American Literature / Unit 7 AML 0624 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reading a Transcendentalist Passage for Its Claim
The idea
A Transcendentalist passage will usually make one of four claims, and identifying which answers most questions. The claim of direct access says a person can reach truth without a mediating institution, and it shows up as an attack on churches, books or custom. The claim of correspondence says the natural world answers to the human mind, and it shows up as nature described in the vocabulary of spirit. The claim of self-trust says one's own intuition outranks other people's approval, and it shows up as an attack on conformity and consistency. The claim of simplification says a life is improved by reducing what it depends on, and it shows up as an inventory of costs. Find the claim and the distractors sort themselves, because most wrong options assert something the movement explicitly rejected, such as deference to authority or the mind as a passive receiver.
In practice
Access, correspondence, self-trust, simplification.
Where people slip
A passage praising nature is not automatically arguing correspondence. If the natural description is doing moral or economic work rather than spiritual work, the claim is simplification, and the answer changes.
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