Henry Adams And Individualism Essay

William Carlos Williams stated the following on the Victorian era and its influence on the era that it preceded, "Man is an animal, and if he forgets that, denies that, he is living a big lie and soon enough, other lies get going.” (Kolocotroni, Goldman, and Taxidou 13) The Victorian period’s sharply defined goal of separating animal and savagery was precisely the motivation for the combination of ideas despite complexities in the latter modernism society. Modernism embraces the idea of the unknown, anti-ideology, experiences, making the only well-defined element of the era its obscurity. Writers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustave Le Bon, Henry Adams, and George Simmel published pieces during this movement, and although most have contradicting

In chapter 25 of Henry Adams’ autobiography titled, The Education of Henry Adams, Adams does more than just tell his own life story; he sets himself upon a pedestal. In the opening of this chapter, Henry Adams says the following in regards to himself, “He would have liked to know how much of it could have been grasped by the best-informed man in the world." (Kolocotroni, Goldman, and Taxidou 41) Henry Adams’ opinion of himself complimented his idea of his own intellectual superiority feeling that if he did not comprehend something, no one else would either; this quality can perhaps be seen best when Adams’ says the following, “The question, which to any plain American in the nineteenth century seemed as remote as it did to Adams, drew him almost violently to study.” (Kolocotroni, Goldman, and Taxidou 44) This quote only further illustrates not only Adams’ supremacy but also other individuals’ inferiority. Henry Adams also only viewed things from his specific point of view; therefore, he saw things only from his historian perspective, making his autobiography become his own narcissistic journey conveniently written in third