Midterm Kirby Scotton

Question 1:

Although each early American writer had their own voice, many of them incorporated the same features in their writing. While some writers focused on their religious conviction and a need to connect to God, other writers desired self-promotion or they tried to spin narratives that would “sell” the New World to Europeans. Even though both versions explored different forms, structures and depictions of the New World, each author presented themes that resonated with the other. Many Early Colonial writers often hid their own need for self-preservation in their narratives.
Among the many examples of Early American writings you find common themes, subjects and narrative style. But, unlike most American movements where writers often mirror each other in tone and structure many of the Early American writers kept a strong sense of self while writing about the New World. John Smith focused on exploration and the adventures behind discovering the new world, similar to William Bradford who documented the pilgrimage from Brittan to the New World. Smith, however, focuses on a romantic depiction of the New World and himself as he describes life in Jamestown. In his narrative he speaks of himself in the third person, which can often distract the reader. It provides Smith with a celebrity that he may not have received as just a man because in his narration he is the equivalent of a modern day superhero. He describes in exuberant detail the way “Smith” was attacked by “200 savages” which he fought off and killed two, tying his native American guide to his “arm with his garters and used him as a buckler” (63). Smith focuses on selling himself as a commodity almost as much as he focuses on “selling” the land because he knew he would profit from it. In the New World were few had housing or food, much less wealth, he wanted to attract wealthy settlers from Brittan who could come and settle in America because he expected they would call on him, the first American hero, to show them the ropes.
Although Bradford’s narrative is also a depiction of true events that read similar to a diary, Bradford’s need of self-preservation is less evident to many readers. He does not focus on himself as a character but instead uses the chance to document the other 100+ pilgrim’s fleeing Great Brittan in pursuit of religious freedom. Bradford establishes the superiority of the travelers as he explains that many people “desired to be with them, [but] could not endure that great labor and hard fare,” of travelling across the Atlantic Ocean. In doing this he is reflecting on the travelers and their passage as an act of strength and an example of their conviction. Religious members of Brittan who feared persecution or members of society who would want to display their own strength and or took his words as a challenge. Bradford never comes across as a man who needs to show his strength or be admired. Instead he connects everything to God, he gives ever sliver of credit to God and is constantly reminding the other travelers that this is His will, not theirs. The Pilgrim’s choose to leave because they were excited to lay some “good foundation,” (87) insinuating that the New World was going to be a more Godly land than Brittan, and thus would be blessed by God.
Where as Smith’s need for self-preservation is connected to his desire to prosper in the New World and for the New World to flourish with wealthy members of society, Bradford focuses more on the spiritual self-preservation. He wants the New World to flourish because it will give him more people to covet for God, and it could also solidify his place as a member of the “Elect” in the eyes of God. He takes a truthful approach to illustrating the hardships the travelers endured not because it was the right thing to do or because no one else had spoken so truthfully about the New World, he did it to show the trials the travelers had been through so those who traveled would revere them as the strongest and the ones “chosen” by God because they had proven themselves. People who were not religious devout would not travel to America under Bradford’s direction, but those who felt a need to prove themselves to God would have taken the challenge willingly, like many of the pilgrims did.

Question 3:

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” exemplifies Romantic Literature. Although many romantic elements can be highlighted in this short story, Hawthorne’s use of historical context to frame the story, the intricate way he weaves sinister and emotional plot and the characters themselves merge to form a story that arguably can be considered one of the most “textbook” romantic pieces Hawthorne wrote. While these elements allow his piece to easily be categorized as romantic literature, it is the inner conflict of his characters and the contrast between two worlds that illustrates the struggle of man between good and evil. This element solidifies not only the stories connection to the romantic world, but it’s placement as an important piece in American Literature.
Traditionally, romantic authors frame their stories with historical context. Much like Washington Irving’s “The Devil in Tom Walker, Hawthorne historically frames his story when he strategically states that “Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem village,” in the opening line. Some readers may not be familiar with Salem, but one can easily discern that the majority of Hawthorne’s readers would be reminded of Salem, Massachusetts. As Goodman Brown says his goodbyes to his wife, who is eagerly pleading with him to stay, he leaves “Faith” behind to attend to his “errand.” Brown’s errand is leading him deep into the forest, late a night, in Salem. This connects the reader to the mass hysteria that ensued during The Salem Witch trials. This frame not only connects Hawthorne’s story historically but it mirrors the fear that Brown experiences in the story. The Salem Witch trials are an example of mass hysteria that occurred due to the fear of the “unknown.” This invisible fear that can occur when one feels threatened by an unknown force can lead many people to see or hear things that are not there. This same fear drives Brown into the woods, far away from his “Faith,” and continues to drive him insane through the end of the story.
Another romantic element used in “Young Goodman Brown” is the intricate ways Hawthorne uses plot to illustrate the internal struggle of man between good and evil. Many romantic stories use plot devices that portray the different sides of good and evil. Hawthorne uses a secondary character, a traveler with a twisted staff who resembles Brown, to create the two-sided dialect that depicts the various sides of good and evil. The traveler symbolizes Brown’s sinister desires, encouraging him to go deeper into the forest, “reasoning as we go.” The man is encouraging Brown to explore the inner curiosity that is driving him into the forest, and it is this same curiosity of the unknown that lingers to create the hysteria that consumes him by the end of the story. Seduction is another element found in the plots of romantic pieces. Goodman Brown finds himself “seduced” by the man as he is encouraging him to come deeper and deeper into the woods with him. For the reader, it is actually evil seducing Brown away from “Faith” and into the darkness of the unknown in the forest.
The contrast Hawthorne creates between Brown’s physical world and his religious world is truly one of the strongest elements of romanticism in “Young Goodman Brown.” The reader physically sees the difference between Salem Village and the woods as Hawthorne describes the final events in the middle of the forest, but it is it’s representation of his spiritual life that impacts the readers reaction to the ending. Brown finds himself in the center of the forest with what appears to be the devil and all of the members of the town. He is shocked of their presence, illustrating to the reader that he fears those he knows well and will from that point always be suspicious of. Trying to cling to his conviction he cries “With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!” but it is the strategic capitalization of “Faith” that shows Hawthorne’s purpose in the following events. As he finds pink ribbon he cries, “my Faith is gone, there is no good on earth.” Hawthorne is illustrating the complete lack of hope a man feels once his faith has been taken from him. Brown’s wife, “Faith,” is lost to him, and because she symbolizes his religious faith and conviction it can be argued that it is his “Faith” in God that has really left him. As he finds his wife he pleads one last time, “look up to heaven, and resist the wicked on,” but it is himself he is really telling to resist the desires and seduction of evil.

Question 4:

Many readers may argue that it is Edgar Allen Poe’s ability to analyze the psychological decent into madness that draws many readers to him. As one of the first widely circulated authors and poets of his time, it is an interesting theory to argue. He had three books of poetry published by the time he was 21 years old. Most writers today can’t say that, much less authors in the 1800’s. One has to begin to wonder why so many readers found themselves consumed with the themes and images that Poe created, but it is not his earlier works like “The Raven” or “The Fall of the House of Usher” that has always felt like the most important piece he has written. Instead, I have always felt myself drawn to the last poem he wrote before his death in 1848, “Annabel Lee.”
In an attempt to lament the loss of his wife, Poe wrote “Annabel Lee” as a tribute to her. Although the poem is shorter than many other pieces published during the time, and it certainly lacks the same social consciousness of poets like Michael Arnold, it still packs the traditional Poe punch. With just the first two stanzas the reader is lulled into a melancholy state with the rhythm of the ballad. He uses a traditional rhyme scheme, often focusing on ABACA patterns, but it is the repetition of his words and the softness of the end rhymes that reminds the reader of a nursery rhyme a parent would use to cox a child to sleep. Repeating the key line “in a kingdom by the sea,” in line 2, 8, and 14 helps the reader connect to the mood and creates a specific image. When reading Poe one will not envision a little town on a calm coastline; this is a “kingdom” by the sea, complete with tempests and duals. The sea symbolizes movement, immensity and the unknown beyond the horizon. Water traditionally is associated with emotion, and so the reader can often argue that Poe’s placement of the kingdom by the sea not only shows the powerlessness one has (because the weather can change rapidly at the beach and is often treacherous in one form or the other), it also shows the inner conflict that he himself is experiencing in his final days. He’s distraught over the death of his wife, the only woman he ever really loved, and cannot reconcile her loss like he has had to reconcile the loss of so many others. One can sense the breaking beneath the surface of the poet’s mind, and thus it is not surprising that Poe was found dead soon after the rights to “Annabel Lee” were sold, presumably from drinking himself to death.
As the poem progresses, the character “Annabel Lee” is “chill[ed]” (line 15) by the cloud above and is then “bore away from” (line 18) the narrator only to be pronounced dead in the final line of the fourth stanza. “That the wind came out of the cloud one night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.” This represents the powerlessness many people feel, especially after they have experienced tremendous loss in their lives with what seems like little purpose. In society today we understand that people often die and there is little to no meaning in their deaths, but in a life like Poe’s where he had experienced death after death after death it is understandable why he may begin questioning the “cloud” as it potentially represents religion, God and the afterlife.
Poe often uses themes such as victimization and confrontations with mysterious presences as a way to cope with the trauma he has experienced in his own life. He questions “God” and why does this keep happening in my life, which is one of the reasons why his poems and stories often involve the death of a woman or someone close to the narrator. He also explores the concept of madness and the breaking between reality and delusion. These shifts are more evident in his short fiction where the narrators are more rounded, but it can be seen in his poem “Annabel Lee” as the narrator begins to express that the love between him and Annabel Lee is stronger than any other force in the world.
“But our love is stronger by far than the love,
Of those who were older than we –
Of many far wiser than we –
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul,
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee” (lines 27-33).
As he often does, Poe expresses the belief that souls are connected, and because of their connection love and emotion can transcend death. This is a strategy for the man who has experienced the loss of his loved ones and need to keep them alive in his mind and in his heart. He clings to the belief that their love is special and cannot be tarnished or tainted by any element of unknown force, which is in its own form a blurred line between reality and delusion.

Question 6:

With raising tension across America following the “upheaval of the Civil War,” writers began to focus on an approach toward writing that commemorated the ordinary day-to-day lives of ordinary people. Unlike the Romantic writers before them, writers of the Realist movement avoided embellished language and intense settings that played off the reader’s fears and imagination. Instead, these writers focused on mundane details that the readers could associate with their own lives, and used this as a tool to connect the readers to their stories and characters. In conjunction with Realism, Naturalist began to forge their own path, focusing on Darwinism and survival of the fittest. Most Naturalist writers focus on the animalistic side of people, showing characters that were driven by greed and lust. Both movements were filled with writers who focused on the lives of “real people,” but writers of the Naturalist movement focused on the more sinister side of the ordinary. Crane and Bierce both focus on soldiers in their stories. Stephen Crane’s “An Episode of War,” covers a small event in a soldier’s life when he is shot while counting coffee rations. Ambrose Bierce’s short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” does not have a narrator that is a soldier, but the narrator is directly linked to events from the Civil War. In “An Episode of War,” the narrator is a lieutenant who is counting coffee when he is suddenly shot. There is no grand bravado or foreshadowing of this event like a reader would see in a romantic piece like Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown.” Instead Crane focuses on the unpredictability of life and the impossibility of protecting one self against the elements of the world as he describes, “the corporals were thronging forward, each to reap a little square, when suddenly the lieutenant cried out.” This idea is also continued towards the end of the piece when the narrator finally comes face to face with the doctor. When the doctor sees the wound he “fingered it disdainfully,” showing how desensitized the society had become to violence due to the brutal war most American’s had just lived through. Where one might expect a grand spectacle to be made of the fact the soldier eventually loses his arm and returns home, Crane again speaks to the normality of this type of violence and the inability of people to protect themselves from anything when he divulges that, “this is the story of how the lieutenant lost his arm.” It is stated so matter-of-factly that he could have been informing the reader, “you’re going to have meatloaf for dinner.” Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” reflects a similar tone and themes as Crane’s, but Bierce pushes against the norm of a linear story line and incorporates a framed story instead. Bierce takes great care in describing the details of the bridges structure and the men standing on it. Originally, the reader may think the man being described on the bridge is African-American because of the time period depicted and the method of execution. However, it is the man’s “straight nose” that finally provides the clear image of the man with “a rope closely” encircling his neck. Bierce describes every detail of the scene, from the old boards to the “sluggish stream” and even illustrates the stoic men standing motionless facing away from the lynching. These soldiers serve no real purpose to the story other than to illustrate the passivity of American’s when it came to executing the “enemy.” The man being executed is not a felon or a run away slave, showing that during this time period even “gentlemen are not excluded” for potentially finding themselves dead. This connects to the theme of the unpredictable and how powerless people are in choosing their own fate. Bierce also plays with dry sarcasm when he makes the joke “to die of hanging at the bottom of a river” when the man plunges into the stream. The narrator fights through insane odds to make it to his home at the end of the story only for the reader to learn the narrator is actually swinging by the neck over the side of the bridge. Bierce shocks the reader with the narrator’s death to show how quickly things can change for anyone. The reader becomes invested in the narrator’s survival and roots for him to make it out alive because he is the ordinary Joe. The reader can see in the narrator a sliver of themselves, someone who has been pushed into a life that they can’t control, someone who craves change but lacks the power to provoke it. Bierce is commenting on the powerlessness of people not just to the unknown forces in the world, but also to the people who control our fates like our families or higher authorities like government officials.