RUBRIC FOR
ALTERNATIVE PAPER TOPIC ON EMERSON AND THOREAU

	Each of the three or four sections will be constructed as follows:
EXAMPLES FROM PARA. 38 (NOT ASSIGNED) OF EMERSON'S "SELF-RELIANCE"
	a. Chosen quotation as opening sentence, according to this pattern:
	    Begin by introducing the quotation and its author and the work in which
	     it appears.  Then explain in your own words  what you believe the author means,
	     literally or metaphorically.   This should be about a quarter-page or less.
	Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance" is of course an appeal to the reader—indeed, to all
	Americans of  his time and place—to throw off social conventions and seek to know who we
	are before we imitate others.  In so doing, Emerson attacks every social institution in sight,
	including religious practice and thought which he says strangle independence of mind  Not merely 	prayer, but also the core of religious belief is to Emerson a barrier to discovery of the Self: "As men's 	prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect" (545). Society is 	"disease[d]"  because it merely repeats the religious ideas of the past without creating new ones to suit 	the problems and needs of the present.

	b.  Interpretation of the quotation and  use of a related quotation (cross reference
	     elsewhere in same paragraph or elsewhere in essay)
	     Explain in more depth how the author is using this idea, or why he thinks it, and
                  support your claim by reference to a repetition of this idea elsewhere in the paragraph
	     or elsewhere in the essay.  Again, no more than a quarter page in length
.	He complains that, while original religious leaders and their insights may be stupendous in their own 	time and place, a man now cripples his religious thinking by "recit[ing] fables merely of his 	brother's , or  his brother's brother's God" (546).  Moreover, the student of a great religious teacher 	will sooner or later, says Emerson, "exhaust…his master's mind;" that is, the pupil will
	have learned all there is to learn, yet not realize it is time that the pupil moved on, freed from
	blind devotion to the teacher simply because the teacher was once wise.

	c.  Personal commentary; how this quotation gets under your skin, inspires you, annoys
	     you, etc. :
	    This is the heart of your paper.  Here  you expand and discuss in broader terms, 	  	  	     	     referring to society or family or friends or your personal life as the quotation applies
 	     to any or all of the above.  Minimum half a page.
	Emerson's insistence on originality in every generation of religious experience has a certain
	surface similarity to the great prophets of Judaism and Christianity, and their equally urgent
	summons to religious revival and reinterpretation of religious tradition to fit the struggles and
	needs of the present time.  But I am not persuaded by Emerson's smug confidence that the student 	will of 	course surpass the teacher. It is one thing to say that great truths must be reapplied to new 	circumstances, as Martin Luther King reapplied to the Civil Rights Movement the teachings of Jesus 	about justice and love of one's neighbor.  It is quite another to suggest that the individual
	should single-handedly reinvent a religious and moral system, as if the individual were equal to the 	centuries of insight and practice which a rich tradition has accumulated for the believer to explore 	and live into. "I came," says Jesus, "not to abolish the [past], but to fulfill it."


	NOTE UNDERLINED TRANSITIONAL ELEMENTS