Ralph Waldo Emerson Self Reliance

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After analyzing Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance" essay, one can conclude that Emerson's claims are applicable to the characters of both Huckleberry Finn and Jim. Specifically, before getting to know Jim so well, Huck still relies on the Southern white American viewpoint of the human race. By way of example, Huck genuinely assumes that turning over Jim to the white American people would be the right thing to do. In addition to this, Huck struggles with the question of whether or not Miss Watson is a good slave owner. Here, Huck can be described as a "cautious young adult." As Emerson maintains, a cautious person is immensely worried about his or her reputation and the opinions of other people. This idea is by virtue of that a person's burden to comply with the society's ideals implies to repress self-reliance. …show more content…
For instance, Jim is less captivated by the fact of accepting other people's conventional codes of conduct than Huck. When Huck starts to tell Jim the story of King Solomon, who wanted to cut a baby in half, Huck's statements guide us to compare Jim's value judgment of King Solomon (that he had many children that he was not able to appreciate human life rightly) with white Americans' treatment of African-Americans. In regard to Jim's argument, this is a clear reminder that not all men and women of any race are treated equally in the American society at the