Mason Spounias

Mrs. Storer
English 3H Block 4
1/22/2020
Socratic Circle Reflection on Emmerson and Thoreau

The group preformed pretty well. There were times, especially during the second round,
where the conversation was stagnant. I think that the nature of the questions chosen just
happened to not resonate with the second group very well. It wasn’t us just an unfortunate
combination of Friday afternoon questions. The first group was good, but the third group really
kicked it into gear. We talked about a lot of stuff. The first group talked about nature and
appreciation of nature through Emmerson’s point of view. The second group really didn’t do
much, we kind of just answered questions bare boned and I don’t remember because of how
boring and uninteresting it was (not to bash anyone, in fact I was in that circle. It just never took
off. Like I stated before I don’t think it was anyone’s fault just unfortunate circumstances). The
third group really went deep into ideas of conformity and what it means to be a transcendentalist.
The groups were great at taking things deeper, but I think we all struggled with getting engaged
in the conversation. For example, round two had trouble talking about much, but when we got
engaged into round three, we went deep about being a transcendentalist, where Bella said it
basically meant to not care.
Personally, I did ok. I thought I had one good point in the second circle about the ants
representing society, and that’s why Thoreau was so interested in their quarrels. I did not do well
with citing text in any of the circles, I just fell short of bringing textual evidence into the
discussion. I do feel I deepened the conversation, no one was talking about the ants being a
small-scale version of how Thoreau observed society. Same with my ideas about conformity and
how its not bad and it is everywhere. I brought new and thought-provoking ideas into the
discussion relating to the text (I thought anyway). I didn’t really build off other ideas, I feel that
was because I feared being repetitive because I agreed with what most people said. There were
times; however, I was able to build off someone’s topics. I wasn’t as good as I’d like to have, but
I still feel I did pretty good this time, especially in the third round. If I could change one thing, I
would make better annotations so I can use textual evidence much easier. I just had problems
with how fast it moved sometimes. Sometimes it was slow, but then I felt awkward coming in.
Other times it was just too fast for me to search for textual evidence.

Transcendentalism means to be your own person, and to follow your own personal views.
The main points of my essay would include examples of both Emmerson and Thoreau’s
work. I would describe the carefree nature Thoreau, especially his story about not paying taxes
simply because he didn’t want to. My next point would be how Emmerson views the world, and
how his views and Thoreau’s views would be contradictory to the contemporary views. Like
Emmerson’s view of nature vs. our own or maybe the ants representing society, just ideas that
are unique the author. A less formal approach would be to describe them as hippies and compare
them to modern (1960-70’s modern) hippies.
I would compare the content of these selections to my own experiences, especially my
views on the catholic church. Just as authors were able to express their own unique views, I feel I
have been able to at Mater Dei. Learning about the church, I’ve never been a fan of its past and
have trouble trusting the current church. I do believe in Jesus Christ, but my views I feel differ
from all my campus ministry classmates. I feel Emmerson and Thoreau experienced something
similar in their writings, they were new and against pure fact and science. They were opposing
popular opinion. I feel on some level, I have the same views as the authors.