Freedom

Walt Whitman:

"I will go to the bank by the woods and become undisguised and naked, I am mad for it to be in contact with me."

The meaning of freedom to Whitman is something deeper than being nude in nature; nakedness represents the true self, stripped from all the qualities that would make you easily categorized.  By being naked, you are your authentic self, with nothing to hide.  Nature is one of the only things that man cannot fully control, and for that reason it is seen as the wild or perhaps even a primitive dwelling place.  Therefore, by first freeing yourself from all the titles and roles by being naked, and then coming into contact with a force that is inherently untamed, you are not confined by any physical or societal boundaries.


Emily Dickinson"


"I Dwell in Possibility -- a fairer House than Prose --"

Although I think freedom for Dickinson is about the independent nature of thought -- meaning how each of our ideas have their own potential --  I also think this line is infused with frustrations about the gender roles of her time.  She compares prose to home, a place that was primarily reserved for women; in doing so, she shows that prose can be an occupation for women, not only men.



Ralph Waldo Emerson:


"Free should the scholar be -- free and brave.  Free even to the definition of freedom, without any hindrance that does not arise out of his own constitution."

Freedom for Emerson is freedom though creativity.  In his speech The American Scholar he urges academics to step away from their books and traditional lessons, he maintains that the only way they can create something truly great is if they go out and make (learn from) their own experiences.  This way, they find their own freedom, their own interpretations, their own meanings; only then can they truly be free.


Frederick Douglass:


"I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom...Through conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher, I set out with high hope, and a fixed purpose, at whatever cost of trouble, to learn how to read."


Freedom to Douglass was something he not only saw as physical coercion, but almost entirely mental.  He realized that only education (literacy etc) would allow him to escape the oppression he faced through Slavery in the south.  By keeping slaves uneducated, their masters could keep them docile and obedient; but, once Douglass started to learn, discovering his own ideas, he would never be the same.