In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Essay V Love” (1841) he explains the mysterious ways of love and reasoning for why we feel these things, Emerson believes love isn’t something we control, it is the purest most virtuous gift our souls can encounter. Emerson opens his essay with a quote, one that isn’t just explaining what his essay is about it had deeper meaning and makes you really think, “I was as a gem concealed, me my burning ray revealed.” –Koran.
It is also from a somewhat unexpected source adding versatility to the essay from the get go. He then starts his paragraph with some background on his thesis by giving examples of fulfillments of the soul. After this he uses a combination of pathos and logos to make a structured yet personal order in which love becomes apart of you, therefore connecting the love and soul aspects of his thesis in one paragraph. The next paragraph spends time comparing the ways love affects people young and old adding different perspectives to the topic.
Then he brings up the topic of essentially the grass being greener on the other side. The relevance of this topic is yet to be discovered though so he’s using a common thought as a transition. The next couple paragraphs give almost a narration of how a man feels when he falls in love how what course of action is taken from the little “school-boy” treating one of the girls differently to being able to compare her only to the poetic song of a bird. He’s basically relating to the reader in this section assuming most people have been in love before.
In the midst of this he stops to make a few quotes trying to give examples or just poetic insights on what he’s saying, “Thou art not gone being gone, where’re thou art; thou leav’st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy loving heart.” He’s rounding out the style of his writing here giving as many techniques as possible making his riding.
