Analyzing Literary Tone: Emerson, Thoreau, Melville and Hawthorne

Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self Reliance, Henry David Thoreau's Where I

Lived and What I Lived For, Nathaniel Hawthorne's Dr. Heidegger's

Experiment and Herman Melville's Moby Dick are all considered to be

models of timeless writing. Each author was skilled but each wrote with their

own tone. There are both parallels and disagreements between these writer's

tones.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote to inspire and to change the thought

process of the everyday man, in hopes that society would improve. He is

intensely critical of society as a whole, but believes that a man can change

himself. He wrote with an encouraging tone that was also insightful to

common behavior. Emerson was generally sanguine but was also pragmatic

as necessary. His works incorporate a personal tone which helps to relate

the reader and author. Many common aphorisms are excerpts from his

work.

Henry David Thoreau also used a personal tone to express his

optimism for mankind. He wrote to critique the public, but more so to

encourage readers to enlighten themselves and change for the better. He is

often more uplifting and idealistic than Emerson. Thoreau also had a more

practical outlook than Emerson. Likewise, his style is more casual than the

other writers. Thoreau and Emerson were considered as transcendentalists

and their tones are most similar to one other. Thoreau and Emerson both

used religion in their writing, knew about people, loved nature and were

introspective.

Nathaniel Hawthorne took a more humorous side than the others. His

work, Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, was an ironic story that showed his

dissatisfaction with people's actions and society's values. He was also more

pessimistic than Emerson and Thoreau had been. Hawthorne also included

religion somewhat by using the Seven Deadly Sins as inspiration.

Herman Melville used the most pessimistic tone in his writing, as

compared to the other authors. He condemned society for being too

idealistic and believed that society was prone to be dominated by emotion.

Melville was pragmatic by all accounts and his writing was relatively somber