Emerson: The Transcendentalist Movement

The transcendentalist movement began in America during the late 1830s. The movement was fathered by Ralph Waldo Emerson and centered around the concept of going beyond what our physical senses and reason tell us about the world. The tenets that surround transcendentalism include willingness to question authority and individualism. Henry David Thoreau took the ideas and tenets of the movement to a further understanding and deeper interpretation in many ways: he lived in isolation for over two years, acted against conformity in every way, and questioned authority by refusing to pay his taxes and going to jail for it. Since the days of Emerson and Thoreau, transcendentalism has been a relatively common theme in literature, movies and the arts.

Keating accurately displays the willingness to question authority in “Dead Poets Society.” The willingness to question authority is established as a tenet of transcendentalism in multiple literary works by early transcendentalists. In Self-Reliance, Emerson, the father of the transcendentalism, questions the authority of society by promoting nonconformists: “society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members… The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion...Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist” (Emerson 370). Emerson dislikes the blindness that conformity casts upon the members of society. He starts the transcendentalist movement to challenge the conformity seen in every aspect of society and ultimately promote self-reliance. Thoreau takes Emerson’s idea of questioning authority to a deeper meaning by acting upon it. When the United States struck up a war with Mexico in 1846, Thoreau disliked the government’s involvement in the war and refused to pay his taxes to protest. As a result Thoreau is jailed and the events surrounding his imprisonment are told in the play The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, by Robert E. Lee and Jerome Lawrence. When asked why he will not pay his taxes, Thoreau says “we’ve got a President who went and boomed up war all by himself- with no help from Congress and less help from me” (Lawrence and Lee 6). Thoreau is directly questioning the authority of the government and openly

Keating in “Dead Poets Society.” The transcendentalist tenet of individualism is established in the early literary works of Henry David Thoreau. In his essay Walden, Thoreau explains why he decided to isolate himself from society by living in the woods and ultimately promotes individualism. In the conclusion of the essay he says “if a man does not keep pace with with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away” (Thoreau 385). Thoreau is encouraging his readers to be their own person and not conform to society. This further establishes individualism as a tenet of the transcendentalism movement. Individualism is accurately displayed by Mr. Keating and the lessons he teaches his students. Mr. Keating encourages his students to not only question the authority of traditional ideas, but also to form their own: “we all have a great need for acceptance, but you must trust that your beliefs are unique, your own, even though others may think them odd or unpopular” (Weir). Mr. Keating wants his students to learn to be themselves and have confidence in their own beliefs. This shows that he understands transcendentalist ideas and believes they should be practiced. Mr. Keating’s actions are consistent with the tenets of