I went into this reading thinking I would enjoy Ralph Waldo Emerson the most, maybe just because his name was who I recognized the most from the list. I started reading Nature, and I was not one with Nature at all, I couldn't get into the story, and it took everything I had to turn the page and keep reading. I'm sure that at the time this was written people of that era might have gotten more out of this story than people do today, and that could be partly our fault because we are in too much of a hurry to stop and appreciate the leisurely pace this story takes you on. I myself want a little more excitement and if I'm not intrigued by a book within the first few pages, I'm off to something else. We live in a world of instant gratification I guess, and that for me includes my reading material. I know the transcendentalist era was a philosophical era, so we should be able to take something educational away from these stories.
Of his stories, self reliance was most meaningful to me, because it's something I try to teach my daughter and what I assume all parents goals are, to teach their children to be self reliant and be yourself, not to conform to other peoples ideas and ways.
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