AP Emerson & Thoreau SG r-12 p.1
Study Guide
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau
“Self-Reliance” by RW Emerson (page numbers refer to the Heath Anthology, pp. 707-718)
1. What is Emerson's definition of “genius”? (p. 707)
Do you agree with it? Why?
What does Emerson say we should do with our own thoughts? (p. 707)
What will we be “forced” to if we don't do this in time?
2. Are we equally impressed by all people and ideas? Explain. (p. 708)
3. What should we do with the place that “divine providence has found for” us? (p. 708 2nd ¶)
What does Emerson say here about events and people?
4. What is the “virtue in most request”? (p. 709, 2nd ¶)
What does Emerson think of this?
Why?
Do you agree?
5. In order to be a man, one must be a ________________________________________. (p. 709)
6. According to Emerson, what determines right and wrong? (p. 709)
7. What does Emerson say on p. 710 (“There is a class of persons”) about the way we choose those with
whom we associate or whom we help out? What words does he use to describe our attachment to them?
8. What does Emerson say is all that concerns him? (p. 710 3rd ¶)
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What does he say makes “the great man”?
9. What is Emerson's “objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you,” and how does he
use a preacher as an example? (Bear in mind that people—like Emerson himself in his younger days—
often went into the ministry for very different reasons than they do so today!)
Can you think of any modern instances of this type of “thinking” (not necessarily connected to religion)?
10. How does the world reward non-conformity? (p. 711 2nd ¶)
Should this matter to us? Why?
11. What does Emerson think of deliberate consistency? (p. 711 3rd ¶ and p. 712)
How may it keep us from improving?
12. What does Emerson say about being “misunderstood”?
13. What does he suppose “no man can violate”? What does he mean by this, and by saying that our actions
will always be “harmonious, however unlike they seem”? (p. 712, 2nd full ¶)
14. What does Emerson say we should “scorn”? (p. 712)
Is he right? Explain
15. Have we “in these days . . . heard the last of conformity and consistency? (I refer to our present, not
Emerson's.) Explain.
16. What do you think Emerson means when he says, “An institution is the lengthened shadow of one
man”?
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What is Emerson saying we should all realize about OURSELVES?
17. What does Emerson say about “voluntary acts” versus “involuntary perceptions”? (bottom of p. 714,
“Every man discriminates between voluntary acts…”)
What does he say we may “err in”?
18. What does man dare not do?
On what do we set “so great a price”? Why?
19. When “good” is near us and we have life in ourselves, how will it seem to us? (p. 716, top)
Why?
20. Look at the ¶ beginning “If we cannot at once rise . . .” on p. 717. What does Emerson say here about
our own convictions and the relationships we may have with others?
Do you agree with him?
21. Is Emerson advocating a complete lack of standards to which to hold ourselves? (pp. 717-718) Explain.
22. What does Emerson say about occupations? (p. 718 last ¶)
23. Judging by what you have read of Emerson, which of his ideas are still radical and/or non-conformist,
even by modern American standards?
AP Emerson & Thoreau SG r-12 p.4
“The American Scholar” by RW Emerson (Heath Anthology, pp. 694-706)
1. What does Emerson say the scholar is delegated as?
What is he in “the right state”?
What has the scholar tended to become?
2. What do we accomplish by studying nature?
3. What is the “next great influence” on the scholar?
4. What must “each age” do?
5. What, in your own words, is the “grave mischief” of which Emerson speaks?
6. What should books really be used for?
7. Read the passage beginning “It is remarkable . . . .” In your own words, what does Emerson say about “the best
books”?
Which pieces of writing have you felt this way about in your life?
8. According to Emerson, what are the problems in the notion that the scholar must be a recluse?
9. Do you agree with Emerson that the scholar must not be a recluse? Explain why.
10. What does Emerson mean when he says that the scholar's duty is to be “free and brave”?
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11. What does Emerson say fear springs from?
12. What comments does Emerson make about the things on which American scholars should concentrate?
What does he say about Europe?
“Friendship” by RW Emerson
Text: Dover Thrift Edition of Emerson's Essays, pp. 39-50.
Use the text of the essay to fill in each blank below correctly. The quotations are in order.
1. Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe it should _____________ _____
__________________________, and it would be content and cheerful alone for a thousand years.
2. My friends have come to me _______________. The great _________ gave them to me. … [T]he Deity
in me and in them derides and cancels the thick walls of_____________ _________________________,
___________________, ________, __________, __________________, at which he usually connives, and
now makes many one.
3. A new ____________________ is to me a great event, and hinders me from ___________.
4. Thus every man passes his ______________ in the search after friendship, and if he should record his
true sentiment, he might write a letter like this to each new candidate for his ______________.
DEAR FRIEND: -If I was _____________ of thee, sure of thy capacity, sure to match my mood with thine, I should never
think again of trifles in relation to thy _______________ and _________________. … I not presume in
thee a perfect ____________________ of me, and so thou art to me a _____________ ____________.
Thine ever, or never.
5. I do not wish to treat friendships ________________, but with roughest ___________________. When
they are real, they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the ___________________ thing we know.
6. There are two elements that go to the composition of friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no
superiority in either, no reason why either should be first named.
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One is ________________. A friend is a person with whom I may be __________________ . … The other
element of friendship is ____________________.
7. Two may talk and one may hear, but __________________ cannot take part in a conversation of the
most _________________ and ___________________ sort.
In good company there is never such discourse between two, across the table, as takes place when you
_______________ ______________ ______________.
8. Friendship requires that rare mean betwixt ___________________ and ______________________ , that
piques each with the presence of power and of consent in the other party.
9. Better be a ______________ in the _________________ of your friend than his ___________________.
10. Friendship demands a __________________ treatment. We talk of ___________________ our friends,
but friends are self-elected. ___________________ is a great part of it
11. Let him be to thee for ever a sort of beautiful _____________, untamable, devoutly revered, and not a
trivial conveniency to be soon ______________ and _______________ ______________.
12. Respect so far the ___________________ laws of this fellowship as not to prejudice its perfect flower
by your ________________ for its____________________. We must be ________________
______________ before we can be _______________'s.
13. The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to __________ ___ ____________ is to
____________ ___________.
14. I do then with my friends as I do with my _________________. I would have them where I can find
them, but I seldom ____________ them. … Then, though I ________________ my ________________, I
cannot afford to talk with them and study their visions, lest I ____________ my ___________________.
15. It has seemed to me lately more possible than I knew, to ____________ ___ ____________
____________, on ___________ side without due _______________________ on the other. Why should I
cumber myself with _______________ that the receiver is not capacious?
16. Respond to the following: Why may a new friendship be described as “a delicious torment”? Use some
examples from your own experience!
AP Emerson & Thoreau SG r-12 p.7
“On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” pp. 85-106
Page numbers refer to the Bantam Edition of Walden and Other Writings by Henry
David Thoreau. Also found in the Heath Anthology as “Resistance to Civil Government,” pp. 751-765
1. What kind of government does Thoreau favor? Why? (p. 85, 1st ¶)
2. What does Thoreau think of “majority rule”? Is he right? (p. 86, “After all…”)
3. What does Thoreau say should be used to decide right and wrong?
4. What does Thoreau say is his only obligation?
5. What happens when people have an “undue respect for the law”? (p. 86, bottom)
6. What two reasons does Thoreau give for justifying revolt against the current government? (pp. 87-89)
7. According to Thoreau, why won't most people revolt against the government? (p. 89, “Practically
speaking…”)
8. What are some of the problems Thoreau sees with voting as a form of actually doing something to right a
wrong? (pp. 89-90 and p. 92, bottom)
9. What should determine our actions? (p. 91, bottom)
10. If the law “requires you to be the agent of __________________________________________ to
another, then, I say ______________________the_____________________ … What I have to do is to see,
AP Emerson & Thoreau SG r-12 p.8
at any rate, that I do not ___________________________________________________________
_______________________ .” (p. 92, “Unjust laws exist…” and “If the injustice…”)
11. What part of society should the government listen to? What people does Thoreau use as examples to
support this? (p. 92, 1st full ¶)
12. On p. 94, Thoreau describes how a minority may, through civil disobedience, influence the government.
Explain how the minority can do this.
13. Why is Thoreau freer to commit civil disobedience than most of the people he knows? (“When I
converse…” pp. 95-96)
14. What two taxes does Thoreau say he has refused to pay? Why? What happened as a result? (pp. 96-98)
15.What does Thoreau mean by the statement: “If a plant cannot live according to nature, it dies; and so a
man”? (p. 97)
16. During his night in jail, how did Thoreau spend his time? (pp. 98-99)
17. Thoreau quotes the argument Daniel Webster, a lawmaker who says that slavery should remain legal
since it was legal when the Constitution was first written. (pp. 102-103)
Why is this not necessarily a valid argument?
AP Emerson & Thoreau SG r-12 p.9
What other things were once considered “constitutional” that are now not considered so?
How were changes in these laws effected? (There are two different ways in which things once okay under
the Constitution can be made or deemed not so, or vice-versa.)
Examine and summarize instances when Americans from 1850 -- present have used methods of civil
disobedience in order to create change and end injustice.`