Ralph Waldo Emmerson on Friendship

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born 200 years after Milton was born, in the year of 1803. By then, since they did not stop to write their opinions, both of them were prisoned under the British parliament’s law of censorship. At the same time, America had declared its freedom and they still continued to write their opinion about certain things. Emerson’s essays in Self-Reliance and Other Essays published in 1993 were about America’s independence and his writing. Believing in freedom, he wants people to always make a choice, no matter what the situation is or where the rules are laid. His belief is that people are the ones who choose to follow the rules. In Friendship, one of Emerson’s essays in the book, he writes his own opinions on friendship rationally based on the beliefs mentioned. This essay basically talks about the bond and tie-in between people. For Emerson, having this tie-in between individuals is important because no matter how close we are with the person, this connection paints and perfects our lives like a cherry on top of a frozen yogurt. Using his logic that is strong and rational, Emerson explains how a friendship corroborates the idea of self-reliance, that a good friendship is the firmest thing we know, and that a friendship with more than two individual is uncommon and not genuine. As Emerson states, friends "who carry out world for [us] to new and noble depths, and enlarge the meaning of all [our] thoughts" are important in our life (41).

Just like what Emerson usually does, he begins the essay with a poem, “A ruddy drop […] sea outweighs” which relates to the sentence stated later in the same essay “I do not […] with roughest courage” (39, 44). By beautifully writing the first two lines in the poem, he wants to ...

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... way of two friends. This implication is not right because friendship should not be built by “a texture of wine and dreams”, but with the “tough fibre of the human heart” (42). Heart of trust is the basic of friendship because in friendship, we need to fight against the difficulties to find a true happiness. Fighting against the obstacle together proves whether it is a true friendship or not.

For Emerson, as well as for us, friendship does mean the world. Assume that world is a friend, and every human being has one world, so every human being must have a friend. Having a friend means having the greatest gift of all, Emerson's logic ultimately proven strong and rational. Emerson has given us definition about friendship and tips on how it is built. As we know that having friends will make us feel like never before, why don't we try to build stronger friendship today?