LITR 4328: American Renaissance

Model Assignments Final Exam Essays 2018 (final exam assignment) Sample answers for A1. learning about American Renaissance

Kelsey Flores

10 December 2018

The Final Final of my College Career

Essay A: My Romantic Journey Continued

          The most important aspect of any class is taking something from it you can apply to your life for growth as a person, and not just for the growth of your wallet. For this reason, American Renaissance has been important to me in how it has allowed me in some ways to take a step back in this final semester of my college career and learn to appreciate the world in a way the romantic writers we studied have, looking away from “the here and now of drab reality” and  “[valuing] something exotic, unattainable, or lost” in “an alternate reality that challenges the everyday.”

          I have referenced this piece before, and because I felt it resonate with me more than any other text, I must reference it again as I feel it defines almost exactly how I have taken something from this course I will keep with me for life. In both my Midterm and my Research Journal, I paid respect to Emerson’s Nature because of how he romanticizes and appreciates its simplicities that are actually much greater in value than we might originally believe. Emerson reminds us that in nature, and more specifically “in the woods…a man casts off his years…and at what period soever of life, is always a child” because in nature “the sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.” These words have reminded me that when the world gets rough and the mind becomes flooded with our reality, we must take a step back and submerge ourselves into nature to be brought back down to the basics of life.

Nature reminds us material goods may not always be available to us, but nature will always be there to envelop us back into a simpler, more innocent and childlike mindset of discovery and awe. Nature can give us the key to a child-like mindset—one focused on the vastness of the land and the strength of rivers and full of wonder, rather than the bills that always come and the alarm clock that goes off every morning.

In his own way, Poe writes about that which is lost and desired and really allows us to tap into our emotions instead of pushing them aside. In “Annabel Lee,” the speaker expresses feelings of loss for his love and desire to have that back and, like Emerson, draws on the stars. However, for the speaker in the poem “the stars never rise” as he is living in a dark and dim world without his love. He does however “see the bright eyes/ Of the beautiful Annabel Lee” as he continues to dream about her and release those emotions of longing and nostalgia. Poe presents romantic element that truly is devoid of "anything but the here and now."

Romanticism is incredibly complex in my mind, but through the course of this semester I have found it beneficial to me to see the genre as a way for us to get back in touch with our emotions. The world can be a dark place, as the world of Poe’s writing can be, and it is important to find some medium to express that which sometimes we cannot express with our own words. Emerson and Poe help us key into our locked down thoughts.