Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar” is easily established as an inspiring piece. One that incites progress concerning American education and societal advancement during a tumultuous time in American history, the 1830’s. Considering turbulence, many are quick to cite the struggle over slavery and the oncoming civil war. But something else was happening in the United States at the time. In 1830 The Indian Removal act was signed into law by Congress under President Andrew Jackson. Thousands of Native Americans were forcibly removed from their southeastern homelands and made to march the fatal “Trail of Tears” to Oklahoma. Because of this, I find a tremendous amount of irony in “The American Scholar” regarding Emerson’s beckoning for man to connect with nature. “Ever the wind blows; ever the grass grows… the scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle most engages” (paragraph 10). Emerson poetically asserts that the scholar who recognizes the unimaginable amount of learning to be had in nature is on the path to possess intellect. To engage with the awes of nature is to engage with one’s place in the world and therefore one’s understanding of it. Is not the principle belief held by Native American culture based on recognizing the importance of the intricacies of nature? This cultural significance, the reverence of nature, is what led our WASP settlers to judge these people as barbaric. Native Americans possess this engagement with the spectacle of nature. To make these claims while they are deemed savages and marched to the brink of death is harrowing. Now, I am not here to punish Emerson for the crimes of the United States government, nor place blame on him for this irony. It is most likely that he hardly, if at all, knew what was happening on the Trail of Tears, or any extent of Native American culture. I only aim to uncover a tragic irony. And a paradoxical instance that is assumed by our government. Beholding a white man for arousing intellectual connection with the natural world, while nature revering “savages” are being advanced to their impending doom.
Moby-Dick
ECL 522: Fall 2025. Professor Pressman
You are very right to point us to the historical context of this piece, and to all of our reading (I will be doing a lot of that work in class and hope you will help me). It might be worth noting that Emerson actually was a critic of The Indian Removal Act, writing to Pres. Van Buren (publically) in 1838 (in a letter that was published in newspapers) about it.
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/emerson/4957107.0011.001/1:37.3?rgn=div2&view=fulltext
But Emerson was also (problematically) not vocal and public critic in many ways, either of The Indian Removal Act or slavery, until quite (perhaps too) late in his career. I think you are very right to see the ironies and hypocrisy in “The American Scholar”, as you will probably see in Moby-Dick too.