American Literature II ~ LIT 210—(REVISED for
summer 2010)
Dr. Jonathan Alexander
Office, Parker Center, 319-F
609-894-9311 or 856-222-9311 (x1123)
E-mail: jalexander@bcc.edu
Online syllabus URL: http://staff.bcc.edu/faculty_websites/jalexand/210syl-s.htm
_____________________________________________________________________
A. TEXTS: Custom Text ISBN# 0-390-15023-1 “American Lit. 1 & 2” (Available
at BCC bookstore)
Some readings must be accessed online;
please click on links and bring readings with you for discussion.
B. COURSE OVERVIEW: American Literature II is a
survey course which continues from the Civil War period where American Lit I concluded,
covering the periods of Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, and Post-Modernism. The
course will assign primary emphasis to the major literary trends found in early
C. LEARNING OBJECTIVES ~ At the end of LIT 210, you should be able to:
D. COURSE EXPECTATIONS
Attendance: If the student is to profit from any course, he or she must attend class on a consistent basis.
Students must attend all classes for the full duration of each session. Should you need to miss a class for observance of religious holidays, jury duty, military duty, bereavement, or illness, you must notify the instructor by telephone or e-mail prior to or within 24 hours after the class. Without such communication, students forfeit the right to make up missed work. If such communication is made, students will be permitted to make up missed work at the beginning of the following class meeting. It is, therefore, the student’s responsibility to read the syllabus and be prepared for current as well as missed assignments.
Entering class late or leaving class early (without prior authorization) is considered disrespectful and will not be tolerated.
Academic Etiquette: Students will respect themselves, their peers and their instructors by considering the following:
Cell phones must be kept on silent. No calls are to be made or received during class. If you are expecting an important call during the class meeting time, notify me prior to class and quietly excuse yourself if the call is received. No text-messaging or game-playing will be tolerated.
Students who wish to use the restrooms may do so by quietly leaving and re-entering the room. If a student believes he or she will require an absence of more than a few minutes, it is his responsibility to notify me accordingly.
Communication: Many means of communication are available to the student including telephone, e-mail and mailbox.
If you leave a message on my office voice-mail, please remember to speak clearly and provide your name, course information, and phone number if you request a return call.
If you contact me via e-mail, always include your FULL NAME AND CLASS SECTION in the subject line. Too often students forget to sign e-mail or have e-mail addresses without obvious identifiers. If you do not include your name and class in the subject line, I will not open the message.
Students who send me e-mail and do not receive a reply of any kind within 48 hours should assume it was never received. Such e-mails should be resent. I do not mind receiving redundant messages if you are unsure whether your message was transmitted (though I may only reply to one). If your message doesn’t present itself as urgent, I may reply quickly and briefly and ask to get back to you before long.
Students who send e-mails containing attachments must save these documents with one of the following extensions: DOC, DOCX, WPS, TXT, or RTF. If the previous extensions are not available to you, copy and paste the text of your assignment into the e-mail message itself.
Class Assignments:
All work written and submitted should utilize standard rules of grammar, sentence organization, paragraph organization, and diction.
All formal papers are to be typed, titled, double spaced, stapled, and carefully proofread.
All assignments are due on the date specified on the syllabus without exception. Assignments which are not submitted during the class session they are due will be penalized 15% for each subsequent day they are late.
If a student presents reasonable justification for an absence, such an absence does not allow for more time to complete assignments. When a student is absent the day an assignment is due, he or she must submit the assignment as an attachment via e-mail on or before the date it is due.
Since students are provided with all assignments and deadlines on the first day of the semester, excuses such as “crashed computers,” “misplaced data,” “misplaced disks,” or “empty printer ink cartridges” will not be accepted. All computer work should be saved twice (hard drive and floppy/flash).
All Powerpoint presentations should be saved as “1997-2003” versions (“ppt” extensions) to ensure that they can be opened on the College’s laptops. Students are also encouraged to email to me their PPT files prior to their scheduled presentation date to provide another failsafe against document loss.
Plagiarism will not be tolerated under any circumstances. Be aware that plagiarism includes (but is not limited to) copying someone else’s words without crediting the source; paraphrasing someone else’s words without crediting the source; using someone else’s ideas without crediting the source (even if rephrased in your own words); using facts not universally known which are obtained from a source without crediting the source; asking someone else to write your paper, either in whole or in part; or obtaining a paper or portion thereof by any means and submitting it as an original document. The penalty for plagiarism is failure of the assignment and potentially failure of the course (at the instructor’s discretion), and it may result in suspension or expulsion from the College (at the discretion of the Student Affairs Committee). Please refer to the BCC Student Handbook for additional information regarding College regulations and the handling of plagiarism.
E. ASSIGNMENTS: Visit the grading rubric (http://staff.bcc.edu/faculty_websites/jalexand/rubric.htm) to see how writing is evaluated.
F. MAKE-UP EXAM POLICY: Because all assignment deadlines and
scheduled exam dates are provided at the beginning of the semester, little
latitude is given to those students who are not considerate of themselves or
respectful of course expectations. The schedule of assignments and activities
is a contract and, therefore, not open to negotiation. In the event that you
must be absent the day an assignment is due (though it is strongly discouraged
if preventable), utilize a form of electronic submission to turn in journal
entries or other assignments the day they are due
G. GRADING POLICY: All assignments have a specific point value. There are 200 total points worth of assignments and examinations.
|
Total Course |
Final Percentages |
Letter Grade |
|
177-200 |
88.5 - 100 |
A |
|
175-176 |
87.5 - 88 |
B+ |
|
159-174 |
79.5 - 87 |
B |
|
155-158 |
77.5 - 79 |
C+ |
|
149-154 |
74.5 - 77 |
C |
|
139-148 |
69.5 - 74 |
D |
|
0-138 |
0 - 69 |
F |
|
ASSIGNMENT / ACTIVITY |
DUE DATE |
VALUE |
GRADE |
|
Journal Response Questions and Handouts |
Daily |
40 pts |
|
|
Midterm Exam |
Session 6 |
40 pts |
|
|
Group Powerpoint Presentation |
Session 9 |
20 pts |
|
|
1500-word Research Essay (Options listed above) |
Session 10 |
40 pts |
|
|
Final Exam |
Session 10 |
40 pts |
|
|
Participation and Attendance |
N/A |
20 pts |
|
|
TOTAL |
|
200 pts |
|
I. PROJECTED SCHEDULE OF
ASSIGNMENTS:
All readings for this course have been made available online. Students who
choose to take advantage this convenience are expected to bring with them a
copy of all assigned readings (either printed, on a laptop, or other electronic
device. Otherwise, page numbers listed
refer to the 12th edition of Perkins’ American Tradition in Literature, vol 2. All readings and journal responses must be completed before the date
scheduled.
SESSION 1: Thursday, July 8
Discussion of syllabus, general course expectations, and literary
history
WALT WHITMAN, ►I Hear America Singing, (at end of syllabus)
What do these individuals seem to have in common? What, if anything,
distinguishes them one from the next? Do you think the speaker wants these men
and women to be seen as a homogenous group with little distinction or a
heterogeneous mixture of vastly different people? How is the balance between
work and play handled? Do you think the speaker favors one over the other?
►Oh Captain, My Captain, (at end of syllabus)
What makes the style of this poem different from the previous? How has
the speaker managed to capture both the thrilling triumph of Lincoln’s
abolitionist efforts and the tragic loss of his recent assassination? Which
image in the poem do you see as the most poignant or resonant?
►Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand, (at end of syllabus)
How can the speaker expect his readers to have an appreciation of his
work if he is constantly reminding them of the futility of understanding it? Do
you sense sincerity in the speaker’s claims that the reader may never fully
reconcile the work, or do you believe his tone is more often playful or
sarcastic?
SESSION 2: Tuesday, July 13
MARK TWAIN, ►How to Tell a Story, 171
What does the author propose as the difference between knowledge and
action? Which seems to be favored more and why? What makes humorous stories the
“only one difficult kind”? How does he differentiate among that which is
“humorous, comic, and witty”? How does he distinguish between the manner (or
process) through which a story is told and the matter (or substance) of the
story itself? What makes the comic story and its teller a “pathetic” thing to
see? What value does the author place on the “pause”?
FRANK NORRIS, ►A Plea for Romantic Fiction, 175
How does Norris distinguish between Romance and Romantic? How does he
effectively argue his point of literary criticism while still asking so many
questions? What arguments does Norris make against Realism? How does he promote
Romance as an equally effective “teacher” as any style of expression?
RED CLOUD, ►[All I Want Is Peace and Justice], 178
How does the speaker handle the fact that the white men seem to have an
unfortunately incorrect view of the natives? How might this speech be viewed as
a desperate plea of a man who thinks he has nothing more to lose?
ZITKALA-SA, ►The School Days of an Indian Girl, 180
How does this piece illustrate the condition of being caught between
two drastically different worlds? How does she use the education of native
children as a metaphor for the unfortunate perceptions felt by the white race?
What is the most striking passage of the piece for you?
SESSION 3: Thursday, July 15
SARAH ORNE JEWETT, ►A White Heron, 183
By refusing to betray the heron’s secret, what is Sylvia rejecting (and
in favor of what)? What is the hunter’s goal (and is it achieved)? What role
does the narrative voice play in our understanding of Sylvia’s choices? Why do
you believe Sylvia made the right or wrong decision? What does the heron’s pine
tree represent for Sylvia? What makes this tale Romantic (according to Norris)?
What makes it Realistic? What makes it Naturalistic?
STEPHEN CRANE, ►A Man Said to the Universe, 190
How does this very short poem represent Crane’s view of a “universe essentially indifferent to man?” What relationship is established between the “man” and the “universe”?
►The Open Boat, 191
What does the story tell us about perceptions and observations of
people in a crisis? What is the effect of our being told early in the story
that the men are not near a rescue station? Why does Crane deliberately place
the dinghy’s crew in sight of land? How does Crane’s view of the human
community arise out of his view of the natural forces surrounding and working
upon humans?
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR, ►We Wear The Mask, 209
How does the poem differentiate between public and private personae?
What is the speaker’s attitude toward his public? From what inspiration do you
think this may have arisen? What might this poem have in common with John
Lennon’s lyric about Eleanor Rigby, who is “wearing a face that she keeps in a
jar by the door”?
►Life’s Tragedy, 210
What does this poem say about missed opportunities and failed
expectations? How does the speaker feel about seeking perfection or an ideal
end? What role (if any) does regret play in our lives?
►Sympathy, 211
How does the speaker express his familiarity with suffering? How are
missed opportunities treated similarly or differently than they are in “Life’s
Tragedy”? What makes the bird an effective or ineffective metaphor in this
poem? How are freedom and salvation represented?
E. A. ROBINSON, ►The Mill, 212
What role does denial of truth play in this poem? How are unconscious
fears and concerns represented? How does memory become an unwelcome liability?
How might the miller and his wife have escaped from similar burdens but through
different gestures? How does this relate to Dunbar’s suggestions about achieved
or failed expectations?
►Variations of Greek Things: A Happy Man, (included at end of syllabus)
What is the power of memory and legacy expressed in this poem? Do you
sense sincerity in the speaker’s reminiscing, or is there stylistic evidence of
sarcasm? Is the speaker’s sentiment ideally Romantic or plausibly Realistic?
►Mr. Flood’s Party, 213
How has Flood found a way to manage his feelings of loneliness and
isolation? Is he ultimately successful? What elements of the poem make it
Naturalistic in its moral? What does the road (and Flood’s spatial orientation
on it) represent within his life? How are Flood’s past and future represented,
and what does each seem to have to offer him now?
SESSION 4: Tuesday, July 20
ROBERT FROST, ►After Apple-Picking, 215
What is the speaker looking forward to? What does he seem to feel
guilty about? How does he attempt (and perhaps fail) to escape these responsibilities
that he knows are his? How does the illustration of fallen apples relate to the
speaker himself? How does this relate to Dunbar’s and Robinson’s suggestions
about achieved or failed expectations?
►The Wood-Pile, 216
What role does (in)decision play for the speaker? How does the poem
represent spaces both familiar and foreign? What commentary does this poem make
about the sense of incompleteness of tasks which Frost represented in “After
Apple-Picking”? What positive message can be brought from this poem whose final
word is “decay”?
►Birches, 217
How does this poem represent the relationship between the real and the
ideal? How does the speaker maintain this balance? How is the boy “too far from
town” represented as extremely resourceful and self-sufficient? What does this
contribute to the poem’s message? How is the sense of being “alone”
characterized differently in this poem than in “Mr. Flood’s Party”? What
message is proposed by the act of filling a cup “even above the brim”? What
does this have to do with swinging on birches (literally) and life
(figuratively)? How does the speaker eventually remain true to his romantic
side while maintaining a pragmatic view of life?
►The Need of Being Versed in Country Things, (included at end of syllabus)
How does this poem express equal amounts of idyllic Romanticism while
emphasizing the harshness of Modernity? What’s the speaker’s attitude about
feelings of regret? What role does Nature play in its own preservation? How is
the power of individual perspective given value?
CARL SANDBURG, ►Chicago, (included at end of syllabus)
How is the speaker able to enumerate seemingly horrible truths about
his hometown while remaining proud to call it his? Which of the speaker’s
descriptive examples do you think is the most damning to the city of Chicago?
If the speaker’s reference to “terrible burden of destiny” can be associated
loosely with Naturalism, how does he take it beyond Crane’s view of a helpless
human toward a more fulfilling message?
►I am the People, the Mob, (included at end of syllabus)
What does this poem have in common with George Santayana’s quote,
“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it”? Is “not
learning” (as Santayana claims) the same as “forgetting” (as Sandburg claims)?
How can the speaker remain hopeful for the future when the present appears so
bleak? How is this poem (and “Chicago”) fundamentally similar to (and
strikingly different from) the humanistic language of Whitman’s “I Hear America
Singing”?
►Government, (included at end of syllabus)
What role does first-hand observation play for the speaker? How are
concepts of “criminality” and “corruption” illustrated through this poem? Is it
a good thing or bad thing that the “government” is represented as something
dynamic, alive, moving, changeable? What is the effect of ritual, patterned
behavior as expressed in the final stanza?
SUSAN GLASPELL, ►Trifles, 213
How are the “letter of the law”
and the “spirit of the law” interpreted differently by Mrs. Peters and Mrs.
Hale? Does one win out over the other? How are the two “characters” of Minnie
Foster and Minnie Wright characterized differently? What textual evidence
illustrates why the men are logical, arrogant, and stupid? How are Mrs. Peters
and Mrs. Hale each motivated for their own reasons to conspire against the men?
What do you learn of the character of John Wright that might mitigate the
charge against Minnie? Explain the significance of each of the following
symbols: the bird, the cage with the broken hinge, the cold house and broken
jelly jars, the unevenly sewn quilt block, the fresh bread on the counter, the
half-clean table top, the rope.
SESSION 5: Thursday, July 22
T. S. ELIOT, ►The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (IN-CLASS EXERCISE), 229
WALLACE STEVENS, ►The Snow Man, 233
What does it mean to have a “mind of” something, and how does that
prove important to the speaker here? What elements in this poem are loosely
associated with a lingering Romanticism? On the other hand, what makes this
poem purely Modern in its approach?
JOHN CROWE RANSOM, ►Winter Remembered (included at end of syllabus)
How does this speaker’s reference to “absence” relate to Robinson’s “The Mill”? How does
“feeling” and the desire for painlessness relate to Prufrock? What message is
the speaker proposing about love and loss?
CLAUDE MCKAY, ►America, 234
How does the speaker express a love for something that doesn’t always
seem to have his best interest in mind? What role does loyalty play for the
speaker? Does he seem more certain or uncertain about the future?
►If We Must Die, 235
What role does dignity and self-respect play in this poem? Do you
perceive the “fighting back” at the end as more literal or figurative? How
might it be both?
►Outcast, 236
Is there a positive message within this poem which seems laden with
negative imagery (“dim,” “forgotten,” “alien,” “ghost,” “apart”)?
CONTEE CULLEN, ►Yet Do I Marvel, 237
How does this poem express the equal concerns about God’s benevolence
and the speaker’s futility of existence? What role does temptation play? How do
you interpret the act of “marveling” (as opposed to “knowing,” “understanding,”
or even “appreciating”)?
SESSION 6: Tuesday, July 27
MIDTERM EXAM
O. HENRY, ►The Gift of the Magi, (click here for reading) (Video)
What symbolic value does the number three have in this story? How can
Della and Jim possibly appreciate the gifts from each other if they had to give
up their most precious possession in order to receive it? Can a story based on
coincidence, irony and surprise still be readable today? What makes this a
timeless story?
ERNEST HEMINGWAY, ►A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, (click here for reading) (Video)
What are some of the contrasts present in the story? What are the major
differences between the young waiter and the old waiter, particularly in terms
of how they view the old man and working in the café? What is the meaning of
the old waiter’s “prayer”? Given the
view of human existence that is expressed, what is the role and significance of
the café? What do you consider to be the overall meaning of the story?
WILLIAM FAULKNER, ►A Rose For Emily, (click here for reading)
Why is Miss Emily Grierson described as “a
fallen monument”? What does it mean that
“Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary
obligation upon the town…”? How does the
narrator describe Homer Barron? What does he come to represent for Emily? What
is the community’s attitude towards Homer and Emily’s relationship? After Miss Emily’s death, what is discovered
in the room “which no one had seen in forty years”? What do you believe to be
Miss Emily’s motive for her actions?
SESSION 7: Thursday, July 29
RICHARD WRIGHT
►From Black Boy, “A Five-Dollar Fight,” (click here for reading)
How do you come to understand that the narrator of the story has to
think “double,” that is, think about himself as himself and at the same time
think about himself as the white men see him? Do you get the impression that
this is a no-win situation for the narrator (or can something be gained by this
experience)? Why or why not? What does this story say about the corrupting
influence of racism on the two young African American men? What does the
comparison to the fighting dogs or roosters say about the white men’s
attitudes? Richard Wright labels himself both a realist and a naturalist writer
who wrote stories to convey a message about social injustice. Identify two
elements of this story (one for realism and one for naturalism) which
illustrate both of these tendencies.
ALLEN GINSBERG
►America, (included at end of syllabus)
Considering the other works discussed this semester which illustrate
positive and/or negative views of civic or nationalistic pride (including
Whitman, Sandburg, McKay, Dunbar, etc.), select two other poems and identify
how Ginsberg’s poem “America” is similar to or different from each.
AMIRI BARAKA
►An Agony As Now, 238
Considering the other works discussed this semester which illustrate
positive and/or negative views of self worth or identity (including Robinson,
Frost, Eliot, Stevens, Hemingway, Wright, etc.), select three works and
identify how Baraka’s poem “An Agony, As Now” is similar to or different from
each.
LANGSTON HUGHES
►Theme for English B, included at end of syllabus
Role-playing as the instructor on the receiving end of Hughes’ “theme,”
write a 100-word evaluative response to the student from the instructor’s
point-of-view. Consider what the “assignment” was. Consider what your
“expectations” were (taking into account your race, your implied age, and any
other demographics you think are relevant). Consider whether the student
delivered on your assignment. After the 100-word evaluative response, provide a
letter grade on a scale of A to F.
SAM SHEPARD
►True West (VIDEO PRESENTATION)
What symbolic role does the desert play for each of the two characters? Identify two ways that the “switch” in the brothers’ roles can be seen in the play? What distinction does the playwright make in the play between “art” and “business”? How can True West be defined as a naturalistic work of drama? Give examples as they can be associated with Crane’s “Open Boat” and other elements of Naturalism. How does Lee (and, eventually, Austin) display qualities of the loner, alienated and detached from society? What other characters have we read who can be related to these two men (directly or indirectly)? How is Lee’s final monologue at the end of Act One indicative of these two men and their relationships with each other and the world? Does the end of the play seem resolved to you? If not, what else did you expect to learn about these men? If so, what does the end (as it appears) tell us about how we’re supposed to feel about these men?
SESSION 8: Tuesday, August 3
BETTY FRIEDAN, ► “The Problem That Has No Name,” (click here for reading)
Why did “the problem lay buried, unspoken” for so long? What seems to
be the speaker’s greatest disappointment regarding the treatment of women by
men? Why is it significant that women weren’t being defined as “inferior,”
rather “simply different” from men? What impact might it have had on women
through the years if they knew others felt the same way as they?
DENISE LEVERTOV, ►Wedding Ring, 240
What does this poem express about the opportunities that lie ahead and
of the potential futility of hope? What significance does each of the other
“items” which lie in the basket have? How does this relate to the ring itself
and what it represents now for the speaker? Does the speaker seem hopeful of
being able to recover a lost past? Does she think change is possible? Is it
effective for her to end with questions she doesn’t seem to answer? (Or does
she?)
CAROLYN FORCHE, ►Taking Off My Clothes, included at end of syllabus
What is the tone of voice of this poem? How does the speaker illustrate
what she thinks is pain and compromise that she has undergone for the listener?
How does the conversational tone at the end display a very different tone than
Levertov’s “questions”?
ADRIENNE RICH, ►Living in Sin, included at end of syllabus
How does the speaker differentiate (through examples) between what she
“thought” and what she “knows”? Where in the poem does she seem to hold herself
in contempt for behaving the way she is? If she seems to loathe her own
behavior, why does she apparently continue it? How do you think the speaker
would define being “back in love again”(l. 23)? What might the “sin” in the
title be a reference to (if not conventional “pre-marital intimacy”)?
MARGE PIERCY, ►Always Unsuitable, included at end of syllabus
How does the speaker seem to express both a concern for pleasing the
“mothers” and a contempt for them at the same time? How is Piercy’s
compromising for a cause similar to or different from Forche’s? Where does
Piercy’s speaker present details to suggest she is neither perfect nor always
appropriate? On the other hand, (as opposed to Rich’s sense of self-loathing)
where does Piercy represent a speaker who has a greater sense of self-respect?
►Barbie Doll, included at end of syllabus
How does this “girlchild” attempt to make herself something she is not?
What motivates her? What is the outcome? How is her portrayal in death
ironically triumphant? What is the difference between this girl’s efforts to be
someone she wasn’t and those of the speaker in the previous poem? Do you think
the same “happy ending” could be applied to the speaker of “Always Unsuitable”?
How about to Forche’s speaker?
JANICE MIRIKITANI, ►Suicide Note, included at end of syllabus
What roles do age, gender, intelligence, and public opinion play in
this poem? How might the concerns of this female speaker be an updated
representation of the sort of sentiments expressed years earlier by Friedan?
What do you think is the key difference between this speaker’s inability to
please (and her subsequent suicide) and the inability to please expressed in
“Always Unsuitable”?
ALICE WALKER, ►Everyday Use, 241 (VIDEO PRESENTATION)
SESSION 9: Tuesday, August 4
Group Presentation 1 (1860-1885, The Reconstruction and Industrial Revolution)
Group Presentation 2 (1885-1910,
Naturalism)
Group Presentation 3 (1910-1935, Modernism and The Lost Generation)
Group Presentation 4 (1935-1960, Post-Modernism
and the Beat Generation)
SESSION 10: Thursday, August 6
Group Presentation 5 (1960-1985, Civil Rights and the Sexual Revolution)
Group Presentation 6 (1985-2010, The Digital Voice)
1500-word Research Essay, FINAL EXAM
________________________________________________
REALISM AND THE LOCAL COLOR MOVEMENT (1865-1880)
The second half of the 19th c. saw
The East asked what kinds of people leading what kinds of life are at the end of those bands of iron?
The Western regionalists answered: Men and women like yourselves, but dressed differently, speaking differently, with different social ways: fantastic deserts, mile deep canyons, mountains high enough to bear snow the year round, forests with trees as wide as man can stretch and wider, villages where the only woman was the town whore, camps where the only currency was gold-dust.
Writers of the South told of swamps where cypress grew out the green-scummed water and the moss grew down into it; of the cities where obsessive blood-consciousness of its inhabitants told of the mingling of races.
Mid-western authors narrated the tales of the plains where a man could be lost in the dust or ruined by hailstorm; of cities where fortunes were made or lost in a day’s trading on the beef or grain exchanges.
Principles Of Realism
1. Insistence upon and defense of “the experienced commonplace.”
2. Character more important than plot.
3. Attack upon romanticism and romantic writers.
4. Emphasis upon morality often self-realized and upon an examination of idealism.
5. Concept of realism as a realization of democracy.
Identifying Characteristics Of Realistic Writing
1. The philosophy of Realism is known as “descendental” or non-transcendental (non-romantic). The purpose is to instruct and to entertain. Realists were pragmatic, relativistic, democratic, and experimental.
2. The subject matter of Realism is drawn from “our experience”; it treated the common, the average, the non-extreme, the representative, the probable.
3. The morality of Realism is intrinsic and relativistic; relations between people and society are explored.
4. The style of Realism is the vehicle which carries realistic philosophy, subject matter, and morality. Emphasis is placed upon scenic presentation, de-emphasizing authorial comment and evaluation. There is an objection towards the omniscient point of view.
5. There is the belief among the Realists that humans control their destinies; characters act on their environment rather than simply reacting to it. Character is superior to circumstance. (Naturalism will later refocus on and refute this concept)
6. The Realists reject the kind of symbolism suggested by Emerson (a Romantic) when he said “Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.” Their use of symbolism is controlled and limited, depending more on the use of images.
Realistic Techniques
1. Settings are thoroughly familiar to the writer.
2. Plots emphasize the norm of daily experience.
3. Ordinary characters are studied in depth.
4. Complete authorial objectivity
5. Responsible morality; a world truly reported.
NATURALISM: Two
Approaches (1880-1914)
1. Naturalism is an extension or continuation of Realism with the addition of pessimistic determinism.
2. Naturalism is different from Realism.
Subject Matter & Characterization in Naturalistic Fiction
1. The subject matter:
a. The subject matter deals with those raw and unpleasant experiences which reduce characters to “degrading” behavior in their struggle to survive (including prostitution and seduction, exposure to social conditions and social evils). These characters are mostly from the lower middle or the lower classes; they are poor, uneducated, and unsophisticated.
b. The atmosphere is the commonplace and the unheroic; life is usually the dull round of daily existence. The naturalist tries to discover those qualities in such characters usually associated with the heroic or adventurous—acts of violence and passion leading to desperate moments and violent death. The suggestion is that life on its lowest levels is not so simple as it seems to be.
c. There is discussion of fate and “hubris” (excessive pride, arrogance) that affect a character; generally the controlling force is society and the surrounding environment.
2. The concept of a naturalistic character:
a. In Naturalism, characters do not have free will. External and internal forces, environment, or heredity control their behaviors:
Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, 1859, concept of natural selection (biological determinism), “survival of the fittest” threatened establish religious beliefs;
Karl Marx’s Communiest Manifesto, 1867, concept of economic determinism, civilization thrives on the struggle of the social classes;
Sigmund Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, 1899, concept of “pleasure principle” (psychological determinism); human actions guided by repressed fears and desires (wish-fulfiillment).
All determinists believe in the existence of the will, but the will is often enslaved on account of different reasons. characters are conditioned and controlled by environment, heredity, chance, or instinct; but they have compensating humanistic values which affirm their individuality and life—their struggle for life becomes heroic and they maintain human dignity.
b. the Naturalists attempt to represent the intermingling in life of the controlling forces and individual worth. They do not dehumanize their characters.
AMERICAN MODERNISM
(1914-1945)
The Centers of Modernism
1. Stylistic innovations—disruption of traditional syntax and form.
2. Artist’s self-consciousness about questions of form and structure.
3. Obsession with primitive material and attitudes.
4. International perspective on cultural matters.
Modern Attitudes
1. The artist is generally less appreciated but more sensitive, even more heroic, than the average person.
2. The artist challenges tradition and reinvigorates it.
3. A breaking away from patterned responses and predictable forms.
Contradictory Elements
1. Democratic and elitist.
2. Traditionalism and anti-tradition.
3. National provinciality versus the celebration of international culture.
4. Puritanical and repressive elements versus freer expression in sexual and political matters.
Literary Achievements
1. Dramatization of the plight of women.
2. Creation of a literature of the urban experience.
3. Continuation of the pastoral or rural spirit.
4. Continuation of regionalism and local color.
Modern Themes
1. Collectivism versus the authority of the individual.
2. The impact of the 1918 Bolshevik
Revolution in
3. The Jazz Age.
4. The
5. The passage of 19th Amendment in 1920 giving women the right to vote.
6. Prohibition of the production, sale, and consumption of alcoholic beverages, 1920-33.
7. The stock-market crash of 1929 and the Depression of the 1930s and their impact.
Modernism and the Self
1. In this period, the chief characteristic of the self is one of alienation. The character belongs to a “lost generation” (Gertrude Stein), suffers from a “dissociation of sensibility” (T. S. Eliot), and who has “a Dream deferred” (Langston Hughes).
2. Alienation led to an awareness about one’s inner life.
1. Harlem Renaissance (HR) is the name given to the period from the end of World War I and through the middle of the 1930s Depression, during which a group of talented African-American writers produced a sizable body of literature in the four prominent genres of poetry, fiction, drama, and essay.
2. The notion of “twoness,” a divided awareness of one’s identity, was introduced by W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the author of the influential book The Souls of Black Folks (1903): “One ever feels his two-ness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled stirrings: two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
3. Common themes: alienation, marginality, the use of folk material, the use of the blues tradition, the problems of writing for an elite audience.
4. HR was more than just a literary movement: it included
racial consciousness, “the back to
LATE-TWENTIETH CENTURY (1945- )
Significant Events
The Decades
The 1950s, referred by poet Robert Lowell as “the tranquilized fifties,” has been ridiculed as a smug, irresponsible, and materialistic decade.
The 1960s, in literary terms, is marked by the loosening of censorship and the discussion of “taboo” topics. Sexual fantasies, extremes of adventure, and “black humor” (humorous satire using shock or cruelty) are commonly used as subjects of literary works. The journalistic essay becomes a popular style of writing. A vigorous anti-establishment, and anti-traditional literary movement emerged called the Beat Movement (or Counterculture Movement). This decade is also marked by freedom movements such as Black power, women’s liberation, and gay rights.
The 1970s mark the emergence of the women’s movement and the “sexual revolution.”
The 1980s and 1990s are too recent and contemporary for evaluations of literary trends. Appearing on the literary scene are the so-called multicultural writers like Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, James Welch, Bharati Mukherjee, and Sandra Cisneros.
Walt Whitman
I Hear America Singing
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand
singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or
at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of
the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
Walt Whitman
O Captain! My Captain!
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the
bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain
lies,
Fallen cold and
dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the
deck,
You’ve fallen cold
and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and
dead.
Walt Whitman
Whoever You Are Holding Me Now In Your Hand
Whoever you are, holding me now in hand,
Without one thing, all will be useless,
I give you fair warning, before you attempt me further,
I am not what you supposed, but far different.
Who is he that would become my follower?
Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections?
The way is suspicious—the result
uncertain, perhaps destructive;
You would have to give up all else—I alone would expect to be your God, sole
and exclusive,
Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting,
The whole past theory of your life, and all conformity to the lives around you,
would have to be abandon’d;
Therefore release me now, before troubling yourself any further—Let go your
hand from my shoulders,
Put me down, and depart on your way.
Or else,
by stealth, in some wood, for trial,
Or back of a rock, in the open air,
(For in any roof’d room of a house I emerge not—nor in company,
And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,)
But just possibly with you on a high hill—first watching lest any person, for
miles around, approach unawares,
Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea, or some quiet
island,
Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss, or the new husband’s kiss,
For I am the new husband, and I am the comrade.
Or, if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
Where I may feel the throbs of your heart, or rest upon your hip,
Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;
For thus, merely touching you, is enough—is best,
And thus, touching you, would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.
But these leaves conning, you con at peril,
For these leaves, and me, you will not understand,
They will elude you at first, and still more afterward—I will certainly elude
you,
Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold!
Already you see I have escaped from you.
For it is not for what I have put into it that I have
written this book,
Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it,
Nor do those know me best who admire me, and vauntingly praise me,
Nor will the candidates for my love, (unless at most a very few,) prove
victorious,
Nor will my poems do good only—they will do just as much evil, perhaps more;
For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not
hit—that which I hinted at;
Therefore release me, and depart on your way.
E.A.
Robinson
Variations of Greek Themes: A Happy Man (1902)
When these graven lines you see,
Traveler, do not pity me;
Though I be among the dead,
Let no mournful word be said.
Children that I leave behind,
And their children, all were kind;
Near to them and to my wife,
I was happy all my life.
My three sons I married right,
And their sons I rocked at night;
Death nor sorrow ever brought
Cause for one unhappy thought.
Now, and with no need of tears,
Here they leave me, full of years,--
Leave me to my quiet rest
In the region of the blest.
Robert Frost
The Need of Being Versed in Country Things (1920)
The house had gone
to bring again
To the midnight sky a sunset glow.
Now the chimney was all of the house that stood,
Like a pistil after the petals go.
The
barn opposed across the way,
That would have joined the house in flame
Had it been the will of the wind, was left
To bear forsaken the place’s name.
No
more it opened with all one end
For teams that came by the stony road
To drum on the floor with scurrying hoofs
And brush the mow with the summer load.
The
birds that came to it through the air
At broken windows flew out and in,
Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh
From too much dwelling on what has been.
Yet
for them the lilac renewed its leaf,
And the aged elm, though touched with fire;
And the dry pump flung up an awkward arm;
And the fence post carried a strand of wire.
For
them there was really nothing sad.
But though they rejoiced in the nest they kept,
One had to be versed in country things
Not to believe the phoebes wept.
Carl Sandburg
Chicago (1916)
Hog
Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight
Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They
tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen your painted women
under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys.
And
they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
is true I have seen the
gunman kill and go free to
kill again.
And
they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
faces of women and children I
have seen the marks
of wanton hunger.
And
having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and I
give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come
and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and
coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging
magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
job, here is a tall bold
slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;
Fierce
as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the
wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking,
rebuilding,
Under
the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under
the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing
even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging
and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse,
and under his ribs the heart of
the people,
Laughing!
Laughing
the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating,
proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of
Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to
the Nation.
Carl
Sandburg
I am the People, the Mob (1916)
I am the people -- the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
I am the workingman, the
inventor, the maker of the
world’s food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses
history. The Napoleons
come from me and the Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a
prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms
pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is sucked
out and wasted.
I forget. Everything but death comes
to me and
makes me work and give up what I
have. And I
forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself
and spatter a few red
drops for history to remember.
Then--I forget.
When I, the People, learn to
remember, when I, the
People, use the lessons of yesterday
and no longer
forget who robbed me last year, who
played me for
a fool--then there will be no
speaker in all the world
say the name: “The People,” with any
fleck of a
sneer in his voice or any far-off
smile of derision.
The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.
Carl
Sandburg
Government (1916)
The Government--I heard about the
Government and
I went out to find it. I said I
would look closely at
it when I saw it.
Then I saw a policeman dragging a
drunken man to
the callaboose. It was the
Government in action.
I saw a ward alderman slip into
an office one morning
and talk with a judge. Later in the
day the judge
dismissed a case against a
pickpocket who was a
live ward worker for the alderman.
Again I saw
this was the Government, doing
things.
I saw militiamen level their
rifles at a crowd of work-
ingmen who were trying to get other
workingmen
to stay away from a shop where there
was a strike
on. Government in action.
Everywhere I saw that Government
is a thing made of
men, that Government has blood and
bones, it is
many mouths whispering into many
ears, sending
telegrams, aiming rifles, writing
orders, saying
“yes” and “no.”
Government dies as the men
who form it die and are laid
away in their graves and the new
Government that
comes after is human, made of
heartbeats of blood,
ambitions, lusts, and money running
through it all,
money paid and money taken, and
money covered
up and spoken of with hushed voices.
A Government is just as
secret and mysterious and sensi-
tive as any human sinner carrying a
load of germs,
traditions and corpuscles handed
down from
fathers and mothers away back.
John Crowe Ransom
Winter Remembered
Two evils, monstrous either one
apart,
Possessed me, and were long and loath at going:
A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart,
And in the wood the furious winter blowing.
Think not, when fire was bright upon my bricks,
And past the tight boards hardly a wind could enter,
I glowed like them, the simple burning sticks,
Far from my cause, my proper heat and center.
Better to walk forth in the frozen air
And wash my wound in the snows; that would be healing;
Because my heart would throb less painful there,
Being caked with cold, and past the smart of feeling.
And where I walked, the murderous winter blast
Would have this body bowed, these eyeballs streaming,
And though I think this heart’s blood froze not fast
It ran too small to spare one drop for dreaming.
Dear love, these fingers that had known your touch,
And tied our separate forces first together,
Were ten poor idiot fingers not worth much,
Ten frozen parsnips hanging in the weather.
Allen Ginsberg
America
America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I’m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.
I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.
I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance.
I’d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I’m a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they’re all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don’re really want to go to war.
America it’s them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
Langston Hughes
Theme for English B (1951)
The instructor said,
Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you--
Then, it will be true.
I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:
It's not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me--we two--you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York too.) Me--who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records--Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white--
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me--
although you're older--and white--
and somewhat more free.
This is my page for English B.
Carolyn
Forché
Taking Off My Clothes (1976)
I
take off my shirt, I show you.
I shaved the hair out under my arms.
I roll up my pants, I scraped off the hair
on my legs with a knife, getting white.
My hair is the color of chopped maples
My eyes dark as beans cooked in the south.
(Coal fields in the moon on torn-up hills)
Skin polished as a Ming bowl
showing its blood-cracks, its age, I have hundreds
of names for the snow, for this, all of them quiet.
In
the night I come to you and it seems a shame
to waste my deepest shudders on a wall of a man.
You recognize strangers,
think you lived through destruction.
You can’t explain this night, my face, your memory.
You
want to know what I know?
Your own hands are lying.
Adrienne Rich
Living In Sin
She had thought the studio would keep itself;
no dust upon the furniture of love.
Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal,
the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears,
a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat
stalking the picturesque amusing mouse
had risen at his urging.
Not that at five each separate stair would writhe
under the milkman's tramp; that morning light
so coldly would delineate the scraps
of last night's cheese and three sepulchral bottles;
that on the kitchen shelf among the saucers
a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own--
envoy from some village in the moldings...
Meanwhile, he, with a yawn,
sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard,
declared it out of tune, shrugged at the mirror,
rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes;
while she, jeered by the minor demons,
pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found
a towel to dust the table-top,
and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove.
By evening she was back in love again,
though not so wholly but throughout the night
she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming
like a relentless milkman up the stairs.
Marge Piercy
Always Unsuitable (1969)
She wore little teeth of pearls around her neck.
They were grinning politely and evenly at me.
Unsuitable they smirked. It is true
I look a stuffed turkey in a suit. Breasts
too big for the silhouette. She knew
at once that we had sex, lots of it
as if I had strolled into her dining-room
in a dirty negligee smelling gamy
smelling fishy and sporting a strawberry
on my neck. I could never charm
the mothers, although the fathers ogled
me. I was exactly what mothers had warned
their sons against. I was quicksand
I was trouble in the afternoon. I was
the alley cat you don't bring home.
I was the dirty book you don't leave out
for your mother to see. I was the center-
fold you masturbate with then discard.
Where I came from, the nights I had wandered
and survived, scared them, and where
I would go they never imagined.
Ah, what you wanted for your sons
were little ladies hatched from the eggs
of pearls like pink and silver lizards
cool, well behaved and impervious
to desire and weather alike. Mostly
that's who they married and left.
Oh, mamas, I would have been your friend.
I would have cooked for you and held you.
I might have rattled the windows
of your sorry marriages, but I would
have loved you better than you know
how to love yourselves, bitter sisters.
Marge Piercy
Barbie Doll
This girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee
and miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.
Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nose and fat legs.
She was healthy, tested intelligent,
possessed strong arms and back,
abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.
She went to and fro apologizing.
Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.
She was advised to play coy,
exhorted to come on hearty,
exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.
Her good nature wore out
like a fan belt.
So she cut off her nose and her legs
and offered them up.
In the casket displayed on satin she lay
with the undertaker’s cosmetics painted on,
a turned-up putty nose,
dressed in a pink and white nightie.
Doesn’t she look pretty? everyone said.
Consummation at last.
To every woman a happy ending.
Suicide
Note
Janice
Mirikitani
How many notes written . . .
ink smeared like birdprints in snow.
not good enough not pretty enough not smart enough
dear mother and father.
I apologize
for disappointing you.
I've worked very hard,
not good enough
harder, perhaps to please you.
If only I were a son, shoulders broad
as the sunset threading through pine,
I would see the light in my mother's
eyes, or the golden pride reflected
in my father's dream
of my wide, male hands worthy of work
and comfort.
I would swagger through life
muscled and bold and assured,
drawing praises to me
like currents in the bed of wind, virile
with confidence.
not good enough not strong enough not good enough
I apologize.
Tasks do not come easily.
Each failure, a glacier.
Each disapproval, a bootprint.
Each disappointment,
ice above my river.
So I have worked hard.
not good enough.
My sacrifice I will drop
bone by bone, perched
on the ledge of my womanhood,
fragile as wings.
not strong enough
It is snowing steadily
surely not good weather
for flying - this sparrow
sillied and dizzied by the wind
on the edge.
not smart enough.
I make this ledge my altar
to offer penance.
This air will not hold me,
the snow burdens my crippled wings,
my tears drop like bitter cloth
softly into the gutter below.
not good enough not strong enough not smart enough
Choices thin as shaved
ice. Notes shredded
drift like snow
on my broken body,
covers me like whispers
of sorries.
Perhaps when they find me
they will bury
my bird bones beneath
a sturdy pine
and scatter my feathers like
unspoken song
over this white and cold and silent
breast of earth.
American History II NAME___________________________________ SCORE _______
Directions: Identify
the “decade” during which each event occurred (i.e. 1880-1889 = “1880’s”)
|
1. ______ |
13th Amendment abolishes slavery. |
|
2. ______ |
18th Amendment prohibits the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages; 19th Amendment gives women the vote. |
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3. ______ |
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4. ______ |
Bay of Pigs Invasion: Armed Cuban refugees invade Cuba with U.S. support |
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5. ______ |
Brown v. Board of Education declares segregated schools unconstitutional |
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6. ______ |
Citizen Cane released, considered by many the greatest film ever made |
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7. ______ |
Completion of |
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8. ______ |
Congress passes Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, protecting Native human remains and sacred objects |
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9. ______ |
Cuban Missile Crisis: |
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10. ______
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D Day invasion of western Europe from |
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11. ______
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Daylight Savings Time instituted to allow more daylight for war production |
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12. ______
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Ellis Island Immigration Station opens. |
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13. ______
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Federal building in |
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14. ______
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First circus produced by P.T. Barnum |
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15. ______
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First Mickey Mouse cartoon “Steamboat Willie” |
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16. ______
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Formation of Federal Bureau of Investigation |
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17. ______
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Frozen “O”-ring causes Space Shuttle Challenger to explode after take-off |
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18. ______
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Jackie Robinson becomes the first black major-league ballplayer |
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19. ______
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National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) founded |
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20. ______
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National Guard kills four students at antiwar demonstration, Kent State U., Ohio |
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21. ______
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22. ______
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President John F. Kennedy assassinated. |
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23. ______
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President Richard Nixon resigns in wake of Watergate, avoiding impeachment |
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24. ______
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Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer |
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25. ______
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Scopes trial of Darwinian theory of evolution |
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26. ______
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Sniper kills ten and wounds two in DC metropolitan area |
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27. ______
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Statue of |
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28. ______
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29. ______
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30. ______
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Wright brothers make the first successful airplane flight
at |