Robert Richardson, Emerson: The Mind on Fire Journal

Tanya Barragan
Scott Lankford
English 48A
Robert Richardson, Emerson
10/28/2011

AUTHOR’ QUOTE

“He was not sure what he really believed, who he really was, or what he should be doing. He felt the “vanishing volatile froth of the present” turning into the fixed adamantine past. “We walk on molten lava,” he wrote.” (5)

INTERNET QUOTE

“Richardson details the evolution of one of the most famous 19th Century thinkers--from liberal Christian to Emerson's eventual philosophy which was akin to pantheism. The subtitle "Mind on Fire" was well chosen. Richardson uses it to form a thread through the work as he shows the lighting of Emerson's early mind, its climactic flame, and its eventual extinguishment just prior to death.”
http://www.2think.org/etmof.shtml

SUMMARY

Robert Richardson, Emerson; The mind on fire, is about Emerson being lost for love and life. Emerson, who visits his dead wife Ellen’s coffin, decides to open it, because he still is in denial about the fact that she is dead. But it is also about what her death has done to him and how it has taken his life. Emerson, being lost and alone, not sure of what his life is truly about. His beloved Ellen was the love of his life and without her he had lost himself in the world. Death is a big part of Emerson’s lonely solitude and he is only trying to figure out what his meaning of life is.

YOUR IDEAS/REACTIONS/RESPONSES TO THE AUTHOR’S IDEAS

I got a few ideas from Richardson, I think that he was trying to look in the mind of Emerson and see what he was all about. I also think that he wanted to look into the life of Emerson and his writing to tell people what kind of man Emerson may have been. I think that Richardson really wanted to share Emerson's feeling and what he was going through after the death of his wife. I reacted to Emerson’s story as a very sad one. Seeing a man who was having trouble getting over the death of his wife and getting lost in the world because of it. I felt from the words, that he was losing himself in the world and didn't know what to do with his life. It was also sad because he still wrote journals to his wife ,still wanting her to be alive; I could feel a pain that he must have been going through. I think that Richardson does a good job at trying to explain what a person can go through after death hits them in their lives. I feel that he waned to give us an idea of Emerson and tell us how this man had lost with himself. The descriptions show that Richardson must have been very intrigued with this Emerson, to share this story, because it is a sad one and also tells us the life Emerson, and one of the things that he went through in life. I think that Richardson did this because this was a huge part in Emerson’s life, and the loss of his wife was something that changed him and took his soul. Richardson wanted us to to see this because this is where Emerson losses himself in life and is trying to find a way back into the world that he had experienced hardship.