Is The “Great Gatbsy” himself really that “Great?”
The Great Gatsby is a classic book that has often been described as the classic, Modern-American Novel, while I am not attempting to question that appropriation, I do want to question Gatsby’s “Greatness?”
The narrator of the novel is Nick Carraway, another Midwesterner and veteran, and a 1915 Yale graduate, who by chance has rented the next to Gatsby’s as he tries his hand at the New York Bond business. On the first page of the book Nick says that he’s inclined to reserve all judgments of people, but on the second page he notes that Gatsby represented everything for which he has an unaffected scorn. Later Nick says that he disapproved of Gatsby from beginning to end. In fact, we learn during the book that Gatsby has lied more than once, that he has apparently accumulated his wealth not only immorally but illegally, and that he’s willing to sacrifice anything for his infatuation with a married woman. So again, what’s so great about Gatsby?
Well, Nick also tells us that Gatsby had “an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.”(2) Nick explains that “The truth was that Jay Gatsby. Sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God..and he must be about his father’s business”(99). He was an idealist who lived with” a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing.”(100)
Gatsby’s idealism is closely related to the American Dream: If only one works hard, just the way Benjamin Franklin told us to, and Gatsby had developed his own list of resolutions as a boy; one would become healthy, wealthy and wise. His father said after Gatsby was found murdered in his own swimming pool: “He had a big future before him, you know.. If he’d of lived, he’d of been a great man. A man like James J. Hill, He’d of helped build up the country.”(169)
Yet Gatsby’s idealism, once he met Daisy, became attached solely to her. After he made love to her while he was in the army, “he found that he had committed himself to the following of a grail.”(149) As Nick learned later, Gatsby “knew Daisy was extraordinary, but he didn’t realize just how extraordinary a ‘nice’ girl could be.” Although penniless, he had let her believe that he was from much the same social stratum as herself, and she came to represent everything that he wanted his life to be. As Fitzgerald writes, “Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes, and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor.”(150)
One leaves this book feeling that Gatsby is indeed great—certainly in comparison to those who surround him in Fitzgerald’s novel. Yet he is also tragically flawed by impoverished dreams and by limited ideals. On the last page of the book Nick says, “I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come along way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind..”(182)
Works Cited
The Great Gatsby, Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
We Want Moore
Marianne Moore was a modernist or some would argue a post-modernist, American poet and writer, known particularly for her irony, and wit. Her poetry expresses her moral strength and artistic mastery, and can be studied at different levels of complexity. She uses paradoxes, and nature imagery to force two dominating forces in ambiguous way to make a point, which is exemplified in her poem titled “Poetry.”
The poem begins with its speaker making a rather ironic comment about her distaste for poetry, “I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all, this fiddle.”(Moore 438) This comment is contradictory, because while she does not prefer poetry, the speaker nonetheless expresses herself through the medium of a poem. It becomes briefly clear with the use of the word “fiddle.” Apparently, the speaker believes that poetry can be trifling, or that poetry-writing process involves too much petty tampering. The speaker’s conversational opening of the poem allows for a tone that seems casual, yet it one that is marked by witty intelligence.
Lines 2-3 contains a statement that argues with the one in lines one and two. Here Moore admits that although one might think oneself perfectly despising poetry or poetry-writing process “ Reading it however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine”(Moore 438) To Moore, “the genuine” represents the most essential attribute of good art. She is a difficult poet, but not obscure one; on the contrary she is very clear, but my difficulty at times is her insistence that we think and think well at every point. Similar to William Carlos Williams she shoots what is beautiful in itself and not part of the whole. For both artists imagination is placed in opposition to intellection. The raw material for poetry abounds, it is everywhere, is anything, but it must be imaginatively grasped.
As Elizabeth Joyce refers to “Imagination proceeds from a deeper source than intellection. When in “Melanchthon,” Miss Moore speaks of the “beautiful element of unreason” underlying the poet’s tough hide, I think she is talking about the place where imagination grows. The element is “genuine” because it cannot be otherwise, its source mysterious, hidden under layers of the rational mind. Poetry then when it is genuine, is a collision of this private vision with the outside world. It is an imaginary garden full of real toads.” (Joyce 1)
“Poetry” makes the case for attribution of authority to traditionally “secondary” texts in its insistence that “business documents and schoolbooks” may be poetry. “Throughout Moore’s work her many quotations from secondary sources- precisely the realm of “business documents and school-books” argue for the value of such sources by claiming her work’s dependence on them for its (redefined) authority.” (Gregory 4)Marianne Moore is a very distinctive poet from many of her time, yet there is still an ever going debate about whether to label her a modernist or post-modernist and yet I still don’t have an answer. She embodies and utilizes both forms of art.
Works Cited
Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry
Blackmur, R. P. 'The Method of Marianne Moore." The Double Agent: Essays in Craft and Elucidatio. New York: Arrow Editions, 1935.
Bogan, Louise. "American Timeless." Quarterly Review of Literature 4 (1948): 151.
Braithwaite Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Costello, Bonnie. Marianne Moore: Imaginary Possessions. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1981.
Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1975.
Daiches, David. The Novel and the Modem World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939.
The poem begins with its speaker making a rather ironic comment about her distaste for poetry, “I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all, this fiddle.”(Moore 438) This comment is contradictory, because while she does not prefer poetry, the speaker nonetheless expresses herself through the medium of a poem. It becomes briefly clear with the use of the word “fiddle.” Apparently, the speaker believes that poetry can be trifling, or that poetry-writing process involves too much petty tampering. The speaker’s conversational opening of the poem allows for a tone that seems casual, yet it one that is marked by witty intelligence.
Lines 2-3 contains a statement that argues with the one in lines one and two. Here Moore admits that although one might think oneself perfectly despising poetry or poetry-writing process “ Reading it however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for the genuine”(Moore 438) To Moore, “the genuine” represents the most essential attribute of good art. She is a difficult poet, but not obscure one; on the contrary she is very clear, but my difficulty at times is her insistence that we think and think well at every point. Similar to William Carlos Williams she shoots what is beautiful in itself and not part of the whole. For both artists imagination is placed in opposition to intellection. The raw material for poetry abounds, it is everywhere, is anything, but it must be imaginatively grasped.
As Elizabeth Joyce refers to “Imagination proceeds from a deeper source than intellection. When in “Melanchthon,” Miss Moore speaks of the “beautiful element of unreason” underlying the poet’s tough hide, I think she is talking about the place where imagination grows. The element is “genuine” because it cannot be otherwise, its source mysterious, hidden under layers of the rational mind. Poetry then when it is genuine, is a collision of this private vision with the outside world. It is an imaginary garden full of real toads.” (Joyce 1)
“Poetry” makes the case for attribution of authority to traditionally “secondary” texts in its insistence that “business documents and schoolbooks” may be poetry. “Throughout Moore’s work her many quotations from secondary sources- precisely the realm of “business documents and school-books” argue for the value of such sources by claiming her work’s dependence on them for its (redefined) authority.” (Gregory 4)Marianne Moore is a very distinctive poet from many of her time, yet there is still an ever going debate about whether to label her a modernist or post-modernist and yet I still don’t have an answer. She embodies and utilizes both forms of art.
Works Cited
Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry
Blackmur, R. P. 'The Method of Marianne Moore." The Double Agent: Essays in Craft and Elucidatio. New York: Arrow Editions, 1935.
Bogan, Louise. "American Timeless." Quarterly Review of Literature 4 (1948): 151.
Braithwaite Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Costello, Bonnie. Marianne Moore: Imaginary Possessions. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1981.
Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1975.
Daiches, David. The Novel and the Modem World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
McKay's Way
It has been argued that the Harlem Renaissance, or the New Negro Movement, is the defining moment in African American literature because of an unprecedented outburst of creative activity among black writers. The importance of this movement to African American literary art lies in the efforts of its writers to exalt the heritage of African Americans and to use their unique culture as a means toward re-defining African American literary expression.
The sudden blossoming of literature called the Negro Renaissance gave a voice to Negroes in the twenties. The Negro Renaissance became part of a general revolt by the writers of the decade against the gross materialism and outmoded moral values of America’s new industrial society. Negro writer’s found strength in their own folk culture. Claude Mckay was one of the first to express the spirit of the New Negro.
Claude McKay (1890-1948)-, named Fetus Claudius after a Biblical Roman Emperor, was born the youngest of eleven children in Jamaica, then a British Colony in the West Indies. His mother’s family was originally slaves in Madagascar; his father had Ashanti ancestors. Grounded in black peasant culture within a color-conscious society, the ambitious dark-skinned Mckay’s belonged to an educated economic minority. Although later he severed most ties with his family, Claude Mckay’s earliest years were pleasant one’s, a “time when…Imagination itself awoke” for him(11). Even as child, in literature he found, “broad new worlds romance and thought” (14). Reading widely amongst the English and continental poets and philosophers, McKay developed the “highly intuitive capabilities of a poet” (20).
McKay spent a brief time in the Jamaican constabulary in 1911, but his heart was elsewhere. In 1912, he published two poems of dialectic poetry, Songs of Jamaica and Constab Ballads. These books represent the first attempt by a West Indian educated in the British imperial tradition as using local dialect as poetic medium. McKay’s career as a social rebel began with his social commentary that appeared on the pages of island newspapers. But in 1912, McKay came to America and never returned to Jamaica.
Like many other Negro writers of the twenties most notably, Langston Hughes, Mckay shared to a degree, the same feeling of alienation that characterized Gertrude Stein or Hemmingway’s “lost generation”. In 1918, McKay could’ve wrote “And now this great catastrophe [World War I] has come upon the worlds proving real hollowness of nationhood, patriotism, racial pride, one of the many things one was taught to respect and revere.”(Cooper 5) Particularly, One of the six poems now famous “If We Must Die”. It’s a very tension-filled strategic, and paradoxical poem. It was a desperate shout of defiance “While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs/ Making their mock at our accursed lot”(501 Line4-5) almost, seemed tragic and hopeless, “If we must die, let it not be like hogs/ hunted and pinned in an inglorious spot.” At the same time, it proclaimed that in Negroes the spirit of human courage remained fully alive, “Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack/ pressed to the wall, dying but fighting pack.”(502 Line14-15)
Works Cited
The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, pg-501-502
Claude McKay and the New Negro of the 1920's Author(s): Wayne Cooper Source: Phylon (1960-), Vol. 25, No. 3 (3rd Qtr., 1964), pp. 297-306
The sudden blossoming of literature called the Negro Renaissance gave a voice to Negroes in the twenties. The Negro Renaissance became part of a general revolt by the writers of the decade against the gross materialism and outmoded moral values of America’s new industrial society. Negro writer’s found strength in their own folk culture. Claude Mckay was one of the first to express the spirit of the New Negro.
Claude McKay (1890-1948)-, named Fetus Claudius after a Biblical Roman Emperor, was born the youngest of eleven children in Jamaica, then a British Colony in the West Indies. His mother’s family was originally slaves in Madagascar; his father had Ashanti ancestors. Grounded in black peasant culture within a color-conscious society, the ambitious dark-skinned Mckay’s belonged to an educated economic minority. Although later he severed most ties with his family, Claude Mckay’s earliest years were pleasant one’s, a “time when…Imagination itself awoke” for him(11). Even as child, in literature he found, “broad new worlds romance and thought” (14). Reading widely amongst the English and continental poets and philosophers, McKay developed the “highly intuitive capabilities of a poet” (20).
McKay spent a brief time in the Jamaican constabulary in 1911, but his heart was elsewhere. In 1912, he published two poems of dialectic poetry, Songs of Jamaica and Constab Ballads. These books represent the first attempt by a West Indian educated in the British imperial tradition as using local dialect as poetic medium. McKay’s career as a social rebel began with his social commentary that appeared on the pages of island newspapers. But in 1912, McKay came to America and never returned to Jamaica.
Like many other Negro writers of the twenties most notably, Langston Hughes, Mckay shared to a degree, the same feeling of alienation that characterized Gertrude Stein or Hemmingway’s “lost generation”. In 1918, McKay could’ve wrote “And now this great catastrophe [World War I] has come upon the worlds proving real hollowness of nationhood, patriotism, racial pride, one of the many things one was taught to respect and revere.”(Cooper 5) Particularly, One of the six poems now famous “If We Must Die”. It’s a very tension-filled strategic, and paradoxical poem. It was a desperate shout of defiance “While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs/ Making their mock at our accursed lot”(501 Line4-5) almost, seemed tragic and hopeless, “If we must die, let it not be like hogs/ hunted and pinned in an inglorious spot.” At the same time, it proclaimed that in Negroes the spirit of human courage remained fully alive, “Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack/ pressed to the wall, dying but fighting pack.”(502 Line14-15)
Works Cited
The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, pg-501-502
Claude McKay and the New Negro of the 1920's Author(s): Wayne Cooper Source: Phylon (1960-), Vol. 25, No. 3 (3rd Qtr., 1964), pp. 297-306
"Stein's Mind"
Gertrude Stine was quoted saying, “In Tender Buttons and then on and on I struggled with the ridding myself of nouns, I knew nouns must go in poetry as they had gone in prose if anything that is everything was to go on meaning something. And so I went on with this exceeding struggle of knowing really knowing what a thing was really knowing it knowing anything I was seeing anything I was feeling so that its name could be something, by its name coming to be a thing in itself as it was but would not be anything just and only as a name” (242).
She has explored the fact that peoples, places or things, also know as nouns, have been give a name derived usually from a series of letters that combine to form a word. One could say, all words are groupings of meaningless letters combined to form meaning. However the sum of its parts do not convey meaning they convey a sound and this sound then in turn is attached to an object. Stine believes, nouns lack meaning, as they are merely labels, a novelty. This novelty makes it easier to register in our brain as something particular. Although for sight and material value the word doesn’t describe truly what it is nor what it does. Nouns seem to be purely adapted for retention rather than description. They lack emotion and material context therefore are not suited for poetry especially poetry that is suppose to captivate the mind and make you feel. Also I feel as if Stine feels language, particularly nouns, have been created by white male supremacist and that the refusal of using them creates a further disconnect from the male oppressor. In examining “Rooms” she takes a much more personal language experience than either “Objects” or “Food”. Rather than simply assuming male ubiquity and omnipotence, Stein specifically antagonizes a male presence, oblivious to male objectification and alleged male needs, which she wants no part of. Steins argument, that nouns have lost their power to accurately convey meaning, without also limiting its significance by excluding other meanings. Stein’s exclusionary theory of language, then, was her motivation for an exploration of literary cubism. Like the visual artists who rejected the possibility of a single objective representation, Stein’s poetry is a response to power dynamics behind systematic labels. More specifically,
Tender Buttons reclaims meaning from patriarchal and exclusionary traditions. Within the poems, she often writes of women; specifically she mentions names like “Pauline” and “Mildred” and generally she uses “ladies,” “little women,” and “sister.” Many assert that even Stein’s words refer to women by using “-er” as a pun on “her” especially in nouns created from verbs like “hunter” so that the action is redirected (hunt her). This redirection is another example of the ways Stein challenges noun usage.
Gertrude Stein literary experimentation turns English into “a foreign language of her own”(Mellow 64). Tender Buttons remains impermeable to any interpretive operation aimed at an thematic synthesis.( Mellow64)
Works Cited
Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons
Linguistic Exoticism and Literary Alienation: Gertrude Stein's "Tender Buttons" Author(s): Mena Mitrano Source: Modern Language Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Spring, 1998), pp. 87-102
She has explored the fact that peoples, places or things, also know as nouns, have been give a name derived usually from a series of letters that combine to form a word. One could say, all words are groupings of meaningless letters combined to form meaning. However the sum of its parts do not convey meaning they convey a sound and this sound then in turn is attached to an object. Stine believes, nouns lack meaning, as they are merely labels, a novelty. This novelty makes it easier to register in our brain as something particular. Although for sight and material value the word doesn’t describe truly what it is nor what it does. Nouns seem to be purely adapted for retention rather than description. They lack emotion and material context therefore are not suited for poetry especially poetry that is suppose to captivate the mind and make you feel. Also I feel as if Stine feels language, particularly nouns, have been created by white male supremacist and that the refusal of using them creates a further disconnect from the male oppressor. In examining “Rooms” she takes a much more personal language experience than either “Objects” or “Food”. Rather than simply assuming male ubiquity and omnipotence, Stein specifically antagonizes a male presence, oblivious to male objectification and alleged male needs, which she wants no part of. Steins argument, that nouns have lost their power to accurately convey meaning, without also limiting its significance by excluding other meanings. Stein’s exclusionary theory of language, then, was her motivation for an exploration of literary cubism. Like the visual artists who rejected the possibility of a single objective representation, Stein’s poetry is a response to power dynamics behind systematic labels. More specifically,
Tender Buttons reclaims meaning from patriarchal and exclusionary traditions. Within the poems, she often writes of women; specifically she mentions names like “Pauline” and “Mildred” and generally she uses “ladies,” “little women,” and “sister.” Many assert that even Stein’s words refer to women by using “-er” as a pun on “her” especially in nouns created from verbs like “hunter” so that the action is redirected (hunt her). This redirection is another example of the ways Stein challenges noun usage.
Gertrude Stein literary experimentation turns English into “a foreign language of her own”(Mellow 64). Tender Buttons remains impermeable to any interpretive operation aimed at an thematic synthesis.( Mellow64)
Works Cited
Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons
Linguistic Exoticism and Literary Alienation: Gertrude Stein's "Tender Buttons" Author(s): Mena Mitrano Source: Modern Language Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Spring, 1998), pp. 87-102
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Their Eyes were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is considered a Slave Narrative, because it contains elements that are an essential component of Slave Narratives. Her critics have agreed that it contains some components but not all, so her novel was re-labeled as a revised Slave Narrative.
One of the components of a Slave Narrative that is found in Their eyes were Watching God, is Janie’s autobiographical account of the life of a slave, told by Janie. It is recognized on page 8, when Janie says to Pheoby, “ ‘Ah know exactly what Ah got to tell yuh, but it’s hard to know where to start’” (Hurston).
She then leads into another component in the Slave Narrative, a vague notion the narrator has of her parents. Janie says, “ ‘I ain’t never seen mah papa. Mah mama neither’” (Hurston 8). All she knows of her mother is that her mother was raped by her school teacher, who was presumably white, even though Hurston doesn’t specifically tell the reader of his race. The only family she has is her grandmother who raised her.
To tie in another Narrative Slave component, Hurston also uses the volatile relationships between masters and their slaves. Janie’s grandmother was a slave who was raped by her master, which resulted in the birth of Janie’s mother. Women slaves had no control over their bodies. Their master was allowed to do whatever he pleased. Another form of this violence is between the mistress and the slaves. When Joanie’s mother was born and upon looking at her, the mistress realizes that baby with “gray eyes,” and “yaller” hair was a “white baby” she orders the whipping of Janie’s grandmother, not caring whether or not she lives or dies (Hurston 17).
A clash of religion is another component of a Slave Narrative, which is generally seen as Christianity vs. another religion. In our novel, the struggle is only seen as the women are on the porch gossiping about Janie as she is returning to Eatonville. Janie brings their hypocrisy to the surface in her conversation with Pheoby, “ ‘Well, Ah see Mouth – Almighty is still sittin’ in de same place. And Ah reckon they got me in they mouth now’ ” in which Pheoby responds, “ ‘Yeah, Sam (Pheoby’s husband) say most of ‘em goes to church so they’ll be sure so they’ll be sure to rise Judgment. Dat’s de day dat every secret is s’posed to be made known. They wants to be there and here it all’” (Hurston 5-6). The other religion that is practiced is voodoo. Huston doesn’t create a conflict between the two religion rather she shows the hypocrisy that was see by others of non-Christian faith.
Political propaganda, one of the main components of a Slave Narrative, is seen throughout the novel in different forms. The first is in the form of generational gap.
Janie’s view on marriage and her grandmother’s view are dramatically different. Janie thinks that marriage meant “husbands and wives always loved each other” and her grandmother defined love as “protection” (15). Another form is the formation of Eatonville as a city. Joe Sparks a black man buys up all the land and builds up a town for displaced slaves. Sparks, as mayor establishes a class system by the way he dresses better and enforces Janie to dress and act proper, not like the common women of the town. The successful building of an African American town of Eatonville, and the economical success that the community generated is another component of the Slave Narrative. It demonstrated the freedom and independence of the African American people.
The main ties to the Slave Narrative, is Janie’s life journey. She struggled to become her own person with her on voice through three different marriages. She went through abuse, homelessness, death of loved ones, a murder trial, and she survived a massive hurricane. All of these trials demonstrate a tumultuous life journey and ends with Janie’s ascending out of her life of crisis. This is what makes Janie the heroine of the novel, which is another component of the Slave Narrative.
What makes this novel a revision of the Slave Narrative is how the novel ends. Janie is a single landowner who is economically stable. In a Slave Narrative the woman would be married and her husband would be economically stable. Here Hurston revises it by giving her heroine an economically stable life without the hassle of a marriage. She gives Janie what she had been yearning for throughout the novel, her freedom.
Works Cited
Hurston, Zora. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: HarpersCollins Publishing, 1937.
Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is considered a Slave Narrative, because it contains elements that are an essential component of Slave Narratives. Her critics have agreed that it contains some components but not all, so her novel was re-labeled as a revised Slave Narrative.
One of the components of a Slave Narrative that is found in Their eyes were Watching God, is Janie’s autobiographical account of the life of a slave, told by Janie. It is recognized on page 8, when Janie says to Pheoby, “ ‘Ah know exactly what Ah got to tell yuh, but it’s hard to know where to start’” (Hurston).
She then leads into another component in the Slave Narrative, a vague notion the narrator has of her parents. Janie says, “ ‘I ain’t never seen mah papa. Mah mama neither’” (Hurston 8). All she knows of her mother is that her mother was raped by her school teacher, who was presumably white, even though Hurston doesn’t specifically tell the reader of his race. The only family she has is her grandmother who raised her.
To tie in another Narrative Slave component, Hurston also uses the volatile relationships between masters and their slaves. Janie’s grandmother was a slave who was raped by her master, which resulted in the birth of Janie’s mother. Women slaves had no control over their bodies. Their master was allowed to do whatever he pleased. Another form of this violence is between the mistress and the slaves. When Joanie’s mother was born and upon looking at her, the mistress realizes that baby with “gray eyes,” and “yaller” hair was a “white baby” she orders the whipping of Janie’s grandmother, not caring whether or not she lives or dies (Hurston 17).
A clash of religion is another component of a Slave Narrative, which is generally seen as Christianity vs. another religion. In our novel, the struggle is only seen as the women are on the porch gossiping about Janie as she is returning to Eatonville. Janie brings their hypocrisy to the surface in her conversation with Pheoby, “ ‘Well, Ah see Mouth – Almighty is still sittin’ in de same place. And Ah reckon they got me in they mouth now’ ” in which Pheoby responds, “ ‘Yeah, Sam (Pheoby’s husband) say most of ‘em goes to church so they’ll be sure so they’ll be sure to rise Judgment. Dat’s de day dat every secret is s’posed to be made known. They wants to be there and here it all’” (Hurston 5-6). The other religion that is practiced is voodoo. Huston doesn’t create a conflict between the two religion rather she shows the hypocrisy that was see by others of non-Christian faith.
Political propaganda, one of the main components of a Slave Narrative, is seen throughout the novel in different forms. The first is in the form of generational gap.
Janie’s view on marriage and her grandmother’s view are dramatically different. Janie thinks that marriage meant “husbands and wives always loved each other” and her grandmother defined love as “protection” (15). Another form is the formation of Eatonville as a city. Joe Sparks a black man buys up all the land and builds up a town for displaced slaves. Sparks, as mayor establishes a class system by the way he dresses better and enforces Janie to dress and act proper, not like the common women of the town. The successful building of an African American town of Eatonville, and the economical success that the community generated is another component of the Slave Narrative. It demonstrated the freedom and independence of the African American people.
The main ties to the Slave Narrative, is Janie’s life journey. She struggled to become her own person with her on voice through three different marriages. She went through abuse, homelessness, death of loved ones, a murder trial, and she survived a massive hurricane. All of these trials demonstrate a tumultuous life journey and ends with Janie’s ascending out of her life of crisis. This is what makes Janie the heroine of the novel, which is another component of the Slave Narrative.
What makes this novel a revision of the Slave Narrative is how the novel ends. Janie is a single landowner who is economically stable. In a Slave Narrative the woman would be married and her husband would be economically stable. Here Hurston revises it by giving her heroine an economically stable life without the hassle of a marriage. She gives Janie what she had been yearning for throughout the novel, her freedom.
Works Cited
Hurston, Zora. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York: HarpersCollins Publishing, 1937.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
The Heavywieght Modernist Championship Fight(WCW vs. T.S Eliot)
Dr. Jordan
WCW versus T.S Eliot Round 1
William Carlos Williams also known as WCW, was an American poet whose concept centered on modernism and imagism. He is very much a centrist of post war poetry, heavenly in the United States, and commenced the habit of open and organic form. He was concerned with everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people. His most anthologized poem is “The Red Wheel Barrow” and published as part of Spring and All, which is regarded as some of his best work. Although, Williams’s diction about poetry agrees with their high modernist principles, he was not hesitant about his disagreements with major writers such as T.S Eliot and Ezra Pound.
In the poem Spring and All, it is clear that spring is an important part of this poem. Eventually it emerges as a main character taking on almost human characteristics, as it changes the world of the poem. In (lines 14-15); our first glimpse of spring is described as being “sluggish and dazed” These words usually apply to humans but are used as personification for an object or idea of spring, paradoxically T.S Eliot uses spring, particularly April as “April is the cruellest, month, breeding”, “Lilacs of the dead land(Lines 1-2)”. Both use imagery particular spring as a metaphor for the sweeping changes over the whole world in the early 20th Century. World War one is over and Carlos promotes the good of people producing new and exciting art and philosophy and new prosperity. Contrastingly T.S Eliot, though its shifts between satire and divination paints a visual of modern day through obscurity as dark, futile, full of uncertainty and despair, while still incorporating or re-working the literary past of the British customs.
It is some of those dictions, and poetic devices why Williams in his 1919 prologue to Kora in Hell, denounced Eliot as well Ezra Pound as “conformists, preoccupied with rehashing the literary glories of the past, (285)”. Carlos argument stems from his notion of speaking in modern-verse, in the language of the United States, with “verse to be alive, infusing into something of the same order, some tincture of disestablishment, in the nature of an impalpable revolution (284).” Although, Pound asserted agreeably that poetry should make a new, he discouraged Williams with the notion, past and present can make a new, by that meaning, the past is capable of modernization. For a more modern day example, Hip hop artist Kanye West’s song “Gold digger”, uses the cameo from Ray Charles “ I Got A Woman” and incorporates Kanye’s modern day depiction of a gold digging woman. The track mixes the past musical style of rhythm and blues with a present or modern bouncy hip hop beat. Eliot would agree with this example because it puts the “old and the “new” in a paradox, keeping the past unchanged and the present unpretentious, and evolutionary.
To close T.S Eliot , and WCW share high modernist principles in a broader concept such as wearing out of language, cliché and starting a new, and unpretentious art. They only differ in the issue of determining if the past is a necessity when incorporating the new.
Works Cited
Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Jahan Ramazani, pp 284-285, 291-292, 474-479
Pound, Eliot, and the Rhetoric of The Waste Land
Author(s): Marshall McLuhan
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 10, No. 3, Anniversary Issue: I (Spring, 1979), pp. 557-580
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468929
WCW versus T.S Eliot Round 1
William Carlos Williams also known as WCW, was an American poet whose concept centered on modernism and imagism. He is very much a centrist of post war poetry, heavenly in the United States, and commenced the habit of open and organic form. He was concerned with everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people. His most anthologized poem is “The Red Wheel Barrow” and published as part of Spring and All, which is regarded as some of his best work. Although, Williams’s diction about poetry agrees with their high modernist principles, he was not hesitant about his disagreements with major writers such as T.S Eliot and Ezra Pound.
In the poem Spring and All, it is clear that spring is an important part of this poem. Eventually it emerges as a main character taking on almost human characteristics, as it changes the world of the poem. In (lines 14-15); our first glimpse of spring is described as being “sluggish and dazed” These words usually apply to humans but are used as personification for an object or idea of spring, paradoxically T.S Eliot uses spring, particularly April as “April is the cruellest, month, breeding”, “Lilacs of the dead land(Lines 1-2)”. Both use imagery particular spring as a metaphor for the sweeping changes over the whole world in the early 20th Century. World War one is over and Carlos promotes the good of people producing new and exciting art and philosophy and new prosperity. Contrastingly T.S Eliot, though its shifts between satire and divination paints a visual of modern day through obscurity as dark, futile, full of uncertainty and despair, while still incorporating or re-working the literary past of the British customs.
It is some of those dictions, and poetic devices why Williams in his 1919 prologue to Kora in Hell, denounced Eliot as well Ezra Pound as “conformists, preoccupied with rehashing the literary glories of the past, (285)”. Carlos argument stems from his notion of speaking in modern-verse, in the language of the United States, with “verse to be alive, infusing into something of the same order, some tincture of disestablishment, in the nature of an impalpable revolution (284).” Although, Pound asserted agreeably that poetry should make a new, he discouraged Williams with the notion, past and present can make a new, by that meaning, the past is capable of modernization. For a more modern day example, Hip hop artist Kanye West’s song “Gold digger”, uses the cameo from Ray Charles “ I Got A Woman” and incorporates Kanye’s modern day depiction of a gold digging woman. The track mixes the past musical style of rhythm and blues with a present or modern bouncy hip hop beat. Eliot would agree with this example because it puts the “old and the “new” in a paradox, keeping the past unchanged and the present unpretentious, and evolutionary.
To close T.S Eliot , and WCW share high modernist principles in a broader concept such as wearing out of language, cliché and starting a new, and unpretentious art. They only differ in the issue of determining if the past is a necessity when incorporating the new.
Works Cited
Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Jahan Ramazani, pp 284-285, 291-292, 474-479
Pound, Eliot, and the Rhetoric of The Waste Land
Author(s): Marshall McLuhan
Source: New Literary History, Vol. 10, No. 3, Anniversary Issue: I (Spring, 1979), pp. 557-580
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468929
Monday, February 15, 2010
Eliot's Religious Connection( Blog question #7)
Gaston Mclemore
Dr. Jordan
T.S Eliot Religious Influence
Thomas Sterns Eliot, author of The Waste Land, has been called the most influential poet of the twentieth century. A pioneer of the modernist movement, T.S Eliot is known for fragmented, elusive poetics, and became, in his own words, a “classicists in literature, royalists in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion (Brooks, Cleanth 1948).” Eliot’s Waste Land, shows the obscure work of dark despair, yet a clear portrayal of evolvement in poetics, and literature leaning towards the modernist movement (F. R. Leavis).
Anglicanism is a tradition within the Christianity compromising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worships or church structures. It is basically an adaption of many faiths such as Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. This circle of religious beliefs make sense in context with the many societal themes in The Waste Land, such as lack of faith, lack of communication, fear of both life and death, corruption of life-water symbol, and a corruption of sex. As such, it is open to a multitude of interpretations and no two critics agree completely on its meaning. It is clear that he unequivocally believed that the very existence of the Western Civilization was threatened. The Waste Land had poignantly described the decay of civilization, and events that captured Eliot for religious and political reasons. The peace agreement between Hitler and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 confirmed Eliot’s worst fears of the weakness of the West. “Our national life seemed fraudulently,” he remarked after Munich Pact (F. R Leavis). With these dramatic events taking shape Eliot visualized a destabilization of the West or a decent into authoritarianism. Eliot had an epiphany and felt it necessary to have “a vigorous rediscovery of what it means to live Christianly. He believed that unless England and America recovered a form of Christian society, they would fall into the paganism of Russia and Germany (F.R. Leavis).
In a 1932 essay “Christianity and Communism” Eliot argued that the only Christian scheme made a place for the values “which I maintain or perish, the belief, for instance, in holy living, and holy dying, in sanctity, chastity, humility, and austerity (Christiancentury.org). This statement is of significance because Eliot portrays two kinds of people in the modern waste land. These are seen in the crowd that flows over London Bridge (62-65). He states, “I had not thought death had undone so many.” This is a reference to Dante description of the people in limbo. They were the dead who were neither bad nor good, just secularized. This is one category of people in the waste land. The other is given by another reference to Dante: “Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled.” This is descriptive of people in the first level of hell, those who were born before Christ. They have no knowledge of salvation and cannot be saved (According to Dante).
The reference shows that there are also people in the twentieth century that have no faith. Eliot illustrates the lack of faith at several points. In lines 301-302, one of the Thames daughters states, “I can connect/ Nothing with nothing” Since she has no faith there no connections or meaning in her life (Wheelwright 97). There are several references in the poem “the hooded hordes walking in a ring.” Madame Sosostris sees them and the protagonist meets them as he journeys to the Perilous Chapel. The Hooded hordes are hooded because they cannot see the hooded figure, the “third that always walks beside you,” who represents Christ (Brooks 26). They are walking in a ring with no sense of purpose or direction because they have no faith.
Eliot surely did his part to redeem the time and help preserve the faith. He did this mainly through his poetry, which brilliantly displays the moral disparity of our time and recounts his own pilgrimage of faith.
Works Cited
T. S. Eliot and the Life of English Literature Author(s): F. R. Leavis Source: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Winter, 1969), pp. 9-34 Published by: The Massachusettes Review, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25087797
Brooks, Cleanth. "The Waste Land: An Analysis." T.S. Eliot. ed. B. Rajan. New York: Funk and Wagnall's, 1948.
Wheelwright, Phillip. "Eliot's Philosophical Themes." T.S. Eliot,.ed. B. Rajan. New York: Funk and Wagnall's, 1948.
Philip Yancey, http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1076, www.christiancentury.org
Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, The Waste Land 474-485
Dr. Jordan
T.S Eliot Religious Influence
Thomas Sterns Eliot, author of The Waste Land, has been called the most influential poet of the twentieth century. A pioneer of the modernist movement, T.S Eliot is known for fragmented, elusive poetics, and became, in his own words, a “classicists in literature, royalists in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion (Brooks, Cleanth 1948).” Eliot’s Waste Land, shows the obscure work of dark despair, yet a clear portrayal of evolvement in poetics, and literature leaning towards the modernist movement (F. R. Leavis).
Anglicanism is a tradition within the Christianity compromising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worships or church structures. It is basically an adaption of many faiths such as Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. This circle of religious beliefs make sense in context with the many societal themes in The Waste Land, such as lack of faith, lack of communication, fear of both life and death, corruption of life-water symbol, and a corruption of sex. As such, it is open to a multitude of interpretations and no two critics agree completely on its meaning. It is clear that he unequivocally believed that the very existence of the Western Civilization was threatened. The Waste Land had poignantly described the decay of civilization, and events that captured Eliot for religious and political reasons. The peace agreement between Hitler and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 confirmed Eliot’s worst fears of the weakness of the West. “Our national life seemed fraudulently,” he remarked after Munich Pact (F. R Leavis). With these dramatic events taking shape Eliot visualized a destabilization of the West or a decent into authoritarianism. Eliot had an epiphany and felt it necessary to have “a vigorous rediscovery of what it means to live Christianly. He believed that unless England and America recovered a form of Christian society, they would fall into the paganism of Russia and Germany (F.R. Leavis).
In a 1932 essay “Christianity and Communism” Eliot argued that the only Christian scheme made a place for the values “which I maintain or perish, the belief, for instance, in holy living, and holy dying, in sanctity, chastity, humility, and austerity (Christiancentury.org). This statement is of significance because Eliot portrays two kinds of people in the modern waste land. These are seen in the crowd that flows over London Bridge (62-65). He states, “I had not thought death had undone so many.” This is a reference to Dante description of the people in limbo. They were the dead who were neither bad nor good, just secularized. This is one category of people in the waste land. The other is given by another reference to Dante: “Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled.” This is descriptive of people in the first level of hell, those who were born before Christ. They have no knowledge of salvation and cannot be saved (According to Dante).
The reference shows that there are also people in the twentieth century that have no faith. Eliot illustrates the lack of faith at several points. In lines 301-302, one of the Thames daughters states, “I can connect/ Nothing with nothing” Since she has no faith there no connections or meaning in her life (Wheelwright 97). There are several references in the poem “the hooded hordes walking in a ring.” Madame Sosostris sees them and the protagonist meets them as he journeys to the Perilous Chapel. The Hooded hordes are hooded because they cannot see the hooded figure, the “third that always walks beside you,” who represents Christ (Brooks 26). They are walking in a ring with no sense of purpose or direction because they have no faith.
Eliot surely did his part to redeem the time and help preserve the faith. He did this mainly through his poetry, which brilliantly displays the moral disparity of our time and recounts his own pilgrimage of faith.
Works Cited
T. S. Eliot and the Life of English Literature Author(s): F. R. Leavis Source: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Winter, 1969), pp. 9-34 Published by: The Massachusettes Review, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25087797
Brooks, Cleanth. "The Waste Land: An Analysis." T.S. Eliot. ed. B. Rajan. New York: Funk and Wagnall's, 1948.
Wheelwright, Phillip. "Eliot's Philosophical Themes." T.S. Eliot,.ed. B. Rajan. New York: Funk and Wagnall's, 1948.
Philip Yancey, http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1076, www.christiancentury.org
Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, The Waste Land 474-485
Thursday, February 11, 2010
The Expatriate Movement( The Sun Also Rises)
Gaston Mclemore
AML 3311
Dr. Jordan
The Expatriate Movement
In its broadest sense, expatriate is any person living in a different country from where he or she is a citizen. The phenomenon and image of Americans living abroad is associated with certain cultural movements, particularly literature, in which expatriate individuals and communities were portrayed. Some prime examples are American literary notables who lived in Paris, from the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression or the so-called Lost Generation, including Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, T.S Eliot and Ezra Pound to name a few.
Many of the expatriates began their exodus for a multitude of reasons; World War I and the effects that it impacted on the writers of the time, the roaring twenties and the post war psychological effects that created the lost generation that many writers fell into. This attitude led to books such as Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”. George Steiner says, “Writers of the lost generation are often less reliable citizens of their nation, and frequently carry in their mind a map of the world, an imagistic or fantastic or writer geography, on which the capitals and frontiers seem at odds with the familiar political atlas.”(Steiner) He goes on to say, “The one thing that makes this affair possible is minimal equipment needed by a writer such as an imagination, intelligence, paper and a pen or a typewriter, and financed by the oblique economics of patronage, royalty, or private income, the writer has less to bind them than most of us, is freer to choose his working location in the context of pleasure or stimulus and is more disposed to mythicize and justify the activity, to attach a dramatic value to it.”(Steiner)
Some of the reasoning behind this self-exile was the disagreement of leaders and actions of America at this time. The lost generation suffered from many non-diagnosed or recognizable disorders, most commonly was post-traumatic stress disorder. The masses that left America were not only writers and artists but many of the wealthy elite, the intellectuals, college graduates and the lost generation of war veterans. In the 1920’s African-American writers, artists, and musicians arrived in Paris and popularized jazz in Parisian nightclubs, a time when Montmartre was known as “the Harlem of Paris” (Steiner). In France, the artist movement revolved heavily around Gertrude Stein, and the emergence of Avant-Garde. She was one of the major American figures in this movement. Expatriates, writers, and artists tried to have an introduction to her in hopes of getting on her good side. “America is my country” and “Paris is my homeland” (stein). This set the bar for the expatriate movement that everybody followed.
Later on the twenties, a time of post war and economic optimism, came the influx of jazz and many African American notables such as Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, Larry Potter, Mildred Thompson, and Sam Middleton.
The Expatriate movement served as one of the staples for many of the most polished American as well African American writers, artists and musicians. These expatriates suffered through a lot of uncertainty, and hardship but have triumph to help take shape the modernist movement we have today.
Works Cited
Roaring Twenties Rayburn, Kevin (1997-2000). The 1920s. [Online] http://www.louisville.edu/~kprayb01/1920s.html
LITERARY EXPATRIATES IN PARIS, The library of UNC
http://www.lib.unc.edu/rbc/french_expatriates/paris.html
Second Countries: The Expatriate Tradition in American Writing Author(s): Malcolm Bradbury Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 8, American Literature Special Number (1978), pp. 15-39 Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3506762
AML 3311
Dr. Jordan
The Expatriate Movement
In its broadest sense, expatriate is any person living in a different country from where he or she is a citizen. The phenomenon and image of Americans living abroad is associated with certain cultural movements, particularly literature, in which expatriate individuals and communities were portrayed. Some prime examples are American literary notables who lived in Paris, from the end of World War I to the beginning of the Great Depression or the so-called Lost Generation, including Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, T.S Eliot and Ezra Pound to name a few.
Many of the expatriates began their exodus for a multitude of reasons; World War I and the effects that it impacted on the writers of the time, the roaring twenties and the post war psychological effects that created the lost generation that many writers fell into. This attitude led to books such as Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises”. George Steiner says, “Writers of the lost generation are often less reliable citizens of their nation, and frequently carry in their mind a map of the world, an imagistic or fantastic or writer geography, on which the capitals and frontiers seem at odds with the familiar political atlas.”(Steiner) He goes on to say, “The one thing that makes this affair possible is minimal equipment needed by a writer such as an imagination, intelligence, paper and a pen or a typewriter, and financed by the oblique economics of patronage, royalty, or private income, the writer has less to bind them than most of us, is freer to choose his working location in the context of pleasure or stimulus and is more disposed to mythicize and justify the activity, to attach a dramatic value to it.”(Steiner)
Some of the reasoning behind this self-exile was the disagreement of leaders and actions of America at this time. The lost generation suffered from many non-diagnosed or recognizable disorders, most commonly was post-traumatic stress disorder. The masses that left America were not only writers and artists but many of the wealthy elite, the intellectuals, college graduates and the lost generation of war veterans. In the 1920’s African-American writers, artists, and musicians arrived in Paris and popularized jazz in Parisian nightclubs, a time when Montmartre was known as “the Harlem of Paris” (Steiner). In France, the artist movement revolved heavily around Gertrude Stein, and the emergence of Avant-Garde. She was one of the major American figures in this movement. Expatriates, writers, and artists tried to have an introduction to her in hopes of getting on her good side. “America is my country” and “Paris is my homeland” (stein). This set the bar for the expatriate movement that everybody followed.
Later on the twenties, a time of post war and economic optimism, came the influx of jazz and many African American notables such as Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, Larry Potter, Mildred Thompson, and Sam Middleton.
The Expatriate movement served as one of the staples for many of the most polished American as well African American writers, artists and musicians. These expatriates suffered through a lot of uncertainty, and hardship but have triumph to help take shape the modernist movement we have today.
Works Cited
Roaring Twenties Rayburn, Kevin (1997-2000). The 1920s. [Online] http://www.louisville.edu/~kprayb01/1920s.html
LITERARY EXPATRIATES IN PARIS, The library of UNC
http://www.lib.unc.edu/rbc/french_expatriates/paris.html
Second Countries: The Expatriate Tradition in American Writing Author(s): Malcolm Bradbury Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 8, American Literature Special Number (1978), pp. 15-39 Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3506762
Willa Jewett (Blog Question #3)
Gaston Mclemore
AML-3311
Dr. Jordan
Willa Jewett?
Students of American Literature are aware of the literary relationship between Sarah Orne Jewett and Willa Cather which goes beyond the fact that each wrote of a period in American Life which both had known and loved, and which no longer exists. Miss Cather dedicates O Pioneers Miss Jewett in an acknowledgment of indebtedness to Sarah’s counsel to recapture in writing her early memories and to make style subordinate to truthful presentation. Her appreciation of Jewett and Whitman is present in her attributes in clear, fresh writing to her literary maternal heritage. Not to mention the similarity in ideals and a preference for women protagonists. The power of nature and innate connection with the animals and country life are essential to both texts. Although, one can argue that Cather’s O Pioneers expresses more universal appeal than emphasis on locale color like, Jewett’s A White Heron.
In Cather’s O Pioneers as well as Jewett’s A White Heron, Both writers share a tendency to see people in a resemblance to things of nature, and attributes nature thoughts and feelings of people. In addition, both have an implication of passion, romantic love or an embracement of female sexuality juxtaposed to nature. In part one of O Pioneers, Cather calmly says “The road led southwest, toward the streak of pale, watery light that glimmered in the leaden sky. The light fell upon the two said young faces that were turned mutely towards it: upon the eyes of the girl, who seemed to be looking with such anguished perplexity into the future; upon the somber eyes of the boy, who seemed already to be looking in the past.”(Cather 11). Willa Cather uses “watery light” as a catalyst for optimism, for the land and almost as an awakening, giving “watery light” a voice and God-Like power. Similarly, Jewett’s depiction of Sylvia within nature is underscored through attributing human characteristics through non-human beings. Sylvia begins to climb a pine tree; the tree is presented as an active being; “the tree seemed to lengthen itself out”, “The old pine must have loved his new independent, “it must have truly been amazed that morning.” (Jewett 55). Like the depiction of Cather’s “watery-light”, Jewett’s description of the tree creates a climax and expands the relationship with nature giving it, Garden of Eden imagery.
As part one, The Wild Land continues Alexandra goes in-depth to reveal her relationship with the seasons and the soil. Even during a drought, she feels closeness with the country and tries to buy more land despite her brother’s wishes. Like Jewett, Cather portrays her harmonious relationship between women and land. This connection is partially inherent, because women and the earth experience seasonal-menstrual rhythms and reach out to and are responsive to others (Benjamin1986; Weedon 1987). The connection is also social, in that women’s cultural roles bind them to land. They recognized that women were economically and socially central to the frontier landscape (Gilbert and Gubert 1989). Both women have fantasies or sensual dreams reflecting sexuality. Sylvia’s decision to reveal the location of a beautiful white heron and its nest to a visiting hunter, but it also may be metaphorically interpreted as Sylvia’s exploration of her sexuality. She fantasies about a visiting hunter, denies the relinquishment of her virginity, climaxes and he leaves disappointed. In relation to Jewett, Cather uses little Marie and Emil to explore the Garden of Eden and find her sexuality leading to her climax.
In short, Both Jewett and Cather touched on gendered related stereotypes and created female individualists rather than imitations of male protagonists. Cather and Jewett’s writings accurately depict the society of the 1960’s and struggle of change into the mid to late nineteenth century.
Works Cited
O Pioneers, Willa Cather pgs- 6-12
Geographical Literary Review, Vol. 85, No. 2 (Apr,. 1995), pp- 217-228
AML-3311
Dr. Jordan
Willa Jewett?
Students of American Literature are aware of the literary relationship between Sarah Orne Jewett and Willa Cather which goes beyond the fact that each wrote of a period in American Life which both had known and loved, and which no longer exists. Miss Cather dedicates O Pioneers Miss Jewett in an acknowledgment of indebtedness to Sarah’s counsel to recapture in writing her early memories and to make style subordinate to truthful presentation. Her appreciation of Jewett and Whitman is present in her attributes in clear, fresh writing to her literary maternal heritage. Not to mention the similarity in ideals and a preference for women protagonists. The power of nature and innate connection with the animals and country life are essential to both texts. Although, one can argue that Cather’s O Pioneers expresses more universal appeal than emphasis on locale color like, Jewett’s A White Heron.
In Cather’s O Pioneers as well as Jewett’s A White Heron, Both writers share a tendency to see people in a resemblance to things of nature, and attributes nature thoughts and feelings of people. In addition, both have an implication of passion, romantic love or an embracement of female sexuality juxtaposed to nature. In part one of O Pioneers, Cather calmly says “The road led southwest, toward the streak of pale, watery light that glimmered in the leaden sky. The light fell upon the two said young faces that were turned mutely towards it: upon the eyes of the girl, who seemed to be looking with such anguished perplexity into the future; upon the somber eyes of the boy, who seemed already to be looking in the past.”(Cather 11). Willa Cather uses “watery light” as a catalyst for optimism, for the land and almost as an awakening, giving “watery light” a voice and God-Like power. Similarly, Jewett’s depiction of Sylvia within nature is underscored through attributing human characteristics through non-human beings. Sylvia begins to climb a pine tree; the tree is presented as an active being; “the tree seemed to lengthen itself out”, “The old pine must have loved his new independent, “it must have truly been amazed that morning.” (Jewett 55). Like the depiction of Cather’s “watery-light”, Jewett’s description of the tree creates a climax and expands the relationship with nature giving it, Garden of Eden imagery.
As part one, The Wild Land continues Alexandra goes in-depth to reveal her relationship with the seasons and the soil. Even during a drought, she feels closeness with the country and tries to buy more land despite her brother’s wishes. Like Jewett, Cather portrays her harmonious relationship between women and land. This connection is partially inherent, because women and the earth experience seasonal-menstrual rhythms and reach out to and are responsive to others (Benjamin1986; Weedon 1987). The connection is also social, in that women’s cultural roles bind them to land. They recognized that women were economically and socially central to the frontier landscape (Gilbert and Gubert 1989). Both women have fantasies or sensual dreams reflecting sexuality. Sylvia’s decision to reveal the location of a beautiful white heron and its nest to a visiting hunter, but it also may be metaphorically interpreted as Sylvia’s exploration of her sexuality. She fantasies about a visiting hunter, denies the relinquishment of her virginity, climaxes and he leaves disappointed. In relation to Jewett, Cather uses little Marie and Emil to explore the Garden of Eden and find her sexuality leading to her climax.
In short, Both Jewett and Cather touched on gendered related stereotypes and created female individualists rather than imitations of male protagonists. Cather and Jewett’s writings accurately depict the society of the 1960’s and struggle of change into the mid to late nineteenth century.
Works Cited
O Pioneers, Willa Cather pgs- 6-12
Geographical Literary Review, Vol. 85, No. 2 (Apr,. 1995), pp- 217-228
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