lec#3

One of my favorite lectures from the class was the one about transcendentalism and idealism. In this lesson, we connected the short story “The Birthmark” to this conflict of Idealism Vs. Transcendentalism. This helped me understand that it’s okay to let things go and to enjoy the simple things because those are what bring you the most happiness. Before this lecture, I had a more idealist approach to life where everything had to be perfect or I wasn’t happy. This lesson helped me understand that perfection doesn’t exist and I should try and become more transcendentalist. The short story “The Birthmark” was a perfect choice when representing this conflict of Idealism Vs. Transcendentalism because it is a major theme in the story and is exemplified when Aylmer is trying to make Georgiana perfect and fails because perfection just isn’t possible. The main reason this is one of my favorite lectures is because after we learned all this we got to have fun while working in groups of our choice to present and teach the class a little bit more about this major theme from “The Birthmark”.