American Literature / Unit 7 AML 0623 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Telling Emerson From Thoreau on the Page
The idea
Exam passages from the two are easy to confuse and easy to separate with three tests. First, the level of abstraction: Emerson argues in general propositions about the soul, society and the scholar, while Thoreau argues from a specific and usually physical instance, a bean-row, a cost in dollars, a night in a cell. Second, the sentence: Emerson's are declarative and aphoristic and can be lifted out whole, while Thoreau's are longer, drier and full of pun and understatement. Third, the subject of complaint: Emerson complains that people borrow their opinions, while Thoreau complains that people waste their lives buying things. Both preach self-reliance; only one keeps accounts.
In practice
Abstraction against instance, aphorism against account.
Where people slip
Both men write first-person prose full of natural imagery, so the pronoun and the trees decide nothing. The test is whether the passage reasons from a principle or from a measurement.
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