Jennifer ed. Encyclopedia of  Themes in Literature. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2011. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

Twain, Mark. "Two Views of the River" Glencoe Literature. By Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Douglas Fisher, Beverly Ann. Chin, and Jacqueline Jones. Royster. New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2009. 504-505. Print.

Quinn, Edward. "Transcendentalism." A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006.Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

"The Red Badge of Courage"

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane was a story about a man, Henry Fleming, who was a soldier during the Civil War who was hit in the head by a fellow soldier during battle who goes on to lie about his injury. He is thought of as a hero for having been hurt during battle.

Even thought there was a very short excerpt from the whole work in our literature book, I gathered that Crane’s philosophy is different from that of Emerson or Thoreau. The initial fact that brought me to this conclusion is the fact that our literature books listed this sort part of the book and Stephen Crane as a Naturalist instead of a Transcendentalist like Thoreau or Emerson. Another reason why I think that Crane’s writing and philosophy differs from Emerson and Thoreau is because in the short part that I read, it talked mainly about Fleming’s feelings instead of the natural surroundings. On the subject of Fleming’s feelings, they are described in a very animalistic sense; Crane even compares Fleming’s feelings to that of the “acute exacerbation of a pestered animal” (Crane 493). This approach to analyzing the feelings of Fleming exemplifies that is a Naturalist because Naturalists were influenced by Charles Darwin’s writing and how he said that people are just highly evolved mammals and nothing else (Sommers 1). Naturalists also believe that humans had no souls because since everyone thought that animals did not have souls and he Darwin believed people were just a high ordered mammal, we also had no soul (Sommers 1). This idea, to me, is very contradictory to the philosophies of Emerson because his major work, Self-Reliance is about having the inner strength and having one’s soul in tune nature. Another way to put the goal in self reliance is to determine what is “natural in the world as well as what is inspirational within the human soul” (Brugman 1). The main behind the Transcendentalists is that the only way to achieve “true knowledge” is to go commune with nature and to look within one’s soul (Quinn 1).

Brugman, Patricia. "Nature in 'Self-Reliance'." McClinton-Temple, Jennifer ed. Encyclopedia of
Themes in Literature. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2011. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

Sommers, Joseph Michael. "naturalism." In Maunder, Andrew.Facts On File Companion to the British Short Story. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.


Quinn, Edward. "Transcendentalism." A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006.Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.

"The Story of an Hour"

The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin is about the wife of a man who hears that her husband has died in a train crash. She gets very emotional and says that she needs to go to her room to be alone for a little bit. She goes and sits in a comfortable armchair that was facing an open window in her room. From there, the she observes all of the things that are going on outside; the “trees all aquiver with the new spring life,” “the delicious breath of rain,” a “peddler crying his wares,” and someone singing off in the distance (Chopin 554). As she sits there, facing the window and observing everything that is happening, she it hits her that she is no longer under her husband’s “rule” and there would be no more “powerful will bending hers;” she is free (Chopin 555). She starts imagining how wonderful her life will be now that she can just “live for herself” (Chopin 555). Her sister hears her breathing heavily and whispering to herself and mistakes it as intense grief and “implores for admission,” to which Louise Mallard replies “Go away. I am not making myself ill” (Chopin 555). After a while of imagining the new life ahead of her, she finally come out of her room and goes downstairs. Just as she gets to the main floor, though, in walks her husband, alive and well. In the shock of discovering her husband is alive, she dies suddenly due to her heart problems foreshadowed in the first paragraph (Chopin 555).

For such a short, little story, Chopin managed to use many literary devices. When she mentioned the heart problems at the beginning of the story, it was use of foreshadowing. When she mentioned that Louise now prayed that her life would be a long one when “only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long” (Chopin 555), she used irony. She also used irony when she mentioned that the doctor claimed that she died of “the joy that kills,” because it shows that she was the only one that knew her true feelings pertaining to her husband’s death (Chopin 555).

“The Story of an Hour” shows similarities to the philosophies of Emerson and Thoreau because they both valed the signfigance of the “self” and Louise Mallard embodied this idea in the shape of a suppressed wife who did not feel like her will was her own. Chopin also shows a similarity to Thoreau’s writing because she is contradictory; for example Louise is “happy” her husband is dead, yet she mentioned that “she had loved him” and that her husband had a “face that never looked save with love upon her” (Chopin 555). This contradiction is similar to Thoreau because “Thoreau was a contradictory figure” (Grant 5).


Grant, P. B. "Individual and Society in Walden." McClinton-Temple, Jennifer ed. Encyclopedia of
Themes in Literature. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2011. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.


Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour" Glencoe Literature. By Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Douglas Fisher, Beverly Ann. Chin, and Jacqueline Jones. Royster. New York: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2009. 554-555. Print.