A Brief Look at Louisa May Alcott

Throughout the ages, American authors have changed the way people of their era and future eras think about society and their own livelihoods. Both Dickinson and Thoreau have questioned society and even changed what society deemed the norm through their writings. Two of these writers, Emily Dickinson and David Thoreau, isolated themselves from society so they could express themselves more freely. Their thoughts of society differ throughout their writing, their reclusiveness to society and seriousness to their writing. One can find some similarities in both writer’s works. These similarities show that one should be steadfast in their beliefs even if they oppose society. We should learn to live without constraint

The person we are today is a reflection of how we were raised as children. Everything we learn and experience as children shapes us for the future. In this passage of her autobiography, One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty wrote about the library and how her becoming of a writer stemmed from her love of reading. Welty is able to convey the intensity and value of these experiences while connecting to her audience.

Emily Dickinson was an exceptional writer through the mid-late 1800’s. She never published any of her writings and it wasn’t until after her death that they were even discovered. The complexity of understanding her poems is made prevalent because of the fact that she, the author, cannot expound on what her writing meant. This causes others to have to speculate and decide for themselves the meaning of any of her poems. There are several ways that people can interpret Emily Dickinson’s poems; readers often give their opinion on which of her poems present human understanding as something boundless and unlimited or something small and limited, and people always speculate Dickinson’s view of the individual self.

Through all the readings that she had possessed she had become, what was the start of, an independent woman. The fact that she continued to read to further her knowledge and to learn more did not faze her that not many other women were doing as she was. At a young age she knew that “settling” with the roles of women during this time was a life that she had to choose but she also wanted more. She wanted to educate herself and that she did through the works of her favorite author’s books and poems.

Throughout the play the authors discuss transcendentalism in Henry Thoreau’s life by choosing moments, from his life, where he is

Throughout literature, characters who live transcendentally share similarities. Their descriptions evoke clarity and purity, and their names often symbolize their beliefs. Mindful characters tend to stand out from the crowd, stepping away from the boundaries of society and choosing their own paths. As transcendentalism is difficult to develop alone, most of these characters have some sort of role model, someone to gain a message from. They then go on to spread that message to the people they meet. A transcendental character’s mission is to impact some un-transcendental character by bringing them clarity, and this can be seen in the characters studied this semester. The similar descriptions, messages, and impacts of conscious characters prove

As stated by intellectual Joseph Wong, “influence is our inner ability to lift people up to our perspectives” (Young Ch. 6). Throughout history, numerous writers have utilized their ability to impact their readers to encourage their audience to follow the author’s principles and beliefs. Louisa May Alcott, born in Pennsylvania in 1832, was the type of writer to use her power to influence her lectors’ views on the topics and issues that she was passionate about. Alcott’s father, Amos Bronson Alcott, was a writer, lecturer, and educator, and her mother, Abba May, was a strong-willed and independent woman and bright educator. Her brilliant parents helped Alcott grow to be an intellectual, an independent female, and, as mentioned by Clark Moreland in one of his lectures, “…a dark headed, volatile, and energetic child” (“Lecture 3.4…”). After her parents fell into deep debt, Alcott began to work to support her family. She served as a seamstress, teacher, and, of course, a writer. As an open-minded individual, Alcott was an advocate of many causes and policies, and, through her compositions, she shared her beliefs to guide her readers towards integrating her ideals into their lives. For instance, in 1863, Alcott released her work “My Contraband,” first titled “The Brothers.” The piece featured a Civil War nurse, Faith Dane, in the Union side who was in charge of caring for a captured, dying Confederate captain and

Both Chris McCandless and Henry David Thoreau relate to the concept of transcendentalism. Transcendentalism’s main ideas revolve around the concepts of self-wisdom, nature, and social reform. Both McCandless and Thoreau embrace two of these three ideas, but they both also show individualism very strongly. People can see this when they read Into the Wild and Thoreau’s excerpts from Walden. By reading these passages, the reader can see similarities between the lives of McCandless and Thoreau.

One thing that people seem to forget is that people seem to become desensitized after a certain amount of time. Accomplishing the things that Alcott did during her time of the Civil war, allowed her to become a better person, more mature. Fortunately, Louisa desired to know life in all its uncertainties, being given an opportunity to experience life in “all its true variety”. As a nurse, she saw and bandaged thousands of wounded soldiers, little did she know that maybe she fell in love with one man in

Louisa May Alcott is an American Novelist best known as the author of the novel “Little Women”. Louisa was born in November 1982, grew up in Germantown- Washington D.C and was known to be an abolitionist, feminist and also a naturalist. Being a naturalist meant that she believed that nothing existed beyond the natural earth i.e. no such thing as spirituality or the supernatural. Her family suffered from financial difficulties and so Alcott had to work to support her family in an early age. She penned the story “My Contraband” (1869) which was formerly known as “The Brothers” (1863). Contraband was a black slave who escaped to or was brought within union lines (Alcott 759). In “My Contraband”, Louisa

Oprah Winfrey destroyed Their Eyes Were Watching God whole meaning, when she made the movie into something different than what Nora Neale Hurston wanted it made out. Janie did not have the characteristics of being strong in the book or in her relationships. In the movie she made out pure than in the book. Oprah made the movie into a perfect love story, when reading the book it was not even close to being a love story. The characters vibe in the movie varied differently from the book.

One of the themes that is frequently seen on transcendentalism poems and essays is individuality. Following one’s intuition and doing what is true to you is something that the writers of transcendentalism try to stress in their writings. In a society where you seem to have to follow the trends and ideas that have been put forth by other people, following your own thoughts even if they do not seem to be what is expected of you is something that is very important to people. Although Transcendentalism was a movement that happened a long time ago, the poems and writings of the transcendentalism authors can still be interpreted into our society.

Transcendentalism, as described and asserted by Emerson, has been a very controversial topic during the twenty-first-century. The country as it is now is more technologically advanced and educated than ever; seeking transcendentalism is now more difficult than ever. With commodities such as cell phones, computers, and the Internet, most would not think of seeking out the values in nature

Anna Alcott was the model for Meg March. Both these characters shared common life events. They both married a man called “John” and both gave birth to twins. They were both the eldest in the family. Louisa’s little sister, May, was the model for Amy. They were both graceful and poised at a young age and very materialistic. The youngest of the Alcott girls, Elizabeth was the model for Beth in the novel. Not only did they share the same namesake as the youngest March character Beth; they both shared a childhood death due to scarlet fever. They both died at a very young age. Evidently, Alcott was the model for Jo. They were both tempestuous and of wild nature. They were both females living in the Victorian Era who defied the norms of their times. At the age of fifteen, she wrote in her diary, “I will do something by and by. Don’t care what, teach, sew, act, write anything to help the family and I’ll be rich and famous and happy before I die, see if I won’t” (Laire 10). Women of that time did not normally focus on getting jobs; they left it to their male counterparts to bring home the income. Alcott and her sister both took on teaching jobs, though her dream was to become an actress. By the age of twenty, she knew her real talent was to write. To please the readers, she quickly understood the reading market and started experimenting with different writing styles. This gave her

Annie Dillard opens Pilgrim at Tinker Creek mysteriously, hinting at an unnamed presence. She toys with the longstanding epic images of battlefields and oracles, injecting an air of holiness and awe into the otherwise ordinary. In language more poetic than prosaic, she sings the beautiful into the mundane. She deifies common and trivial findings. She extracts the most high language from all the possible permutations of words to elevate and exalt the normal. Under her pen, her literary devices and her metaphors, a backyard stream becomes a shrine. Writing a prayer, Dillard becomes an instrument through which a ubiquitous spirit reveals itself. Yet in other cases, she latches on to an image