Wednesday 11 July 2012

Please help me dramatize the lesson learned in the poem "The Rhodora" by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

This poem,
unusual in that the first-person narrator is declaring an association to beauty, is both a
salute to the Rhodoras beauty and a declaration that the narrator is of the
same stuff.  It creates a moral universe in which even the plainest observer of Beauty is
entitled to the same blessings as the flower, rival of the rose.  And just as the rhodora has
its season, and is to be found in remote places, out of public display, it can still be
appreciated by those who find it in private scenes and recognize its beauty.  When the poet is
asked Whence (from where) is the flower? the response is  "Beauty is everywhere" €“
Beauty is its own excuse for being.  The narrator, far from questioning why the flower
existed, supposed that the Creator who made this flower, this beauty, made the narrator also. 
So the dramatic lesson to be learned is that the very fact of Creation is beautiful, and we
are all part of it€“thus, we are all beautiful.  The rhodora was there into please the desert,
the brook, even the red-bird whose beautiful plumage is cheapened by the flowers beauty.  In
this age, when social pressure is on everyone to be attractive, this poem gives a wise
response.   

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