"Gifts"

According to Emerson, gifts shuold be given with no personal gratification in mind for the giver. He thinks that it's okay if you give a simple gift of necessity since it's still a gift nevertheless. When receiving a gift you shouldn't be overly glad or disappointed in it. If one is overly glad, it shows that that person wasn't capable of going and getting this object they needed for their own selves. Also, if one receives a gift that is exactly what they want, it means that that person is exposing too much of themselves to others in terms of their material needs. He thinks that gifts should represent a part of the giver. If it doesn't, it serves as an artificial social tie since the gift could be taken gladly or sorrowfully. One can tell when a gift is given thoughtlessly if it doesn't help bring the giver's character to the surface. If one can't tell who gave them that gift, that means its a bad gift and there is no emotion or sentiment behind it. This is a lose-lose situation in Emerson's eyes, because either emotion in receiving the gift has faults. He is critiquing the norm of people who take pride in gift giving and receiving because to him there are so many subconscious wrongs that go behind each one...

"Self Reliance"

In Self Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson analyzes man in terms of their actions, intentions, and everything shown in interaction with others. In one part of his essay he says, “We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.” There are a few different things that this quote from Emerson can mean. When he says, “We but half express ourselves,” it is clear that he is referring to the fact that people hold back from showing their true selves. In result of this, only fragments of one’s true character is shown to others. This can happen for a variety of reasons. Emerson takes this self conscious occurrence to be happening from a few different angles. He says, “[we] are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.” Literally, that means we are ashamed of what we represent as a whole, which would be Emerson’s literal meaning as to why we only expose parts of ourself. These are the literal meanings behind this quote given by Emerson, however when someone from today’s day in age analyzes what he says – we can extract different meanings.

“We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.” Now that we’ve analyzed the literal meaning of this quote, one can explore beyond Emerson’s word choice to make this point. The first part of the quote is somewhat indisputable because it’s pretty much agreeable that not everyone shows their true self. However, the second part of the quote is debatable beyond Emerson’s literal meaning. “[We] are ashamed of that divine idea which each os us represents.” There are a couple of words in this part of the quote that can be interchanged with something more accurate, or beyond Emerson’s train of that. The fact that he used the word “ashamed” means we would literally be sad about what each of our character’s convey to the world. This would assume that each of us deeply knows ourselves already, because to be ashamed means to be fully aware of what you don’t want to show anyone. But hardly anyone fully know themselves at any time of their life. So to be ashamed of one’s self would be assuming that one DOES know themselves wholly, which is sort of impossible. Emerson could mean that one could be ashamed to show what they DO know about themselves, but it must be understood that being ashamed of what you do know about yourself is different than being ashamed of your entire self. It’s more practical to assume that people are ashamed of the fractions of themselves that they happen to be aware of. Also, Emerson uses the word “divine” to describe the ideas that people can give to the world through representation. By using this word, it can mean that each of us is sort of transcendent/important in terms of character, which is a stretch because not everyone really has a character. In fact there are a lot of people that don’t show character, and they will never intend to.