# Napoleon Bonaparte — Representative Men character guide

> Napoleon Bonaparte in Representative Men by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

**Role:** major

**Also known as:** Napoleon, Bonaparte, the pernicious Napoleon

**First appearance:** 0006-vi-napoleon-or-the-man-of-the-world

## Snapshot

A worker in brass, iron, money, and troops who renounced sentiment once and for all and acted with the solidity of a natural agent.

## Who they are

Emerson describes Napoleon as a pattern democrat who superadded insight and generalization to mineral and animal force, so that men saw the natural and intellectual powers combined as if sea and land had taken flesh and begun to cipher. He was a man of stone and iron, capable of sitting on horseback sixteen or seventeen hours, embarrassed by no scruples, with a hand of iron immediately connected to his head. He matters because he represents the man of the world — the popular external life and aims of the nineteenth century — and the question of what such force, without moral aim, can finally build.

## In the story

### [Napoleon; or, the Man of the World](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/representative_men_se/chapters/vi-napoleon-or-the-man-of-the-world)

Presented as the representative man of the nineteenth century, embodying the spirit of the democratic and commercial middle class. He is described as a realist, a man of immense practical skill and direct action, who rose to power by perfectly adapting to the masses.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/representative_men_se/characters/napoleon
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/representative_men_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/representative_men_se/characters